Help with HTTP, Server, CGI

[Alex Martelli]

"Ronald Jeffries" <RonJeffries at acm.org> wrote in message
news:C0DBABD593E1A4D0.D39328BEE633448E.3CD94692CC3D1C74 at lp.airnews.net...
    [snip]
> My ISP runs IIS. I assume there is a way that he can set up a python
> server for me that is running on some port, and that there's a way to
> map some dirrectory name into that port, so that references to "pydir"
> or something are all handled by my server program. (Is this correct?
> What are the right words for saying this?)

If he will just install win32all, or ActivePython from ActiveState, you
(and anybody else) should then be able to write ASP's (Active Server
Pages) with Python (rather than VBScript or JScript, the two scripting
languages most often used for that).  ASP's are probably the most popular
approach for this on Microsoft servers.  See the "ASP and Python" entry
on the win32com.chm that comes with ActivePython for more details
(equivalent docs are with the win32all add-on to the regular Python
distribution).

I think there are free implementations of FastCGI for IIS, which would
be another option.

If you can choose to run another webserver, then Apache from imatix
is one possibility, lightweight and easy to administer; it offers the
LRWP interface for FastCGI-like interaction (and it works great with
Python, thanks to LRWP's author Robin Dunn).  And of course, Apache
sports a zillion ways to integrate with Python.


> I made SimpleHTTPServer work on my PC (Win98) (yeah, I know), and can
> see some ways I could enhance it to take a standard page layout file
> and merge in content, putting the content text into a pre-defined look
> and feel.

Sure.  There are umpteen ways to 'templatize' with Python, including
my as-yet-unreleased YAPTU (Yet Another Python Template Utility),
and others which are HTML-specific.


Alex