Python and ASP Observations

[John Nielsen]

Thanks for your news posting w/ASP. I am starting down that road myself.

With regards to storing objects, ever try using Cpickel?

I have pickeled complicated python objects, sent them as a string via
COM, then unpickeled on the other side.  It works great. The only
disadvantage, of course, is that ohter languages like VBscript won't
work with this, since it can't unpickel.

john

In article <38651fc7.144536242 at news.isomedia.com>,
  bitbucket at isomedia.com (Eugene Goodrich) wrote:
> I do a lot of ASP coding, so I'm getting to really hate VBScript for
> all the features it doesn't have.  Since Python is so great
> (especially compared to VBScript) and I like it so much, an obvious
> improvement to my obsessive situation is to code ASP in Python
> instead.
>
> Aside from the initial stumbling blocks (1: I spaced on the most
> likely capitalization of the Request and Response objects; 2: Must use
> .SetValue on Session / Application objects), things are going well,
> but there are quirks at every turn.
>
> I haven't seen all my questions answered or my observations already
> observed in the newsgroup.  (To be fair, I've only done a bit of
> DejaNews searching, and I have only recently begun to keep up with the
> news.)  Anyway, working from these assumptions, I figured I'd post
> some of what I found using Python for ASP in case anyone else would
> like to go that way.
>
> My config: Wint NT 4.0 SP 4 or so (you can't say "no" to SPs forever),
> IIS 4, Python 1.52, and Win32whatever to match.
>
> Simple stuff:
>   * the "5 magic objects" in ASP are all English-capitalized.  But you
> knew that.
>   * to stick stuff into the Session and Application objects, you need
> to use Session/Application.SetValue (key, value).  You also knew that;
> I read it in this newsgroup.
>
> Quirks:
>   * You can store lists in the Session and Application objects, but
> when you retrieve them, they come back as tuples.
>   * You can't store dictionaries directly in the Session / Application
> objects.  But you can convert them to strings first, and eval them
> when you retrieve them to inflate them back into dictionaries.
>   * I've read that some people have had trouble putting references to
> COM objects into the Session / Application objects.  (The example I
> saw used the fileSystemObject, but for me the applicable object would
> definitely be the ADO Connection object.)  Well, if you put the COM
> object reference in a list, then you can put it into the Session /
> Application object no problem.  When you retrieve your reference,
> everything appears to work hunky-dory.  I've tried it with the
> Application and Session objects using the ADO Connection and Recordset
> objects while they were "in operation," and they worked fine.  I
> should point out, however, that I generated my references using ASP's
> Server.CreateObject (sProdID), not win32com.client.Dispatch ().
>   * You can't store python object instances in the Session /
> Application objects, not even if they're wrapped in lists.  This
> behavior probably explains the problem with dictionaries, and also
> probably why lists get converted to tuples, but since I'm not an
> expert on the internals, I couldn't say for sure.
>
> For my ASP style, being able to persist the connection object(s) and a
> cache of commonly used database tables (e.g. the table where I store
> all my queries :) is a must.  Plus, I like to do my own recordset
> pooling.  For some time I had been disappointed that Python didn't
> play well enough with ASP to do what I required.  So far, though, it
> looks like it's just going to take doing things a little differently.
> The benefits of Python over <shudder> VBScript still vastly outweigh
> the costs of the tricky bits.
>
>       -Eugene
> import binascii; print binascii.a2b_base64
('ZXVnZW5lQGlzb21lZGlhLmNvbQ==')
>

--
nielsenjf at my-Deja.com


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