Webware for Python
| Version: | 1.0.2 |
|---|---|
| Released: | 06/07/09 |
Contents
WebKit provides Python classes for generating dynamic content from a web-based, server-side application. It is a significantly more powerful alternative to CGI scripts for application-oriented development.
You can e-mail webware-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net to give feedback, discuss features, and get help using WebKit. If you have a bug to report, use the bug tracker.
The core concepts of the WebKit are the Application, Servlet, Request, Response and Transaction, for which there are one or more Python classes.
The application resides on the server-side and manages incoming requests in order to deliver them to servlets which then produce responses that get sent back to the client. A transaction is a simple container object that holds references to all of these objects and is accessible to all of them.
Content is normally served in HTML or XML format over an HTTP connection. However, applications can provide other forms of content and the framework is designed to allow new classes for supporting protocols other than HTTP.
In order to connect the web server and the application server a small program called an adapter is used. It bundles a web browser request and sends it to the application server, which then processes it and sends the response back to the adapter which then outputs the results for use by the web server. Adapters come in various flavors including CGI, FastCGI and Apache mod. See the Install Guide for more information.
At a more detailed level, the process looks like this:
For a more detailed guide, see Anatomy of a Webware Transaction.
The alternative to a server-side application is a set of CGI scripts. However, a CGI script must always be launched from scratch and many common tasks will be performed repeatedly for each request. For example, loading libraries, opening database connections, reading configuration files, etc.
With the long-running server-side application, the majority of these tasks can be done once at launch time and important results can be easily cached. This makes the application significantly more efficient.
Of course, CGIs can still be appropriate for "one shot" deals or simple applications. Webware includes a CGI Wrapper if you'd like to encapsulate your CGI scripts with robust error handling, e-mail notifications, etc.
You should also consider reading the papers which have been written about Webware for Python, particularly the "Introduction to Webware for Python" that was presented by Chuck Esterbrook at the 9th International Python Conference in 2001.
One of the conveniences provided by WebKit is the handling of uncaught exceptions. The response to an uncaught exception is:
Here is a sample error page.
Archived error messages can be browsed through the administration page.
Error handling behavior can be configured as described in Configuration.
There are several configuration parameters through which you can alter how WebKit behaves. They are described below, including their default values. Note that you can override the defaults by placing config files in the Configs/ directory. A config file simply contains a Python dictionary containing the items you wish to override. For example:
{
'SessionStore': 'Memory',
'ShowDebugInfoOnErrors': 1
}
See the Configuration Guide for more information on settings.
WebKit has a built-in administration page that you can access via the Admin context. You can see a list of all contexts in the sidebar of any Example or Admin page.
The admin pages allows you to view WebKit's configuration, logs, and servlet cache, and perform actions such as clearing the cache, reloading selected modules and shutting down the app server.
More sensitive pages that give control over the app server require a user name and password, the username is admin, and you'll set the password when you run install.py. You can change the password in WebKit/Configs/Application.config.
The adminstration scripts provide further examples of writing pages with WebKit, so you may wish to examine their source in WebKit/Admin/.
The most common technique is the infamous print statement. The results of print statements go to the console where the WebKit application server was started (not to the HTML page as would happen with CGI). Prefixing the debugging output with a special tag (such as >>) is useful because it stands out on the console and you can search for the tag in source code to remove the print statements after they are no longer useful. For example:
print '>> fields =', self.request().fields()
Uncaught expections are trapped at the application level where a useful error page is saved with information such as the traceback, environment, fields, etc. You can configure the application to automatically e-mail you this information. Here is an example error page.
When an application isn't behaving correctly, raising an exception can be useful because of the additional information that comes with it. Exceptions can be coupled with messages, thereby turning them into more powerful versions of the print statement. For example:
raise Exception, 'self = %s' % self
If you install the threadframe module, you can dump the stack frames of all running Webware application server threads to standard output by simply sending a SIGQUIT or SIGBREAK signal to the application server. On Windows, this can be done by pressing Ctrl-Break.
