[mod_python] bye bye mod_python, hello... what?

Graham Dumpleton graham.dumpleton at gmail.com
Tue Jan 12 17:27:34 EST 2010


2010/1/13 Clodoaldo Neto <clodoaldo.pinto.neto at gmail.com>:
> 2010/1/12 mog <lists at elasticmind.net>:
>> So, the time has come. I need to start a new project and also migrate my old
>> mod_python stuff to something else :(
>>
>> After all the sweat, blood and tears I put into learning about how Python
>> web apps work, learning how to use mod_python, and how to put web apps
>> together (using mod_python). It's really sad to think that a good portion of
>> that effort seems lost because, unfortunately, mod_python is deprecated :(
>>
>> I looked at a few web frameworks but found they either simply didn't work,
>> exhibited weird random unpredictable behaviour that was impossible to work
>> with, or seemed to abstract so far away from real HTTP which made me feel
>> uncomfortable. I finally settled on mod_python because it seemed to be a
>> nice balance of powerful functionality and usefulness - oh, and it worked.
>>
>> With mod_python I felt as though I was working closely with the HTTP
>> requests because I could use the request objects directly and, if I wanted
>> (and I did), stick stuff in them to use in sessions. mod_python seemed
>> pretty raw, but not so much so that I had to write my own request handlers
>> and all the nitty gritty things like that (which, being new to web
>> development, was and probably still is beyond my ability to do well and
>> securely). I liked it because it also provided lots of in-built utilities
>> making it really easy to do session handling, redirection and so on.
>>
>> I'm trying to avoid using one of the mainstream frameworks because I feel
>> they overcomplicate things, bloat things up, and abstract too much away from
>> what is really going on. Many of them annoyingly also end up requiring a
>> bazillion dependencies to install. Personally I like to use small and
>> compact programs that are really good at doing the small number of things I
>> need them to, as opposed to installing some giant application (and all its
>> dependencies) that can do everything under the sun I'll never use.
>>
>> With all this in mind. I was hoping someone would please be so kind as to
>> recommend things that I could use instead of mod_python as a WSGI layer, but
>> that hopefully works in a similar way to mod_python?
>
> You could start trying Werkzeug which calls itself "a simple
> collection of various utilities for WSGI applications".
>
> http://werkzeug.pocoo.org/
>
> Then WebOb:
>
> http://pythonpaste.org/webob/
>
> Regarding small and simple I think the two above are some of the best
> approaches but don't expect something like the mod_python's publisher
> handler.

I'd second Werkzeug, but also add 'bobo' which uses Paste but gives
some simple to use URL dispatch mechanisms.

Neither have inbuilt session support however, so for that you would
need to use Beaker.

Graham


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