Re: Question about long-running web scripts

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Date	Fri, 26 Oct 2012 12:00:17 +0100
From	Tim Golden <mail@timgolden.me.uk>
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Subject	Re: Question about long-running web scripts
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On 26/10/2012 10:58, Gilles wrote:
> On Thu, 25 Oct 2012 14:24:16 +0100, Tim Golden <mail@timgolden.me.uk>
> wrote:
>>> But actually, I didn't mean one-shot scripts, where the Python
>>> interpreter + script must be loaded each time, but rather: If I leave
>>> a Python running in an endless loop, why not just use either CGI or
>>> some other basic way to call the script instead of FastCGI?
>>
>> In essence, you're describing FastCGI. A Python program (or, indeed, any
>> program) which uses FastCGI runs continuously and waits for the incoming
>> request on a TCP socket (instead of as a sys.stdin stream + env vars
>> immediately after process startup).
> 
> Thanks for the clarification.
> 
> Since, unlike PHP, the Python interpreter is not available in a
> FastCGI-capable version, this explains why the www server must be told
> which specific Python script to run through FastCGI.

I think that this is the distinction you're making:

PHP: mod_php (fastcgi mode) runs myscript.php

Python: <some python fcgi frontend>.py runs myscript.py

which is, essentially, true, not least because PHP and web apps are
pretty much synonymous in many people's minds. Both ways: the only thing
PHP does is web; the simplest route to a web app is PHP.

Certainly there are Python equivalents (mod_python, mod_wsgi, etc.)
which can run in effectively the same way as mod_php, and they could be
configured to run an fcgi frontend script, I presume. There's always a
certain confusion here because you can often one mechanisms (say,
mod_wsgi) to act as another (say legacy one-shot CGI) and because some
things are both mechanism and protocol and it's not always easy to tease
the two apart.

> 
> The reason I ask for all this, is that I want to understand how things
> work under the hood before relying on a Python framework to handle the
> nitty-gritty.

Good scheme.

TJG

Thread

Question about long-running web scripts Gilles <nospam@nospam.com> - 2012-10-25 13:45 +0200
  Re: Question about long-running web scripts Tim Golden <mail@timgolden.me.uk> - 2012-10-25 13:03 +0100
    Re: Question about long-running web scripts Gilles <nospam@nospam.com> - 2012-10-25 14:40 +0200
      Re: Question about long-running web scripts Tim Golden <mail@timgolden.me.uk> - 2012-10-25 14:24 +0100
        Re: Question about long-running web scripts Gilles <nospam@nospam.com> - 2012-10-26 11:58 +0200
          Re: Question about long-running web scripts Tim Golden <mail@timgolden.me.uk> - 2012-10-26 12:00 +0100
            Re: Question about long-running web scripts Gilles <nospam@nospam.com> - 2012-10-26 13:37 +0200
  Re: Question about long-running web scripts David Hutto <dwightdhutto@gmail.com> - 2012-10-25 08:53 -0400
    Re: Question about long-running web scripts Gilles <nospam@nospam.com> - 2012-10-26 11:56 +0200

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