When a servlet's source code changes, it is reloaded. However, ancestor classes of servlets and library modules are not. You may wish to enable the auto-reloading feature in the AppServer.config file to mitigate this problem.
In any case, when having problems, consider restarting the app server.
Another option is to use the AppControl page of the Admin context to clear the servlet instance and class cache.
Assertions are used to ensure that the internal conditions of the application are as expected. An assertion is equivalent to an if statement coupled with an exception. For example:
assert shoppingCart.total()>=0.0, \
'shopping cart total is %0.2f' % shoppingCart.total()
Here is what you need to do in order to debug a Webware web site using the WingIDE development environment:
Use the MakeAppWorkDir script to make a local app work dir for your project.
Create a run-debug.py script in the work directory with these contents:
import sys, Launch Launch.main([sys.argv[0]] + ['DebugAppServer'] + sys.argv[1:])
Add that file to the WingIDE project if you haven't already.
Right-click and choose "Set As Main Debug File".
Now you can run from WingIDE, set break points, examine the stack, use a Python prompt tied to any stack prompt, etc.
WingIDE also has a "Debug > Attach to Process..." command which could be useful to debug a test or production server.
You can validate the HTML in your pages using the Web Designer Group's HTML Validator. It is available as a RPM package, in Debian as wdg-html-validator and you can also install the source.
To enable the validation, you have to override .writeBodyParts() in your SitePage, as:
def writeBodyParts(self):
Page.writeBodyParts()
self.validateHTML()
If your pages contain invalid HTML, a message will be appended to the page.
Cookies and form values that are named with surrounding underscores (such as _sid_ and _action_) are generally reserved by WebKit and various plugins and extensions for their own internal purposes. If you refrain from using surrounding underscores in your own names, then [a] you won't accidentally clobber an already existing internal name and [b] when new names are introduced by future versions of WebKit, they won't break your application.
Suppose you have a web page with a form and one or more buttons. Normally, when the form is submitted, a method such as Servlet's respondToPost() or Page's writeBody(), will be invoked. However, you may find it more useful to bind the button to a specific method of your servlet such as new(), remove() etc. to implement the command, and reserve writeBody() for displaying the page and the form that invokes these methods. Note that your "command methods" can then invoke writeBody() after performing their task.
The action feature of Page let's you do this. The process goes like this:
Add buttons to your HTML form of type submit and name _action_. For example:
<input name="_action_" type="submit" value="New"> <input name="_action_" type="submit" value="Delete">
Alternately, name the submit button _action_methodName. For example:
<input name="_action_New" type="submit" value="Create New Item">
Add an actions() method to your class to state which actions are valid. (If WebKit didn't force you to do this, someone could potentially submit data that would cause any method of your servlet to be run). For example:
def actions(self):
return SuperClass.actions(self) + ['New', 'Delete']
Now you implement your action methods.
The ListBox example shows the use of actions (in WebKit/Examples/ListBox.py).
Note that if you procede as in 1., you can add a methodNameForAction() method to your class transforming the value from the submit button (its label) to a valid method name. This will be needed, for instance, if there is a blank in the label on the button. However, usually it's simpler to procede as in 2. in such cases.
A plug-in is a software component that is loaded by WebKit in order to provide additional WebKit functionality without necessarily having to modify WebKit's source.
The most infamous plug-in is PSP (Python Server Pages) which ships with Webware.
Plug-ins often provide additional servlet factories, servlet subclasses, examples and documentation. Ultimately, it is the plug-in author's choice as to what to provide and in what manner.
Technically, plug-ins are Python packages that follow a few simple conventions in order to work with WebKit. See Creating Plugins for information about writing your own.
The answer to that question might not seem clear after being deluged with all the details. Here's a summary:
Known bugs and future work in general are documented in Future.
Authors: Chuck Esterbrook, Jay Love, Geoff Talvola, Ian Bicking and others (improvements and additions).
Many people, mostly on the webware-discuss mailing list, have provided feedback, testing and patches.
The design was inspired by both Apple's WebObjects and Java's Servlets.