External URLs may point to CGI scripts (CGI, PHP). Three ways for passing parameters to the scripts exist:
Passing parameters as pathinfo:
Parameters are appended to the script's
URL seperated by "/" characters. Example:
http://www.somewhere.de/cgi-bin/search/Content-Management/infopark
Passing parameters using the HTTP method GET:
Parameters are appended to
the script's URL after a "?" character. Two parameters are separated by an "&" character
(ampersand). Values without a name or name/value pairs may be appended to the URL. A
value is separated from a name using a "=" character. Example:
http://www.somewhere.de/cgi-bin/search?keyword=NPS&casesensitive
Passing parameters using the HTTP method POST:
The parameters are passed
via an individual document which the browser generates automatically as it sends form
data to the script's URL. Normally, this way of parameter transfer is invisible to the
user. The CMS manages this kind of URLs as external URLs.
The following special cases need to be observed when using URLs of this kind:
According to the HTTP specification, URLs must not contains spaces. If you want to use spaces, replace them with "+" characters.
URLs must not contain special characters. Special characters need to be encoded as %HH, where HH represents two hexadecimal digits. These digits describe the character's position in the character set used (normally iso-latin-1 or iso-5899-1). Examples:
| " " (space) | = | %20 |
| % (percent) | = | %25 |
| & (ampersand) | = | %26 |
If several parameters are given using the method GET, the CMS will save them in the link URL in alphabetical order.