[mod_python] THANKS FOR THE HELP

Thanks everyone for the help. It has been very useful.

Thanks again

Jason












On Fri, May 17, 2002 at 08:27:54PM -0700, Ian Clelland wrote:
> On Tue, May 14, 2002 at 10:13:13PM -0700, Jason Morgan wrote:
> > Hello:
> > 
> > Ok, please excuse my ignorance, but I'm trying to move three sites 
> > over to mod_python from php and I'm having some trouble figuring what 
> > is the 'proper' way to proceed. I have mod_python installed and 
> > working, however, I'm not familiar with the handler concept (yes, I 
> > RTFM) and am trying to decide what to do with it. Should I have 
> > handler dealing with everything in my dirs, while passing off content 
> > generation to methods within personal modules? What is the role of 
> > mod_python.publisher. I would appreciate any help I can get - URLs 
> > are welcome. I've done the google searches, though, and haven't come 
> > across anytrhing about how people actually structure their sites. I 
> > dont' just want to hack something together - as I plan to leave most 
> > site maintenance to a new employee
> > :-).
> 
> Well, I'm not sure how closely my experiences mirror those of other 
> mod_python developers, but I can try to give you some insight. (I spent 
> about two years writing almost exclusively in PHP, and am now adjusting 
> to mod_python)
> 
> The handler concept is by far the biggest difference between the two 
> environments. A PHP script typically resides 'at' a specific URL, and 
> only services requests for that URL. A mod_python handler, in contrast, 
> becomes part of the web server, and handles requests whenever Apache 
> gives them to it.
> 
> To be a little clearer, the way I will usually install a handler is to 
> include it within an Apache <Location> directive. For example, I am 
> writing a user-management module, and I want it to be mounted at 
> http://mysite.com/users, so I set up Apache like this:
> 
>   <Location /users>
>     SetHandler python-program
>     PythonPath "sys.path+['/usr/local/lib/site_apps']"
>     PythonHandler userinfo
>   </Location>
> 
> This means that now my python module (at 
> /usr/local/lib/site_apps/userinfo.py) is responsible for *every* 
> request to a URL which begins with "/users". 
> 
> The first thing that userinfo.py does is analyse the URL of the request 
> to see exactly what was requested. If it is just "/users/", it displays 
> a list of users. If it is "/users/showuser/ian", then it looks up the 
> user record for 'ian' and displays that record. If it is 
> "/users/no-such-page" then it returns apache.DECLINED, and Apache 
> handles the 404 error.
> 
> I can also distinguish between GET and POST requests by examining the 
> req.method variable. If the request is a GET to 
> "/users/deleteuser/ian", then userinfo.py will display a confirmation 
> page. If it is a POST to that same URL, it will read the POST data, 
> look for a confirmation, and delete the user.
> 
> Most of my handlers are designed in this fashion, as one main python 
> module installed under a base URL, which defines a "URL-space". The 
> main module uses import statements to access all of the libraries it 
> needs (database access, user record class, string, cgi, etc.) to do its
> work.
> 
> 
> If you want to look for other resources on application design with 
> mod_python, try searching for information on mod_perl. It's the closest 
> thing I have found to mod_python, as they both act as scripting-
> language interfaces to the Apache C API. O'Reilly's book "Writing 
> Apache Modules with Perl and C" has been an invaluable resource for me. 
> Also, once you understand how the Apache API works, the mod_python 
> documentation becomes a much more useful tool.
> 
> 
> If your goal is just to convert your applications from PHP to the 
> Python language, then you may want to look at the Publisher handler 
> which Grisha has supplied with mod_python. It allows you to use Python 
> scripts in a very similar fashion to PHP or CGI scripts, and a lot of 
> people on this list seem to be using it exclusively. In that case, the 
> publisher handler becomes the default handler for your entire site. It 
> deals with every request that comes in by looking for a Python module 
> with the appropriate name in the right directory, and passing it 
> parameters based on the request. (This is actually completely backwards 
> to the way PHP works, but the effect is the same -- you believe that 
> you are calling the Python script directly from the URL.)
> 
> 
> I hope this answers at least some of your questions; feel free to ask 
> more if I've just made things more confusing :)
> 
> 
> Ian
> <ian at veryfresh.com>
> 
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