Apache module FORM handling in C

Question

I'm implementing an Apache 2.0.x module in C, to interface with an existing product we have. I need to handle FORM data, most likely using POST but I want to handle the GET case as well.

Nick Kew's Apache Modules book has a section on handling form data. It provides code examples for POST and GET, which return an apr_hash_t of the key+value pairs in the form. parse_form_from_POST marshalls the bucket brigade and flattens it into a buffer, while parse_form_from_GET can simply reference the URL. Both routines rely on a parse_form_from_string routine to walk through each delimited field and extract the information into the hash table.

That would be fine, but it seems like there should be an easier way to do this than adding a couple hundred lines of code to my module. Is there an existing module or routines within apache, apr, or apr-util to extract the field names and associated data from a GET or POST FORM into a structure which C code can more easily access? I cannot find anything relevant, but this seems like a common need for which there should be a solution.

Answer 1

While, on it's surface, this may seem common, cgi-style content handlers in C on apache are pretty rare. Most people just use CGI, FastCGI, or the myriad of frameworks such as mod_perl.

Most of the C apache modules that I've written are targeted at modifying the particular behavior of the web server in specific, targeted ways that are applicable to every request.

If it's at all possible to write your handler outside of an apache module, I would encourage you to pursue that strategy.