[FRPythoneers] WebWear Nickle Tour

[Sean Reifschneider]

INTRODUCTION TO WEBWARE

I took a quick look at WebWare last night.  In an effort to best the
flame-war over testing, I figured I'd write a quick note about it for the
FRPythoneers.

The main web site is at:  http://webware.sourceforge.net/

The way I'd describe it is "PHP in Python".  It consists of an "application
server", and a conduit which presents a CGI-like interface.  The interface
allows your web server to pull content from the application server daemon.
It also includes a stand-alone web server that runs on some high port, but
I had problems with it hanging.


FEATURES

It includes the following features:

   WebKit -- A framework for building Python CGIs.  For example:

      from ExamplePage import ExamplePage
      class Time(ExamplePage):

      def writeContent(self):
         self.write('<p>',
         asctime(localtime(time())))

   Python Server Pages (PSP) -- This includes Python code in HTML code.
   You can optionally use braces in place of indentation to work around
   problems with indentation in HTML code.  For example:

      <% for i in range(5): { %> I'm number <%=i%> <br> <% } %>
      Now is: <% import time %><%=time.ctime(time.time())%>

   MiddleKit -- Adapters for interfacing your web apps to databases.

   FormKit -- A framework for building, processing, and validating forms.

   COMKit -- Objects that allow WebKit to interface with COM objects

More detailed information is available at:

   http://webware.sourceforge.net/Papers/IntroToWebware.html


GETTING STARTED

It's pretty easy to try out.  On Unix:

   Download the tar file.

   Extract with "tar xfz /tmp/Webware-0.5.1rc3.tar.gz"

   Change into that directory: "cd Webware"

   Do the equivalent of a "make": ./install.py
   (note, this does not install files anywhere -- they might want to rename
   this).

   Install the CGI conduit: cp WebKit/WebKit.cgi /var/www/cgi-bin

   Start up the application server by doing: cd WebKit; ./AppServer

   You should now able able to check out the demonstrations at
   http://localhost/cgi-bin/WebKit.cgi

That's the nickle tour.

Sean
-- 
 Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading
 sex manuals without the software.  -- Arthur C. Clarke
Sean Reifschneider, Inimitably Superfluous <jafo@tummy.com>
tummy.com - Linux Consulting since 1995. Qmail, KRUD, Firewalls, Python