Using python to develop web application

Question

I have been doing some work in python, but that was all for stand alone applications. I\'m curious to know whether any offshoot of python supports web development?

Would

Answer 1

Edited 3 years later: Don't use mod_python, use mod_wsgi. Flask and Werkzeug are good frameworks too. Needing to know what's going on is useful, but it isn't a requirement. That would be stupid.

Don't lookup Django until you have a good grasp of what Django is doing on your behalf. for you. Write some basic apps using mod_python and it's request object. I just started learning Python for web-development using mod_python and it has been great.

mod_python also uses a dispatcher in site-packages/mod_python/publisher.py. Have a ganders through this to see how requests can be handled in a simple-ish way.

You may need to add a bit of config to your Apache config file to get mod_python up and running but the mod_python site explains it well.

<Directory /path/to/python/files>
     AddHandler mod_python .py
     PythonHandler mod_python.publisher
     PythonDebug On
</Directory>

And you are away!

use (as a stupidly basic example):

def foo(req):
    req.write("Hello World")

in /path/to/python/files/bar.py assuming /path/to is your site root.

And then you can do

http://www.mysite.com/python/files/bar/foo

to see "Hello World". Also, something that tripped me up is the dispatcher uses a lame method to work out the content-type, so to force HTML use:

req.content_type = 'text/html'

Good Luck

After you have a good idea of how Python interacts with mod_python and Apache, then use a framework that does all the boring stuff for you. Up to you though, just my recommendation

Answer 2

Lookup Django.

Answer 3

Python Wiki: Web Frameworks for Python

If you decide to use Django, the official tutorial is an excellent place to start. The Django Book is also free.