Re: lynx-dev Bug in handling of POST's

[Klaus Weide]

On Fri, 23 Jun 2000, Hugo Haas wrote:

> Hi.
> 
> I have discovered a bug in the way Lynx handles POST's in forms.
> 
> Since the page I used to discovered it isn't public, I am going to
> describe the behavior.
> 
> Suppose that you have a CGI script at http://example.org/foo.
> 
> This document contains a form with a POST method:
> 
>       <FORM METHOD="POST" ACTION="/foo">
>       [..]
>       <INPUT TYPE="submit" NAME="submit" VALUE="Proceed">
>       </FORM>
> 
> I use the form, I get what I wanted. The page info says:
> 
>    Linkname: Example script results
>         URL: http://example.org/foo
>     Charset: iso-8859-1
>      Server: Jigsaw/2.1.0
>        Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 12:58:16 GMT
>    Post Data: param=whatever&submit=Proceed
>    Post Content Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
>    Owner(s): None
>        size: 36 lines
>        mode: normal, no-cache
> 
> At the top of the result page, there's a link to go back to the first
> step. Still from the information page:
> 
> Link that you currently have selected
> 
>    Linkname: Back to step 1.
>         URL: http://example.org/foo
> 
> Following this link will, instead of sending an HTTP GET, send another
> HTTP POST with the same data. Lynx is somehow stuck in POST mode.
> 
> The version I am using is "Lynx/2.8.3rel.1 libwww-FM/2.14 SSL-MM/1.4.1
> OpenSSL/0.9.4".

This has always been Lynx's behavior, it's not something that has changed
recently.

This problem should go away if you configure lynx with 
--enable-internal-links and recompile.  Have a look at the description
for this flag in INSTALLATION.

I wrote the code for the "internal links" alternative behavior and still
have some test/demo pages for this,
   http://www.enteract.com/~kweide/test/test-postlink1.html
and
   http://www.enteract.com/~kweide/test/addition.cgi

   Klaus


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