Two Books You Must Possess

You can try it, you can buy it, you can pay me next week,yeah!The first is called Special Edition: Using CGI and it's published by Que (ISBN 0-7897-0740-3). Chapter 10, Using MIME with CGI is particularly strong, having been authored by your humble Webmaster. At finer bookstores everywhere, or you can read it online.

For those who may not know what CGI is, it's Common Gateway Interface, and it's the way that Web servers connect to other programs to process forms and perform other useful work. MIME is Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, and it's a way to allow Internet Email, which is, by definition, text-only, to transfer binary files. See the stuff about MUNPACK below.

Another fine tome is Que's Platinum Edition: Using HTML 3.2, Java 1.1 and CGI. Chapter 57, Adding an Online Search Engine, is the relevant chapter there.