The best way to do web apps with Python?

[Ian Bicking]

Paul Rubin wrote:
> Steve Holden <steve at holdenweb.com> writes:
> 
>>You can read about it in Philip Eby's excellent PEP at
>>
>>   http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0333.html
> 
> 
> I looked at this and I have the impression that it tries to do
> something worthwhile, but I can't tell precisely what.  The "rationale
> and goals" section explains good reasons why it doesn't do various
> certain things.  What's not explained is what DOES it do.  The only
> thing I can tell is that it connects to an abstracted web server, and
> builds up what looks like traditional CGI variables from the incoming
> requests.

It's really meant for web framework developers (as opposed to web 
application developers, who use web frameworks).  Of course it's a fuzzy 
line, and people cross back and forth, especially since most all of it 
is open source.

So basically it is what you were thinking -- it's a way to connect a web 
server to a web application, for any server or application, including 
current servers and applications (not just ones that are developed in 
the future).  It can be a bit more interesting when you delve into 
middleware, which are programs that modify the request before handing it 
off to another application.  But while that opens up interesting 
possibilities (I've used that technique a fair amount in WSGIKit: 
http://svn.colorstudy.com/trunk/WSGIKit/ ), but it's not incredibly magical.

Mostly, it's the first forward movement we've had in a very long time, 
even if the movement isn't huge.  It provides a foundation for further 
standardization.

WSGI compliance also has some other potential benefits, like encouraging 
environment decoupling, and making mock requests easier to produce and 
responses easier to consume.  But those are somewhat vague side effects.

-- 
Ian Bicking  /  ianb at colorstudy.com  / http://blog.ianbicking.org