With App Engine Python27(standard env), it was possible to create a webapp that only serves static resources from the app.yaml. Without writing any Python script.
With Python37 (standard env), I see that it's still possible to have the static_dir in the handlers section of app.yaml but I'm wondering if this will work the same way. Cause I don't define any entrypoint, I don't set a webserver. I have only the app.yaml at the moment.
And the first that blocks me at the moment: if doing so, how do I locally run this app ? (no Python script so no python main.py and dev_appserver.py does not work for Python37).
Thanks for your answers
Yes, the static_dir and static_file configurations work the same way, their sections in the app.yaml reference docs for 2.7 and 3.7 are identical except for the references to the 2.7-specific application_readable option.
Since serving the static content on GAE is identical (the static content is uploaded and served separately from the application code - equivalent, if you want, to serving from a CDN) it doesn't really matter if you're using the 2.7 runtime or the 3.7 one - you're not actually executing any python code, right?
So one option would be to just use 2.7 instead (adding a minimal app skeleton to keep the runtime happy, say by just returning 404 or redirecting to one of the static pages - you can get it from the Quickstart). You can then continue to use the 2.7 development server for local execution.
Another option would be to use 2.7 (as in option 1) just for local development, but switch back to 3.7 for deployment (i.e. update the app.yaml file, drop the skeleton app code or update it for 3.7). A bit more tedious and brittle, but it can be done.
A 3rd option would be to try the updated development server which has some limited support for 3.7, see Python 3.7 Local Development Server Options for new app engine apps. Serving static content might be included in that limited support. You'd need to meet its specific requirements. You'd also need a 3.7-compatible skeleton app, you can get one from the 3.7 Quickstart.
Finally, you could also use some other tool locally during development, if you have one (same advice as for running an actual app locally). It could simply be your browser for static-only content :) Again, the goal is to just develop your static content, GAE will serve it the same way. You won't need any skeleton app in this case.
Side note: I saw this in the Node.js standard env app.yaml reference, not sure if it's applicable to python 3.7 as well, just be aware of it:
In order to use static handlers, at least one of your handlers must
contain the line script: auto to deploy successfully.
Related
This is a bit embarassing, but I'm a Django noob and I couldn't find a simple solution to this:
I have written a Django app in a local VM that I now want to deploy to a "production" server. App works like a charm locally.
Now my IT colleague has set up the server with Django and that also works fine. I can open it via the Web and I get the usual "Congratulations on your first Django-powered page". I can also log into the admin interface. The project has been created.
This is a very low-key mini project and I'm not too familiar with git, so we've decided to just push files via FTP. (And I want to stick with that if at all possible.) So I uploaded the app folder into the project folder and also adjusted the project's settings.py and urls.py.
However, nothing seems to be happening on the server's end. The welcome page is the same, the app does not show up in the admin interface and the URLs won't be resolved as hoped.
Any suggestions what I should have done / done differently?
You need to restart apache or whatever is running your django project. Your changes to py files are cached when you first load your server config (settings).
Any suggestions what I should have done / done differently?
You should be using git/jenkins/deployment techniques, I know you said you've decided not to use it but you're going to be missing out on important things like being able to keep track of changes and unit testing
I have my development environment setup on Win 7 like this:
Django development structure
Apache -server- C:\Program Files (x86)\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.4
PostgreSQL -database- C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\9.2
Django -framework- C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\django
Python -code- C:\Python27
Project -root- C:\mysite
|----------apps
|----------HTML
|----------CSS
|----------JavaScript
|----------assets
I am attempting to keep this extremely simple to start out. There are 5 main directories each with a distinct purpose. All the code resides in the project folder.
compared to WAMP structure:
C:\WAMP
|----------C:\Apache
|----------C:\MySQL
|----------C:\PHP
|----------C:\www
I like how Apache, MySQL, and PHP all reside in a neat directory. I know to keep the root project OUTSIDE in another directory in Django for security reasons.
Is it fine that Apache, PostgreSQL, and Python are installed all over the place in the Django environment?
Did I miss a core Django component and/or directory?
Will deploying and scaling be a problem?
I want this to be a guideline for beginning Django web programmers.
I can answer the question one by one:
Is if fine that Apache, PostgreSQL, and Python are installed all over the place in the Django environment?
All over the place sounds weird but yes it is totally fine.
Did I miss a core Django component and/or directory?
