4.6.3 Other functions

parse_qs(qs[, keep_blank_values, strict_parsing])

This function is functionally equivalent to the standard library cgi parse_qs, except that it is written in C and is much faster.

Parse a query string given as a string argument (data of type application/x-www-form-urlencoded). Data are returned as a dictionary. The dictionary keys are the unique query variable names and the values are lists of values for each name.

The optional argument keep_blank_values is a flag indicating whether blank values in URL encoded queries should be treated as blank strings. A true value indicates that blanks should be retained as blank strings. The default false value indicates that blank values are to be ignored and treated as if they were not included.

Note: The strict_parsing argument is not yet implemented.

parse_qsl(qs[, keep_blank_values, strict_parsing])

This function is functionally equivalent to the standard library cgi parse_qsl, except that it is written in C and is much faster.

Parse a query string given as a string argument (data of type application/x-www-form-urlencoded). Data are returned as a list of name, value pairs.

Note: The strict_parsing argument is not yet implemented.

redirect(req, location[, permanent=0, text=None])

This is a convenience function to redirect the browser to another location. When permanent is true, MOVED_PERMANENTLY status is sent to the client, otherwise it is MOVED_TEMPORARILY. A short text is sent to the browser informing that the document has moved (for those rare browsers that do not support redirection); this text can be overridden by supplying a text string.

If this function is called after the headers have already been sent, an IOError is raised.

This function raises apache.SERVER_RETURN exception to abandon any further processing of the handle. If you do not want this, you can wrap the call to redirect in a try/except block catching the apache.SERVER_RETURN.