This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Python Buzz by Titus Brown. Original Post: 26 Nov 2004 Feed Title: Advogato diary for titus Feed URL: http://advogato.org/person/titus/rss.xml Feed Description: Advogato diary for titus Latest Python Buzz Posts Latest Python Buzz Posts by Titus Brown Latest Posts From Advogato diary for titus

WSGI, Quixote, SCGI, QWIP, and SWAP

In a fit of depression over lousy experimental results, with a healthy serving of turkey on top, I decided to turn my hand to something I do better than experimental molecular biology: program in Python. (Trust me, whatever you think of my programming... my molecular biology is weaker. sigh.)

Pursuant to the general public prodding of various people on the Quixote list, I spent a few hours on the couch today and built two interfaces for WSGI, QWIP and SWAP. (README and source download.)

QWIP, the "Quixote-WSGI interface p(something)", wraps the Quixote publisher in a WSGI-compliant application object. This lets any WSGI-compliant servers out there (are there any?) publish Quixote objects.

SWAP, the "SCGI-WSGI application p(something)", allows the SCGI standalone server interface ('scgi server') to run WSGI-compliant applications. For example, this lets mod_scgi run WSGI applications via the SCGI server -- including QWIP-wrapped applications, which was my testing strategy ;).

Overall, my modicum of experience with the internals of Web servers (mostly from PyWX and some minor hacking on Quixote) served me well; it took me about 1 hr to get QWIP working, and about 3 hours to get SWAP working. (Over half of those three hours was spent figuring out that (1) I was instantiating a new object rather than calling the superconstructor, because I'd left out __init__; and (2) that SCGI expected the input and output streams to be closed to signal that the connection was over. Sigh.) It was pretty satisfying to sit back and set up this set of modules:

Apache <--> mod_scgi <--> SCGI server <--> SWAP <--> QWIP <--> Quixote demo

I'm now moderately more optimistic about the usefulness of WSGI. I hate (no, loathe) frameworks that attempt to solve the problems of mankind, if you'll just drink this cool-aid sir... But, notwithstanding the philosophical debut in the WSGI PEP, it was pleasant to implement the adapters and I could see WSGI being of significant benefit to Web server authors. Or maybe by buying into the framework I've sold out and you can't trust my opinion ;).

So, kudos to Phillip Eby & I hope this stuff is useful to someone! Now, back to making my Quixote applications do more stuff!

--titus

p.s. Has anyone else noticed that advogato.com and www.advogato.com read cookies differently? Kind of amusing to go to one or the other and have different options available, one as logged-in member & the other as nobody...