Basically I'm looking for a way to get rid of my PHP dependence, and I would like to switch to Python. I'm having trouble finding a way to basically make python a drop in replacement. I'm familiar with Django but its just not quick and dirty enough for most small things I have to do. So I'm wondering if there is an Apache module or a way to setup mod_wsgi to serve up *.py files the same way mod_php serves up *.php from the server root?
Note: I have found the various python extensions to php for calling code from PHP but that doesn't really solve the curly brace hell.
The files that mod_wsgi calls are Python files. Additionally, if you set them up in daemon mode, updating the python file will restart the daemon. It's pretty slick.
Another thing you could look at if Django is overkill is Werkzeug, which is pretty much just the server interface. Then later you can add database access with SqlAlchemy and/or templating with Jinja2. Or not.
These pieces are pretty much what people use when they want Django as pieces, and I'm told that they're more powerful, if more work to maintain (some assembly required).
Yes you can do that with mod_wsgi, but if you are new to developing Python web applications it is a potentially painful way to go about it. Either way, read the documentation at:
http://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/wiki/ConfigurationGuidelines#The_Apache_Alias_Directive
You use AddHander just like you would with CGI or PHP scripts.
if you worked with php also you are familiar to mod_php
also there is mod_python ( http://www.modpython.org/ ) but its not active community ( there is many article how set django with mod_python ( http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/deployment/modpython/ ) )
but its better use wsgi and uwsgi
http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/deployment/modwsgi/
http://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/
Related
I have got lots of php code served by Apache (WAMP). Can I use a tool like
Bambalam
PHC-WIN
Phalanger
to wrap the php code so that Apache can still serve those files?
Its for commercial use
No.
Those tools compile PHP-Code to (some kind of) native code. They do not obfuscate code (for this, there are a lot of tools easily found by googling "php obfuscator") but turn them into a language that apache with php doesn't understand.
you could try to use these native programs via CGI, but it will be a PITA to set up & maintain.
also, keep in mind that obfuscating offers just a relatively small bit of code protection. if your customer really, really wants to reconstruct the code, he can.
I'm in the process of setting up a webserver from scratch, mainly for writing webapps with Python. On looking at alternatives to Apache+mod_wsgi, it appears that pypy plays very nicely indeed with pretty much everything I intend to use for my own apps. Not really having had a chance to play with PyPy properly, I feel this is a great opportunity to get to use it, since I don't need the server to be bulletproof.
However, there are some PHP apps that I would like to run on the webserver for administrative purposes (PHPPgAdmin, for example). Is there an elegant solution that allows me to use PyPy within a PHP-compatible webserver like Apache? Or am I going to have to run CherryPy/Paste or one of the other WSGI servers, with Apache and mod_wsgi on a separate port to provide administrative services?
You can run your PyPy apps behind mod_proxy and serve static content with Apache (or even better use nginx). In addition to CherryPy, gunicorn and tornado run great on PyPy.
I know that mod_wsgi doesn't work with mod_php
I heavily advise you, running PHP and Python applications on CGI level.
PHP 5.x runs on CGI, for python there exists flup, that makes it possible to run WSGI Applications on CGI.
Tamer
In PHP world you can just create index.php file, put some inline code and raw HTML, run Apache and it just works.
There are a lot af talks about bad practices of using inline code an so on. So we won't discuss this theme here, please.
How can I start my Ruby application same way? I want to use ERB for code messing, so it will look this way
# index.rb
<h1>Hello world!</h1>
<div>
1 + 1 = <%= 1 + 1 %>
</div>
So my questions are:
What makes PHP just work.
AFAIU(nderstand) There is native support for HTTP in PHP, so I have to use Rack to support it with Ruby
Some basic knowledge for creating my on "microframework": working with application/http servers (Mongrel, nginx, binding on http port and all such kind of job), working with HTTP requests: sessions, params, GET/POST etc (Rack?), sending responses (ERB templating).
