How do I deploy a Python project to a webserver that supports Python via CGI? I'm well versed in PHP, but do not understand CGI's relation to Python in the deployment process.
Any resource links are appreciated.
The web host in question is GoDaddy.
Generally, we use mod_wsgi to make a Python application respond to CGI.
PHP has a special role -- the language runtime IS a CGI application.
Python does not have this special role. Python -- by default -- is not a CGI application. It requires a piece of glue to play well with Apache. mod_wsgi is this glue.
To actually answer your question about deploying python as CGI (while it does not make a lot of sense on a high activity system - there are occasions where it does the job just fine) you just make sure that your files are executable, have the correct extension and then follow this tutorial. It is what I used to learn from.
EDIT: To be clear - I recommend that you look into Django to deploy web based python applications.
Related
I'm a newbie in django and have a project that involves distributed remote storage and I'm suggested to use mod x-sendfile as part of the project procedure.
In have a django app that receives a file and transforms it into N segments each to be stored on a distinct server. Those servers having a django app receiving and storing the segments.
But since mod x-sendfile works need apache and I am just in developing and trying stage this question occurred to me.
I googled a lot but found nothing in that regard.
So my question being: Is it possible to use apache as django web server during the development of django apps? Does it make sense in development mode to replace apache with django built-in web server?
There should be nothing stopping you from installing a copy of Apache on your workstation and using it for developing, and since you're working on something that depends on some of that functionality it makes perfect sense for you to use that for your development server instead of ./manage.py runserver.
Most people use Djangos built-in server because they don't need more than that for what they're trying to do - it sounds like your solution does.
Heck, since you're testing distributed you may even want to consider grabbing a virtualization tool (qemu, virtualbox, et al) so you can have a faux-distributed setup to work with (I'd suggest doing a bit of scripting to make it easy to deploy / restart them all at once though - it'll save you from having to track down issues where the code that's running is older than you thought it was).
Your development environment can be what you need it to be for what you're doing.
I'm coming from a php background and now I'd like to host a Python web application on AWS but have a few questions about it.
Do I need to use a framework like Django/Flask? Is there anyway I can use core Python to do the same? Back in php, although I tried learning Laravel in the middle, I was able to just use core php with apache and host up my website.
Tried deploying my Python code on my AWS but got an error that application.py was missing. I'd like to know, what exactly is application.py and what is it supposed to contain? Similarly, what's wsgi.py I see here and there. Are these actual files I need to create for the web app to be hosted? Is there some specific code that has to go into them or are the pre-created files by frameworks like Django, etc? Because I could hardly find too much information on them online.
I had recently tried following this tutorial from the AWS official site but to no luck.
The reason for being reluctant to use Django is the shortage of time to learn it. But if it were to make the task of hosting a Python web app easier, I would definitely look at it.
And how is the version of Python set? Because the Python codes I've written use the python3 libraries for BeautifulSoup and urllib.
I have read a lot of articles on the web but the first thing I get on searching for Python on the web or with AWS, is Django or Flask or something. How exactly does it work? When it came to php, it was simple copying the files into the /www/ folder of the server machine and I could access the website via it's url. Maybe I've read too many posts to put them all together so could someone please set it straight for me? It would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks a lot!
You will waste a lot more time trying to write a WSGI application yourself from scratch. Use a framework, it will save you a lot of time.
PHP is very different to WSGI and WSGI sits well below the level of functionality that PHP provides out of the box. PHP is more like what frameworks in Python provide. So go learn a framework. If Django seems too complicated, try Flask first.
Also don't try and do it on AWS from the outset, learn the frameworks by using the development servers they provide on your own box. Just work through their respective tutorials.
Actually AWS Elastic Beanstalk give you pure Python (2.6/2.7/3.4) with Apache + mod_wsgi as web proxy. You can look all supported Python environment in here. So, you can use any Python web framework (such as Django, Flask, etc.) in your web app. If you can, choose common and supported framework by AWS (Django/Flask).
You can think: Python + Apache + mod_wsgi is equivalent to PHP + Apache + mod_php.
Please take a look into AWS Elastic Beanstalk documentation for how to working with Python here. Read the Deploying a Django Application or Deploying a Flask Application if you choose one of them. You need to provide what Elastic Beanstalk environment (mod_wsgi) needs.
Same as PHP, Python actually only copy and paste the files. If you want to make Python web app without framework, you need to follow the WSGI standard. You can take look into this question. In my opinion, better if you use a framework, because it handles the WSGI part for you.
First of all this is a good blog post to start from if you are using Django
I don't know much about Flask, with Django once you understand the core concepts it's not hard at all.
application.py is the file that aws looks for as stated in the blog post I pointed to:
By default eb assumes our wsgi file is called application.py
this can be changed to your local wcgi.py file that Django makes when you start your project with django.
Beware that you want to use your static url correctly so aws will read them from the right folder. I personally disagree about the way the static files configuration in the post.
It's better to stay with the aws default which is "static" and just set static url in django settings to "/static/"
Yesterday I have found information about G-WAN server.
I have searched many websites but I couldn't discover how to run frameworks like Web2Py which is more complex then simple hello.py file.
Is there an easy way to do this?
Maybe uWSGI support?
G-WAN supports the CGI interface, so the CGI environment variables are already there. Usually, Web frameworks are built over this layer.
If uWSGI provides more environment variables that are needed for your project then please drop us a line at gwan.com to explain more precisely what you need.
I want to build a web application that stands completely by itself, apache not required. Is cherrypy a good solution, and can this be compiled with something like py2exe?
Python is a scripting language and is not usually compiled. What you are talking about is packaging your scripts into an exe (via p2exe), bundled with the relative modules and an interpreter.
This is possible with many scripts, including CherryPy, as p2exe basically sticks all your scripts together in one place, then executes it with the interpreter. This link will allow you to build your application into an exe. I would however recommend that you use pyinstaller instead, as I have found it to be much easier.
This question shows that you can daemonize CherryPy, and from the page of CherryPy ->
Your CherryPy powered web applications
are in fact stand-alone Python
applications embedding their own
multi-threaded web server. You can
deploy them anywhere you can run
Python applications. Apache is not
required
So yes you can deploy CherryPy, self-contained without Apache. CherryPy seems to be a fine solution.
You are basically describing web2py.
I'd like to serve django application on windows XP/Vista.
The application is an at hoc web interface to a windows program so it won't be put under heavy load (around 100 requests per second).
Do you know any small servers that can be easily deployed on windows to serve a django app? (IIS is not an option as the app should work on all versions of windows)
cherrypy includes a good server. Here's how you set it up to work with django and some benchmarks.
twisted.web has wsgi support and that could be used to run your django application. Here's how you do it.
In fact any wsgi server will do. Here's one more example, this time using spawning:
$ spawn --factory=spawning.django_factory.config_factory mysite.settings
And for using paste, the info is gathered here.
Of course, you could use apache with mod_wsgi. It would be just another wsgi server. Here are the setup instructions.
If you want to give Apache a go, check out XAMPP to see if it'll work for you. You can do a lightweight (read: no installation) "installation." Of course, you'll also want to install mod_python to run Django. This post may help you set everything up. (Note: I have not used python/Django with XAMPP myself.)
Edit: Before someone points this out, XAMPP is not generally a production-ready tool. It's simply a useful way to see whether Apache will work for you. Also, I saw that you're using SQLite after the fact.
Why not Apache ?
Nokia have developed a scaled down version of apache to run on their mobile phones. It supports python.
http://research.nokia.com/research/projects/mobile-web-server/
Also do you need anything else such as database support etc?