Description
Assignment
This assignment should be completed as a collection of several Python source (.py) files, uploaded
to Carmen as a .zip file. You may only use modules and packages from the standard library that
we have covered in class, or that you have written yourself in prior homework assignments.
(1) Create a file called runserver.py that, when run, starts an HTTP server with CGI
enabled on port 8000 from the current directory.
(2) In the same directory as runserver.py, create a new directory called cgi-bin. In that
directory, place the file cardutils.py that was uploaded along with the assignment to
Carmen.
(3) If you did not complete either of the two functions play_game or review_game in Homework 9, complete one of them now before proceeding with either step 4 or 5 as appropriate.
(4) If you completed the body of play_game in Homework 9, do the following.
(a) Create a file called playgame.py in the cgi-bin directory. This script should respond to HTTP POST requests from a client to your server with data in CSV format
following the requirements for the play_game function from last week’s homework,
except that it should only print the cards that were played, and not the scores or a game
summary. The body of the request should have one field, “nplayers”, containing the
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It should be obvious which are the heavily-weighted questions, but if you are unsure please ask me.
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number of players to simulate, and it should use a standard card deck, as generated by
the function std_card_deck.
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(b) Create a file called main.py in the same directory as runserver.py.
From main.py, use urllib to submit a POST request to
http://localhost:8000/cgi-bin/playgame.py with appropriate data,
and print the response to the console along with the HTTP status code and reason
phrase. See my Demos repl for a sample client script.
(c) Modify main.py so that instead of printing the results to the console, it stores the
results locally in a CSV file.
(5) If you completed the body of review_game in Homework 9, do the following.
(a) Create a file called reviewgame.py in the cgi-bin directory. This script should
respond to HTTP POST requests from a client to your server with an HTML webpage
displaying the results of the game that was uploaded as a CSV file accompanying the
request with key “gamefile”.
Note: the file in the CGI FieldStorage instance is a sequence of bytes, not strings!
You’ll need to convert the file to an iterable of strings to use with a csv reader. Use
the decode(encoding=’utf-8’) instance method on bytes objects to do so.
(b) To handle file uploads, create a file called index.html in the same directory as
runserver.py, and in it place a form with a file upload field (see an example of
such a form in my Demos repl in the file webapp/index.html). The form should
also have a field for the number of players, named “nplayers”. The HTML file should
describe what the application does (e.g., “Upload a CSV file containing the output from
a card game and this web app will tell you the results of the game!”). When the user
submits the form, it should send a POST request to cgi-bin/reviewgame.py.
(6) Start your server either by running runserver.py or by issuing the command
python3 -m http.server –cgi from the terminal in the appropriate directory. Use
2Hint: the csv module can print CSV-like text to sys.stdout by importing sys and using sys.stdout as the
“file name” when instantiating a CSV writer. The response from a CGI script is whatever that script printed to
stdout.
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this server to test your CGI script by submitting requests either from main.py or from the
HTML webpage.
Challenge Activities
Some homeworks (such as this one) will have additional challenge activities. These activities do
not contribute to your grade, but they are problems that I find interesting or challenging.
(7) Complete the other of the two CGI scripts (either playgame.py or reviewgame.py).
(8) Modify your index.html file to let the user decide whether to simulate a game or to review
a game.
Submission
To submit this assignment, upload a .zip file named “lastnamefirstname.zip” (obviously replacing lastname with your own last name and firstname with your own first name) containing all of
your Python and HTML files to the “Homework 10” assignment on Carmen. As always, be sure to
note all group members who contributed to the assignment and what those contributions were.
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