newbie ?s

[Steve Holden]

Venkat B wrote:

> Hi folks,
> 
> I'm looking build a CGI-capable SSL-enabled web-server around Python 2.4 on
> Linux.
> It is to handle ~25 hits possibly arriving "at once". Content is non-static
> and built by the execution of py cgi-scripts talking to a few backend
> processes.
> 
> 1) I was wondering if anyone has opinions on the ability of CGIHTTPServer (a
> forking variant) to be able to handle this.

I wouldn't even consider it. The *HTTPServer modules aren't really 
intended to be much beyond a proof-of-concept, IMHO. Certainly you'd be 
likely to stress the system having 25 requests arrive in a bunch, though 
a modern computer would probably handle it.

> 2) If so, would something like pyOpenSSL be useful to make such a webserver
> SSL-enabled.
> 
There is a *lot* to do to SSL-enable a server. Since you advertise 
yourself as a newbie, I'd suggest there were better places to focus your 
efforts.

> I checked out John Goerzen's book: Foundations of Python Network Programming
> (ISBN 1590593715) and searched around. While I found how one can write py
> scripts that could communicate with SSL-enabled webservers, tips on building
> SSL-enabled webservers isn't obvious.
> 
> I was hoping to build a cleaner solution around the CGIHTTPServer variant
> instead of say something like mini-httpd/OpenSSL/Python. I'd appreciate any
> pointers.
> 
I believe the Twisted package may be your best alternative, though this 
is at best hearsay since I am not (yet) an active user.

regards
  Steve
-- 
Steve Holden               http://www.holdenweb.com/
Python Web Programming  http://pydish.holdenweb.com/
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