CGIWrapper 0.2 Release Notes

Webware for Python 0.2

Changes

• Version 0.2 was released on 5/12/2000
• handleException()
  • Added settings: ErrorLogFilename, SaveErrorMessages, ErrorMessagesDir.
  • Added error logging to 'Errors.csv'.
  • HTML error message pages are now saved to a file that can reviewed later by the developer/administrator.
  • Broke out the functionality of handleException() into methods that can be overriden.
• Renamed ErrorMessage setting to UserErrorMessage.
• Added "e-mail errors" feature.
• Logs now get a header row (with column titles).
• The Scripts.csv log can now be configured by the ScriptLogColumns setting which is an array of names.
• Removed special __info__ URL and added _admin page which shows basic info and a menu for the script log, error log and configuration. Added _dumpCSV and _config. Created AdminPage base class for all admin scripts.
• The integration with class-based CGIs can now be configured with the 'ClassNames' setting which is an array of names attempted in order. The empty string means the same name as the script.
• Found a bad glitch: a relative URL that points to a non-script file that is embedded in a page from a CGI script will end up hitting "server.cgi" which then barfs on the non-script. I fixed up CGI Wrapper. The new policy is that anything with an extension is re-served with a "Location:" header. Anything without an extension is assumed to be a Python script.
• sys.exit(0), which throws an exception, is now detected and handled gracefully. i.e., the wrapper no longer reports it as an error when a target CGI script does this.
• Various code clean up and documentation improvements.

Earlier Changes

• 2000-04-25:

  • sys.exit(0), which throws an exception, is now detected and handled gracefully. i.e., the wrapper no longer reports it as an error
  • Major updates to the documentation to reflect the past few days work, plus table of contents, section anchors, etc.
  • Killed ClassExample.py. See _admin.py and other "underscore" scripts for a good example of class-cased CGIs.
  • Enhanced the admin error log to provide a link to the archived error messages (which are plain HTML files). This was prompted the discovery and fix described just below.
  • Found a bad glitch: a relative URL that points to a non-script file that is embedded in a page from a CGI script will end up hitting "server.cgi" which then barfs on the non-script. I fixed up CGI Wrapper. The new policy is that anything with an extension is re-served with a "Location:" header. Anything without an extension is assumed to be a Python script.
  • Got rid of special __info__ URL and supporting showInfo() method. Use _admin URL and look at _admin.py script instead.
  • Pulled CGIWrapperUtils.py into CGIWrapper.
  • The integration with class-based CGIs can now be configured with the 'ClassNames' setting which is an array of names attempted in order. The empty string means the same name as the script.
  • Use cStringIO, but catch ImportError and use StringIO if it's not avail. Haven't compared performance.
  • The Scripts.csv log can now be configured by the ScriptLogColumns setting which is an array of names. I used KeyValueAccess for this. Pretty sweet.

• 2000-04-23:

  • Created KeyValueAccess class in Webware's MiddleKit package and made that the superclass of CGIWrapper. (The purpose being for the new ScriptLogColumns setting.)
  • Added "e-mail errors" feature.
  • Renamed go() to serve().

• 2000-04-21:

  • Removed special __info__ URL and added _admin page which shows basic info and a menu for the script log, error log and configuration. Added _dumpCSV and _config. Created AdminPage base class for all admin scripts.
  • Scripts that start with an underscore should be run out of the CGI Wrapper's directory. This will be used for CGI Wrapper support scripts.
  • Wrapper: The script log should print a header line the first time the file ever gets written to.
  • Renamed ErrorMessage setting to UserErrorMessage.
  • handleException():
    • Added settings, ErrorLogFilename, SaveErrorMessages, ErrorMessagesDir.
    • Added error logging to 'Errors.csv'.
    • HTML error message pages are now saved to a file that can reviewed later by the developer/administrator.
    • Broke out the functionality of handleException() into methods that can be overriden.
  • Docs: Should include an example error page.

• 2000-04-16:

  • Document the OO hook.
  • The traceback on errors is not colorized like in WebKit.
  • Message to stderr should include a timestamp.
  • Review the names of the settings.
  • Add a special version URL that reports the version of the CGI wrapper.
  • Describe the hook for cookies.
  • Rename 'env' global to 'environ' to match os.

• 2000-04-15:

  • Document the globals that are passed to the CGI script and that scripts should use 'env'.
  • Revamp the CGI Wrapper into a class that could then be subclassed and customized.
  • The target script should also have a "wrapper" variable that points back to the CGI Wrapper.
  • The current directory is not changed to the location of the script.
  • The Colors example script does not compute brightness correctly.
  • Some of the config info is hard coded so you have to change the script source.
  • Import target scripts rather than reading & execing their source. Note: Python doesn't seem to allow any backdoors for passing global vars to an import, so this may not be reasonably possible. Looks like execfile() can take care of this.
  • Explain in docs that Server.cgi also forces byte code caching of server.py.
  • The View example script should probably accept a variable tabsize and then use string.expandtabs.
  • The View example script doesn't do its HTML encoding very well. Also, maybe it should use WebUtils.

• 2000-04-10:

  • There's a bug in writing the script log at run time.
• before 2000-04-10:
  • A bunch of stuff.