passing context into BaseHTTPRequestHandler

[Steve Howell]

I have a use case where I'm running BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer, and I
want to configure the request handler with some context.  I've gotten
the code to work, but it feels overly heavy.  I am wondering if
anybody could suggest an easier idiom for this.

This is a brief sketch of the code:

    class MyHandler(BaseHTTPRequestHandler):
        def __init__(self, context, *args):
            self.context = context
            BaseHTTPRequestHandler.__init__(self, *args)

        def do_GET(self):
            // self.context will be available here

    context = { .... }
    def handler(*args):
        MyHandler(context, *args)

    server = HTTPServer(('', port), handler)
    server.serve_forever()

Basically, it takes five lines of code just to pass context into the
handler:

    def handler(*args):
        MyHandler(context, *args)

        def __init__(self, context, *args):
            self.context = context
            BaseHTTPRequestHandler.__init__(self, *args)

Typically the second argument to HTTPServer is a subclass of
BaseHTTPRequestHandler, but I pass in "handler" instead, which
instantiates a new instance of MyHandler with the context from the
enclosing scope.  At first I tried to say "MyHandler(*args).context =
context", but that assignment was too late, because
BaseHTTPRequestHandler.__init__ does a lot of stuff during the
construction phase.  That's what forced me to write my own custom
__init__ as well.

I hope there's enough info here to understand what I'm trying to
achieve, but if it helps to see my code in more context, you can see
it here:

    https://gist.github.com/2173618

Thanks.