So I can make my own (in educational puprposes) microframework for PHP-style web development with Ruby :D
UPD
What really I want to do is an application wich will just get request url, run just that file and return HTML as a response. Also this application should be allowed to be binded on some port
index.rb
info/about.rb
info/contacts.rb
products/product.rb
so It should parse url localhost/index.rb and run index.rb, localhost/products/product.rb?product_id=10 and run products/product.rb and pass product_id=10 as a params hash.
UPD 2
I think good point to start is to dig into Camping microframework source:
https://github.com/camping/camping
It is about 5Kb weight so I shouldn't be confused in it
It is possible to write CGI scripts with Ruby but this is generally not done because we have better solutions.
One file per page is not a very useful abstraction, it's just the one that PHP supports. Ruby has better ways to abstract a web application (like Sinatra, Rails, or even just Rack) so we prefer to use them.
Putting the file name in the url is another unfortunate side effect of PHP's design. It is implementation revealing and unnecessary (you're not getting a Ruby page, you're getting an HTML page), so we choose not to do that either.
CGI and FCGI in Ruby are also slower than the other solutions. This is not because of some limit on how performant they can be; it's mostly just because the effort to make Ruby web applications faster has been spent in more useful areas like Rack and Rails. No one really uses CGI so no one really cares to make it fast. mod_ruby makes CGI scripts somewhat faster if you really want to go this route, but again: there are better ways.
Apache can run PHP by loading in the mod_php module.
I believe to run ruby you will need to have it installed on the server and have mod_ruby loaded into apache. take a look at: http://www.modruby.net/en/
You are looking for CGI. The Apache modules like mod_php or mod_ruby are just packaging provided for CGI scripts written in PHP or Ruby.
I wanted to try out python to create webpages instead of using php. However I came across that you need either mod_python or mod_wsgi installed to apache to make it play with python. If you now use pure, i'm not sure if it should be said pure, python code, not using any web frameworks like django. I found out that making a simple page looks differently in mod_python and in mod_wsgi.
How come?, the more I looked into python it just seemed to be a harder language to use to make webpages comparing it to php. Is there some good starting point to learn python webdevelopment?
Sorry if my question is blurry. I simply want some guidance to start out with python webdevelopment
Yes, making a webpage with python without using a web framework is harder than it is in php. This is by design, since it gives you a great deal more control over how your page interacts with the server, allowing you to build sites that scale well, among other benefits. WSGI is the modern way to interact with a server, but as you observed, it includes many of the nuts and bolts that PHP hides from the user.
If you're looking for a php-like experience for python, you might look at web.py or Flask. They are pretty minimalistic as far as frameworks go, and take care of interacting with the server but otherwise stay out of your way.
That said, you really should consider Django or another similar framework - they provide some really great benefits that help you get what would otherwise be painfully complex sites going quickly. They solve a slightly different problem and provide different solutions from the common PHP frameworks, so you should consider them even if you don't like frameworks in PHP.
If you want to do things in an even more php-like fashion, you could use CGI. It's definitely not a recommended solution, and won't teach you best practices moving forward, but it can get you started...
Really though, consider a framework. It's how most development in Python for the web is done, and you'll learn more useful skills if you develop using one.
mod_wsgi is better, because it's based on the WSGI specification, which defines the interface between web applications (or frameworks) and web servers. A WSGI app at its simplest is nothing more than a function that sends some HTTP headers via a callback and returns a string in response to information about an HTTP request. And since WSGI is implemented by many web servers, you aren't tied to Apache.
The closest you can get to pure frameworkless web development in Python is to write the WSGI app directly. This will really help you see the things that a framework like Django will obscure.
To make things easier, you might consider using Werkzeug, which is a utility library for WSGI. It has many components that are framework-like, but you can choose which ones you want and which ones you don't. For example, it has a really neat system for parsing and dispatching URLs. Werkzeug also has a simple command-line WSGI server which is probably better for development than Apache.
