[Web-SIG] WSGI Utils & SCGI/Quixote.

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 11:01 AM 11/30/04 -0800, Titus Brown wrote:

>The only real problem in getting this to work was that wsgiServer.py
>expected *every* URL under /demo to be registered to demo_obj.  I
>changed the wsgiServer.py code to allow for partial matches & munged
>the SCRIPT_NAME and PATH_INFO variables appropriately.  I also added
>REQUEST_URI because Quixote uses it for a few things; this should
>probably be moved into QWIP.

I think I'm going to have to call that point out in the PEP 
somewhere.  Technically, the PEP requires that SCRIPT_NAME and PATH_INFO be 
set, but I think perhaps some folks have missed the implications of that 
for the URL path space.

Perhaps something like this would do the trick:

"""
Application Placement in Server URL Space
-----------------------------------------

In order to generate correct SCRIPT_NAME and PATH_INFO variables, servers 
and gateways MUST treat an application's location as a URL path 
prefix.  That is, servers and gateways:

* MUST determine the target application using a matching prefix of the 
request path (which then determines the value of SCRIPT_NAME).

* MUST take the remaining portion of the request path, and use it to 
determine PATH_INFO. (Note that the remainder must be empty or begin with a 
'/', otherwise the prefix match was invalid!)

* MUST assume that there are an infinite number of possible URL paths that 
may appear as a PATH_INFO suffix "beneath" the application's base URL

Notice that these requirements imply that servers and gateways:

* MUST NOT use query string contents, fragment identifiers, or URL 
parameters to determine the application object that a request should be 
sent to.

* MUST NOT require that every URL path used by the application be 
preconfigured or pre-registered with the server, or have some required 
mapping to existing files, or any other requirement that would make dynamic 
URLs impractical.

A server or gateway that cannot meet these requirements IS NOT COMPLIANT 
with this specification; it would be completely unusable for applications 
from many popular Python web frameworks inlcuding at least Zope, Webware, 
and Quixote, and many standalone Python web applications as well.
"""