[Web-SIG] WSGI extension spec/doc

[Ian Bicking]

I'm thinking that we should start a less-formal spec about WSGI 
conventions.  Here's some initial things:

* Username callback, per recent discussion

* A key to suppress the catching of unexpected errors (e.g., when 
running in a test, you want exceptions to go all the way up)

* For internal redirects, a way to indicate the previous WSGI request 
environment

* A key for the session id, per Ben's email

* Some CGIish variables.  We all know REMOTE_USER (though I've seen 
LOGIN_USER too, IIS?).  If I want to put user group information into the 
environment as a simple string, where would that go?  I think there's 
other ones like this too.  Some of these are just collecting current 
knowledge about CGI-like environments that we're likely to encounter.

In each of these cases, you don't *need* to use any of these (you can 
make your own ad hoc techniques), or pay attention to the values that 
may be in the environment for these.  But, barring some reason to the 
contrary, why not stick with convention?  Basically I want to document 
some conventions.  Particularly the simple ones.

I almost think we can do this in the wiki, because it's not that formal 
of a process.  I imagine two stages:

* People talk about what they are already doing.  This way people know 
what precedence exists at least.

* We make a new namespace (or reuse 'wsgi') where things get moved after 
some discussion.  I would prefer a namespace other than wsgi.

* If we agree on something we later realize is stupid, we abandon the 
old key and use another one.  Because these are all optional to support 
for now (and for the forseeable future), specific versions of a spec and 
whatnot don't seem necessary.  Maybe people can use 'x-wsgi' (or 
x-whatever-we-decide) as a namespace for proposals (when accompanied by 
code).

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