I'm replying to you with some advice, as someone who was in a very similar situation as you just a few months ago.
So you're using apache to host your website. That's cool. To make python play nice with apache, you're going to want to use mod_wsgi, for the reasons others have stated: seperation of concerns makes it better than cgi and mod_python is no longer being supported.
However, your impression that foregoing a framework will bring you closer to programming in "pure" python is a little bit off the mark. I shared the same opinion, and experimented with both Django and using only mod_wsgi. Let me share what I found.
Mod_wsgi is an implementation of the WSGI standard found in PEP 333. The distinction between the implementation and the standard is important. First, because it means that WSGI compliant applications will work across implementations. More importantly, it reveals something important about what WSGI is meant to do. That is, WSGI is intended a standard for writing frameworks. From the PEP:
simplicity of implementation for a framework author is not the same thing as ease of use for a web application author
and
The goal of WSGI is to facilitate easy interconnection of existing servers and applications or frameworks, not to create a new web framework.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't do something with wsgi, but you should expect to be writing a framework more than an application. If you're interested in writing a simple framework this tutorial is where I started.
However, if you're just looking to make a website, look into one of the frameworks that others have suggested. You'll still be writing python code, but the authors have worked hard to make the code you write closer connected producing websites than producing frameworks. I've personally used Django, and once it was up and running, it was rather painless to churn out interesting applications. Also, their documentation is very good, and they have a good tutorial here. That being said, Django is very fully featured, and if you're looking for something a little more minimalistic, I've heard good things about Flask, but there are lots of other options as well.
You can use ordinary CGI, which is really simple. Create a Python program that looks something like this:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import sys
sys.stdout.write("Content-type: text/html\r\n\r\n")
print("Hello <em>world</em>!")
Make this file executable (chmod +x) and put it in a directory you've configured for CGI files in your web server.
You will also find the standard Python cgi module very helpful.
If your goal is for making your python program web friendly then the answer is Cherrypy. It is a very flexible and simple framework that enables your python objects exposed in web. Check it out and it has a nice web server built-in that you don't need apache/mod_wsgi etc.,
I need to create a web application that tars files on a remote server then moves those files to another server. I am new to scripting languages and was wondering if there are advantages to php or perl for this type of application.
Not really. Both will get the job done just as good as the other. The bottleneck of both will be connecting to the remote server.
PHP was originally derived from Perl, so the syntax between the two are very similar. It's all a matter of taste.
PHP is nice because many Apache servers are setup to allow you to embed PHP code inside your HTML pages. This makes PHP very popular in building things like CMS systems and bulletin boards.
I personally think that the PHP syntax is sloppy. There's way too many specific functions and they're not clearly thought out. The syntax changes from one function to another. I guess it's part of PHP's group based philosophy where a lot of people add a lot of features. I also like Perl's use strict and use warnings pragmas which I find save me a lot of grief.
But, as I said, when it comes to webpage development, PHP is ahead of Perl.
(Yes, I know about modperl, but that's not usually installed in most Apache servers).
I'd say to go ahead and learn both. I believe the Perl books are some of the best written programming guides I've seen. I haven't been too thrilled with the PHP ones. Maybe its because Perl is just more established, so the documentation has been better defined.
Then again, if you're going to learn something, maybe you should try Python. I'm not a fan of Python, but its the up and coming language that most people are learning these days. Google uses Python extensively. And, don't forget Ruby which has the webbased Rails platform that's very popular.
By the way, what you want to do isn't part of the default language, but most languages have modules that are easily installable. For example, you'll need Archive::Tar and LWP for Perl. These can be downloaded from the CPAN module archive.
It's going to take you a while to pick up enough of any language to do what you want, so be patient and have fun.
You need this ssh extension http://php.net/manual/en/book.ssh2.php
It support calling ssh using ssh2_connect.
And you can bundle with tar, scp, or even rsync