embedding python in HTML

[Kirk McDonald]

John Salerno wrote:
> bruno at modulix wrote:
> 
>> You've got to understand that Python is *not* a 'ServerPage' language
>> (-> php, asp, jsp etc) in itself. Your server can now run python, fine,
>> but *how* ? CGI ? FastCGI ? mod_python ? other ? (hint: it's probably
>> just plain old CGI...)
> 
> 
> So does that mean I need to have something further on the server? Or is 
> this something I can do on my end? How do I find out what I need?

If you really want to use Python as a server page language, mod_python 
has support for Python Server Pages via its PSP handler:

Python Server Pages:
http://modpython.org/live/current/doc-html/pyapi-psp.html

PSP handler:
http://modpython.org/live/current/doc-html/hand-psp.html

This of course means your server needs to have mod_python installed and 
configured. (Consult your server administrator.) However, I've always 
found PSP to be somewhat fiddly, and mixing any serious code with the 
HTML text is hardly pretty.

A more common (and bare-metal) approach is CGI. In CGI, a request for a 
page runs a script, the output of which is the HTML page. I think this 
only requires that the server has Python installed, which you have said 
is the case. Python has signifigant standard library support for writing 
CGI.

You should examine Python's standard cgi module:
http://python.org/doc/2.4.2/lib/module-cgi.html
That page also has some nice examples to get you started.

And maybe its Cookie module, if you ever feel like messing with cookies:
http://python.org/doc/2.4.2/lib/module-Cookie.html

Slightly less bare-metal is using mod_python directly (rather than via 
its PSP module). This is probably preferable to plain CGI if mod_python 
is available, as it caches scripts as long as they are not changed. This 
is faster than reading them off the disk every time. By and large, 
mod_python's API replaces (or at least wraps) the standard library's CGI 
support if you go this route. Again, this is only available if your 
server has mod_python installed, which may or may not be the case.