Setting MIME type for CGI output (Web and WAP versions have same extension)

[Nokia_Archive]

Hello!

Sorry if this sounds like a newbie question, but I'm just getting started with WAP... and I'd like to produce my first site with limited resources (a leased "virtual" server and a simple CGI database).

I'm trying to set up a WAP site which will provide access to a database of concerts, but I'm running into problems with MIME types of the CGI application output.

The database is served by a small CGI program called BASERUNNER.EXE, which is accessed through the URL:

http://chanter.com/cgi-bin/baserun.exe?_cfg=e:InetPubClientschanter.comcgi-binpbasewap.cfg

(This is the URL which provides the WML-formatted output).

I'm already using the same database to run the regular HTML site, with a similar URL:

http://chanter.com/cgi-bin/baserun.exe?_cfg=e:InetPubClientschanter.comcgi-binpbasespec.cfg

As you can see, the extension is the same. Therefore, the WAP version is not recognized by WAP devices because of the wrong header.

How do I tell the server how to send the correct MIME header so that WAP browsers recognize the output? And is it possible to make these 2 configurations (WML
output and HTML output) coexist on the same server?

The site is hosted on a shared "virtual" server (IIS 4.0). I'm not the admin, but I could ask them to set the MIME types it I could find the correct parameters.

Thanks in advance!
Yves Dehnel


Posted by Yves Dehnel, wap@chanter.com
on May 19, 2000 at 23:51

[Nokia_Archive]

Posted by Nick Loman, nick@loman.net
on May 20, 2000 at 19:42

You should be able to make the CGI program be the thing to output the MIME type. In my experience the first line of most C/perl CGI programs is something like:

print "Content-type: text/htmlnn";

You need to change this to:

print "Content-type: text/vnd.wap.wmlnn";

Hope this helps,

Nick.