Web Server Gateway Interface: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 23:33, 14 January 2006

Revision as of 05:26, 3 February 2006

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The Web Server Gateway Interface. It defines a simple and universal interface between web servers and web applications or frameworks for the [[Python programming language]].

=Idea=

== External links ==

Python currently boasts a wide variety of web application frameworks. This can be a problem for new Python users, because generally speaking, their choice of web framework will limit their choice of usable web servers, and vice versa.

WSGI proposes a simple and universal interface between web servers and web applications or frameworks.

* See [http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0333.html PEP 333] for more information.

=Specification Overview=

The WSGI interface has two sides: the "server" or "gateway" side, and the "application" or "framework" side. The server side invokes a callable object that is provided by the application side. Additionally WSGI provides middlewares, components that play voth sides.

A middleware" component can perform such functions as:

== See also ==

* Routing a request to different application objects based on the target URL, after rewriting the environ accordingly.

* Allowing multiple applications or frameworks to run side-by-side in the same process

* Load balancing and remote processing, by forwarding requests and responses over a network

* Perform content postprocessing, such as applying XSL stylesheets

=Example Application=

[[Zope]]

A WSGI compatible "[[Hello World]]" application:

<pre>

def app(environ, start_reponse):

start_response('200 OK', [('Content-Type', 'text/plain')])

return ['Hello World\n']

</pre>

=WSGI compatible Applications and Frameworks=

There are numerous [[Web application framework]]s supporting WSGI:

* [[Django web framework|Django]]

* [[web.py]]

* [[TurboGears]]

Additionally there are two simple publishers:

* [http://www.saddi.com/software/flup/ flup]

* [http://wsgiarea.pocoo.org/colubrid/ Colubrid]

=Wrappers=

The server or gateway invokes the application callable once for each request it receives from an HTTP client, that is directed at the application.

Currently wrappers are available for [[FastCGI]], [[CGI]], [[SCGI]], [[AJP]] using the flup package.

== External links ==

* See [http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0333.html PEP 333] fordefining morethe information.interface standard

* http://www.pythonpaste.org/ - WSGI metaframework

* http://www.saddi.com/software/flup/ - Flup Publisher and Request Handlers