No you don't miss anything, Django core is in site-packages folder already and your site code is mysite, which can be located anywhere you want.
Will deploying and scaling be a problem?
No it won't be a problem with current structure. You will deploy your mysite only, the other will be installed separately.
Something you should get familiar with when starting with Django development:
Most likely when you deploy your project, it will be on a Linux server, so install and learn Linux maybe?
virtualenv: Soon you will have to install Django, then a bunch of external packages to support your project. virtualenv helps you isolate your working environment. Well it's "unofficial" a must when you start with python development.
virtualenvwrapper to make your life easier when working with virtualenv
git and github or bitbucket: if you don't know git yet, you should now.
Apache is just web server, it is used to serve files, but to make a website you do not necessary need it. Django comes with its own development server. See :
python manage.py runserver
Apache is required when you are developing PHP websites because your computer do not know how to compile and interpret it. But for Django, you use the Python language, and you have already install it if you are using Django.
Read https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.5/intro/tutorial01/
And where it will be the time to set up your own server using Apache look at :
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/deployment/wsgi/modwsgi/.
Scaling will be a problem on windows. Python in Apache on windows gets 64 threads in one process. Couple this with the GIL and you will have scaling issues.
Python and Apache on Linux don't have this same problem. Under Linux wsgi can create multiple processes that have multiple threads each, minimizing GIL issues.
WSGI in Apache on windows is not a scalable solution in my opinion.
However you can develop there and move to linux for deployment, I do it all the time.
You will want to take advantage of the Apache Alias directive to serve all your static content like css, js, favicon.ico. This frees up python to only handle requests that require logic.
For very simple, internal web-apps using ASP I was able to just switch IIS 'on' and then write some ASP scripts in the www directory that would start working immediately.
Is there an equivalent webserver app for Python scripts that I can run that will automatically start serving dynamic pages (python scripts) in a certain folder (with virtually no configuration)?
Solutions I've already found are either too limited (e.g. SimpleHTTPRequestHandler doesn't serve dynamic content) or require configuring the script that does the serving.
There's always CGI. Add a script mapping of .py to "C:\Python27\python.exe" -u "%s" then drop .py files in a folder and IIS will execute them.
I'd not generally recommend it for real work—in the longer term you would definitely want to write apps to WSGI, and then deploy them through any number of interfaces including CGI—but it can be handy for quick prototyping.
For development or just to play around, here's an example using the standard Python library that I have used to help friend who wanted to get a basic CGI server up and running. It will serve python scripts from cgi-bin and files from the root folder. I'm not near a Windows computer at the moment to make sure that this still works. This also assumes Python2.x. Python 3.x has this, it's just not named the same.
Make a directory on your harddrive with a cgi-bin folder in it (Ex. "C:\server\cgi-bin")
In a command window, navigate to "C:\server" directory
Type the following assuming you've installed python 2.7 in C:\Python27:
"c:\python27\python.exe -m CGIHTTPServer"
You should get a message like "Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 8000"
Linux is the same - "python -m CGIHTTPServer" in a directory with a cgi-bin/ in it.
WSGI setups are fairly easy to get started, but in no anyway turn key. django MVC has a simple built in development server if you plan on using a more comprehensive framework.
My limited experience with Python web frameworks has taught me that most go to one extreme or the other: Django on one end is a full-stack MVC framework, that will do pretty much everything for you. On the other end, there are Flask, web.py, CherryPy, etc., which do much less, but stay out of your way.
CherryPy, for example, not only comes with no ORM, and doesn't require MVC, but it doesn't even have a templating engine. So unless you use it with something like Cheetah, you can't write what would look like .asp at all.
I'm working on a python app that will run on top of Google App Engine. I setup my app up with the following directory structure:
approot/
app.yaml
index.yaml
myapp.py
controllers/
some_controller.py
some_controller1.py
models/
views/
...etc...
My problem is that the development server will not always automatically reload my code when I make changes even though Google's documentation says it will.
The only time it does reload my code is when the change I make is in the top level directory of my app. Anything in a subdirectory (e.g. controllers) is ignored. I have to stop and start the server every time a change is made.
I find this really impedes my progress in development, especially since there is no restart button, you actually have to hit stop and then start.
Is there a remedy for this or am I just doing it wrong? I really like having a well organized project and would rather not dump all my files in the top level directory.
