action      %URI;          #REQUIRED -- server-side form handler --
[download]

Cheers,
Ovid

Join the Perlmonks Setiathome Group or just click on the the link and check out our stats.

start_form() will return a <FORM> tag with the optional method, action
+ and form encoding that you specify. The defaults are: 

    method: POST
    action: this script
    enctype: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
[download]

method = get|post [CI] 
This attribute specifies which HTTP method will be used to submit the 
+form data set. Possible (case-insensitive) values are "get" (the defa
+ult) and "post". See the section on form submission for usage informa
+tion.
[download]

That's the middle element of my three items (number 2). It doesn't imply (to me) anything about item 1 or item 3.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

And find it mildly amusing that the default methods disagree. Which, it seems is often the case for web standards documents.

There's no disagreement there at all. If CGI.pm isn't told which method to use, it generates a "method=POST" string. If a web agent isn't told which to do, it uses GET by default. Two different levels. No conflict.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

I know this is an old message, but someone may find it in a search like I did.

The CGI module spec doesn't disagree with the W3C spec for the FORM tag. They're not referring to the same thing.

In HTML, the action property of the form tag is not optional. If you want to, you can leave it as an empty string (action="") and you will still pass the validator.

In CGI's start_form() method, the action method is optional. If you don't define the action property of the start_form method, it will create a form tag with an action property that points to the current script.

--
-- GhodMode

As merlyn noted in his post, made a tad over five years ago.