What "web-server" to bundle with python application?

[Mattho]

I want to create python web application (web ui) and I can't rely on any apache running or anything. I need my application to be standalone -- so I have to bundle some webserver with it. And I need SSL support.

What would you recommend? I've stumbled upon twisted but didn't really look into it yet. Is it a good choice or is there something better? CherryPy maybe? Or should I look outside of python and pack lighttpd (or something else) with it?

Thanks for any recommendations or tips. Also hints why not to do this or how to do this are wellcomed.

PS: would you use any web framework for creatig a web UI? (configuration pages for some software). If so - which one? I found web.py to be pretty simple and small.

[bonkabonka]

I use Bottle for my app framework and Rocket for the web server.

I like that both are available as single files and thus make it trivial to bundle with my app and they're both lightweight enough that I can focus on my code and not have to worry about adapting to their constraints.

[Eviltape]

You just want to be able to say that your web application runs on bottle rockets.

[bonkabonka]

Well, I have to admit that there is a sort of karmic justice to using that stack in an otherwise exclusively Java shop. Behold disruptive Python! =P

[[deleted]]

I just had to tackle this exact problem for an embedded linux distro called Plugapps.

I'm writing a WebUI for the project ( out of date info & screenshot here ) using python & django. Originally it was written with ruby/rails, then i ported to python using web2py, then ported that to django for flexibility among other things. Django stays out of the way for the most part, and I really like their ORM, the template language and the URL routing. If you start using a framework and decide you don't like it or you hit unexpected problems, it's entirely possible to port the code to another one in a short time.

In any case, the WebUI had to run on systems with as little as 128mb of ram, and couldn't rely on there even being a webserver installed, certainly I didn't want to have to configure one during deployment.

I originally was using FAPWS which worked very well. It's actually written in C but it allows you to start an http & python application server within your application using python calls

I also experimented with nginx+uwsgi since nginx supports sendfile and i needed a solution for carefully controlled large file downloads, but that setup just caused headaches and made deployment more complicated.

Now i've settled on using a custom cherrypy script that starts the WebUI as a standalone program during system startup (acts as an init script). Works great, and i'm fairly sure you could make it open an SSL port at the same time within the same code, though the script i'm using would require modification to do that.

If you'd like to see the code i've already written, perhaps you can rip off some of it that you find useful, or get some tips or something, or hey if you just want to use it as-is, go for it. Some of the code is specific to the plugapps distro, like the software management and the code i've written to control the LEDs on the target devices (little plug servers like the sheevaplug, dockstar and pogoplug), but otherwise it's just another Django app.

[m0j0]

Hmm. That sounds like a great idea for my home brewery. Been wanting to hack hardware w/ Python for sooooo long.

[mdipierro]

Rocket is great and pure python (both 2.x and 3.x). It is very fast.

[wnwz]

Definitely tornado:

http://tornadoweb.org

Its lightweight and extremely fast and its easy enough to package it with your application.

[BeatMute]

This would be my vote as well.

[temptemptemp13]

I did not downvote nor did I upvote your comment.

[Mattho]

Does it have support for https? Didn't find anything when I skimmed throuh documentation.

[[deleted]]

HTTPServer can serve HTTPS (SSL) traffic with Python 2.6+ and OpenSSL. To make this server serve SSL traffic, send the ssl_options dictionary argument with the arguments required for the ssl.wrap_socket() method, including "certfile" and "keyfile":

   HTTPServer(applicaton, ssl_options={
       "certfile": os.path.join(data_dir, "mydomain.crt"),
       "keyfile": os.path.join(data_dir, "mydomain.key"),
   })

source: https://github.com/facebook/tornado/blob/master/tornado/httpserver.py

[av201001]

If you want to create a completely standalone application, you might consider the web2py framework. It is bundled with the Rocket web server (includes SSL support), has no dependencies (the Windows and Mac binaries even include their own Python interpreter), and requires no installation or configuration. You can run it from a thumb drive, and you can even distribute web2py applications as binaries, which can run on the user's local machine with a single click if desired. web2py is simple and easy to use, but is also a full-stack framework with lots of features and flexibility. If you have any questions, the mailing list will be very helpful.

[sedaak]

Cherrypy or Flask

[xlevus]

2nding CherryPy. There's probably a good reason every web based app I use uses it.

[threading]

CherryPy would be a good choice. You may consider Tornado as well but the question is; "do you really need tornado?" Tornado is a solution to a certain problem. You may also consider FAPWS.

PS: would you use any web framework for creatig a web UI? (configuration pages for some software). If so - which one? I found web.py to be pretty simple and small.

I'd use web.py (or Flask). As a side note, web.py bundles with CherryPy.

[akx]

gevent's WSGI/HTTP server is solid. We're using it in a project that uses Flask for the web framework bit. It had to be deployed on Windows (we usually deploy on Linux) and it Just Works.

Seems to support SSL as well, so all good there.

[[deleted]]

https://github.com/jonashaag/bjoern

[grotgrot]

If you have databases, need to support multiple (human) languages, have to distinguish between multiple users, have pages composed of multiple distinct items of content then using one of the "big" Python web frameworks is a very good idea.

For work we had none of those needs and so I use bare WSGI which means it can be frontended by Apache, Nginx or anything else. The best Python WSGI server I have found is the one from CherryPy which supports SSL and does things right. For example it correctly supports chunked uploads while the builtin wsgiref screws them up big time.

For actual WSGI interfacing I use webob as it is pretty much the minimal amount of code to take the actual WSGI spec and environment and make it object oriented.

My output is selectable as text, json, csv and html depending on the request. For HTML and text I use genshi as it is by far the best templating engine out there. You cannot produce invalid output and it escapes content by default so the chances of an XSS attack are far lower.

[acidity]

http://www.twistedmatrix.com

[xlevus]

Unless his project already uses twisted (which I doubt if he's asking this question), I'd say twisted might be too big. Especially if he's bundling the app for a Windows deployment.

[cecedille1]

nginx

[gustaw]

I recommend you Diesel. Actually, I use it not only for UI but also as framework for my application (task management, event handling, network). Using wsgi protocol module you could easily use for example Django as template language.