The reload mechanism is likely tied to the default import mechanism and builtin __import__ function. If you (or your framework) load your modules in some other, clever way, the reloader might not notice. A possible workaround is to explicitly import key modules in your myapp.py module.
double check that you have installed pyobjc
the dev server will complain like this:
UserWarning: Detecting source code changes is not supported because your Python version does not include PyObjC (http://pyobjc.sourceforge.net/). Please install PyObjC or, if that is not practical, file a bug at http://code.google.com/p/appengine-devappserver2-experiment/issues/list.
Following up on my last year's question on documentation, I now want to get started and try out Python-based Sphinx for putting together the developer documentation for a PHP CMS I've been working on.
Instead of setting up Python locally on my workstation, I would like to run it on a publicly accessible web server from the start. All the web hosting packages I have access to run on the LAMP stack, and I'm reluctant to buy Python-based hosting. I am very interested in the Google App Engine, the free quotas they provide will do for me a hundred times over, and even if not, their pricing looks very reasonable.
Now I have zero knowledge of Python - getting Sphinx to work would be my first contact with it - and very little time. As far as I understand, the platform and python libraries the App Engine provides are very compatible to a standard Python library but not identical.
So my question is:
Can Sphinx run on App Engine at all?
Is installing Sphinx on the App Engine as straightforward as if I would install it on top of a normal Python installation? Or will the App Engine's environment require tweaking of the source code that I can't perform in reasonable time with my current level of Python?
Should I be installing Sphinx on a local server and a "normal" Python stack instead first?
Does anybody know any helpful How-to's, tutorials or other resources for this?
You do not need to install Sphinx on GAE at all.
You use Sphinx to create a directory of static HTML, CSS and JS. When this step is finished, you simply upload the output from Sphinx -- in it's entirety.
The output from Sphinx (HTML, CSS and JS) is simply served from one place. You upload the documentation from where you created it to GAE as static files and serve them. Done.
There's no "install on a web server" aspect to Sphinx at all. Sphinx is not a web application; it does not run on your web server. You run it in development briefly to publish the documentation to HTML, LaTeX or whatever. Once you've created the static HTML files, you no longer need any part of Sphinx anywhere.
Can Sphinx run on App Engine at all?
I suppose it can, but you never need to.
Is installing Sphinx on the App Engine
as straightforward as...
It doesn't matter, because you don't install it there. You install it on your workstation and use it on your workstation.
Should I be installing Sphinx on a
local server and a "normal" Python
stack instead first?
Don't install it on a server. Install it on your workstation.
Does anybody know any helpful
How-to's, tutorials or other resources
for this?
If by "this" you mean "installing on a web server", then then answer is "no". One does not install it on a web server. So there are no how-to's, tutorials or resources for "installing on a web server".
If by "this" you mean "creating documentation with Sphinx", then the answer is "what's wrong with https://www.sphinx-doc.org? What do they lack?
I would like Sphinx's "engine" that
turns the input (consisting of reST
files) into HTML/CSS/JS to be
accessible from anywhere to make me
(and possible other contributors)
independent from a specific
workstation.
Sphinx is like a compiler. Everyone has their own copy on their workstation. They download the document source, make changes, commit the source changes, and upload the resulting document.
serve the generated documentation from
the same place.
Correct. After you download the source, make changes, regenerate the document and commit the changes, you upload the resulting document so it will be served from one -- and only one -- place.
Sphinx is a compiler. It is not a "web engine". It's a simple compiler that simply compiles your documentation into HTML so it can be served.
Interesting project! The main issue you're going to run into is that of filesystem access: The filesystem on App Engine is read-only, and based on looking at the source, Sphinx is fairly hard-coded to use the filesystem for output. It also expects to read the configuration file and input files from the local filesystem, which would make building docs for anything other than projects bundled with the app tricky.
It is possible to work around this, but it would require writing a simple virtual filesystem that uses the App Engine datastore, and using monkeypatching to make it work with the regular Python file interface. That's rather advanced for a "new to Python" project!
One other thing you might want to consider if you were pondering allowing users to upload projects to be documented: The Sphinx configuration file is in Python, so executing it could be dangerous - a user could do nasty things to your app with a malicious configuration file!
The difference between deployment locally via dev_appserver and remotely via appcfg has been - in my experience - limited to which of the two commands I execute. That said, I've no experience with Sphinx.
Sphinx compiles documentation, running it on a webserver makes as much sense as running gcc on a webserver.