MapServer pass parameters for a filter through CGI

Question

Using MapServer and generating a static map. I am trying to pass a key of a record through CGI and have MapServer draw it. From what I understand if I have a name=example in my CGI call to my MapServer then inside the MapServer config file I can reference the parameter wit '%name%'. But it does not seem to work.

Here is my layer configruation:

LAYER
    NAME "devlocx"
  GROUP "alarmloc"
    STATUS DEFAULT
    TYPE POINT
    CONNECTIONTYPE postgis
    CONNECTION "host=localhost dbname=osm user=osm password=osm port=5432"
    #DATA "geometry from ptx using srid=3857 using unique gid"
    DATA "geometry from (select gid,name, (st_transform(geometry,3857)) as geometry from ptx  where name='%name%') as foo using unique gid using srid=3857"
    ###########################
    # Define the cluster object
    ###########################
    CLASS
      STYLE
        SIZE 30
        SYMBOL "cir"
        COLOR 255 0 0
      END
    END
END
SYMBOL
 name "cir"
 type ellipse
 points 1 2 end
 filled true
END

Answer 1

My issue was I did not include the VALIDATION Block. Once I created a VALIDATION block and validated the parameters it worked immediately