[Web-SIG] Defining a standard interface for common web tasks

[Ian Bicking]

On Friday, October 17, 2003, at 03:51 PM, Bill Janssen wrote:
> 1)  A good CGI module.  This should allow clear access to the various
> values passed in the environment, as Simon points out.  I think the
> current "cgi" module isn't bad at this, but I'm sure we can find
> shortcomings.

There's a bunch of shortcomings -- some of which aren't that big a deal 
in the CGI environment (like adding headers) but make cgi-based 
programs difficult to port to other systems.

> 2) A standard Apache plug-in.  Does mod_python fill this role?  (Should
> this really be part of the stdlib?)  It would be useful if the APIs
> used here were similar to those used in the API support.

mod_python pretty much fits this.  I don't see any reason to develop 
anything else (at least in terms of Apache integration).  I don't think 
it would make sense as part of the stdlib -- it depends on Apache just 
as much as Python, and people install Apache in all sorts of different 
ways.

> 3)  A standard stand-alone solution, but better than the three standard
> servers already in the stdlib.  I been using Medusa lately, and rather
> like its approach to things.

Twisted makes as much sense as anything.  My impression is that Medusa 
is similar, but Twisted is more actively developed.  OTOH, Twisted is 
moving out into other things -- some well defined portion of Twisted 
could be included, but certainly not everything that is distributed 
with Twisted currently.  There are also some Twistedisms, like 
Deferred, which are generic but not currently used by much of anyone 
outside Twisted.

Medusa is nice because it has a limited scope.  But that's good and 
bad.  Twisted would work great if the Twisted people wanted to make a 
small defined core, and it wouldn't work well otherwise.

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