by Forrest Sheng Bao http://fsbao.net
I have lotta Python programs for bioinformatics research. I wanted to put them onto the web. I only developed Web apps in PHP before. And it seemed to be a big pain for porting a Python program to the web. But, I figured out in 5 minutes.
First, you need an Apache server on your Linux/Mac OS/Windows box. If you are gonna use data base, you need a database server. There are tons of blogs addressing these issues. So I won't be gossipy here. Suppose everything we mention below happens on your server-even web browsing.
Second, configure cgi in Apache. There are many ways to run a Python program on a web/http interface. I think CGI is the easiest. Assume you are on your own server and using all default settings. On Ubuntu Linux 9.04, the default configuration file for your default website is /etc/apache2/sites-available/default Open it, find the part for cgi directory, and make it like this
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /var/www/cgi-bin/ <Directory "/var/www/cgi-bin"> AllowOverride None Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch #Order allow,deny Require all granted Allow from all AddHandler cgi-script .py # tell Apache to handle every file with .py suffix as a cgi program AddHandler default-handler .html .htm # tell Apache to handle HTML files in regular way </Directory>
The line
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /var/www/cgi-bin/
specifies the path of cgi codes and the actual directory of your program. So when you type http://127.0.0.1/cgi-bin, the Apache will look into the directory /var/www/cgi-bin/ of your localhost.
Also, make sure that cgimodule of Apache is enabled. You can enable it by
sudo a2enmod cgi
Now restart your apache. On Ubuntu Linux, by default installation and configuration, it is
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
Third, write up a Hello, World! program.
#!/usr/bin/env python print "Content-Type: text/html" print print """\ <html> <head><title>First Python HTTP Programming </title></head> <body> <h2>Hello World!</h2> </body> </html> """
Now open http://127.0.0.1/cgi-bin/hello.py in your web browser and you shall see a hello world in it.
Reference: http://webpython.codepoint.net/cgi_tutorial
3 comments:
I am from Sri Lanka. I am going to learn python. This article was very useful for my studies. Thank You!
Where do you specify the location of your python installation?
Very helpful thanks. You can leave the cgi-bin where it is by default in /usr/lib/cgi-bin/.
Remember to make your scripts 'world executable' e.g chmod 755 hello.py
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