Can nginx log the response to database? - python

I have a nginx/uwsgi/django server running a main django app and a secondary for emergency when nginx it timeout. I am logging the response to database in the django app.
The problem comes when the timeout trigger the emergency app after the main log the response. The emergency app is runes rarely but I end up with some duplicates entries.
Although I can ignore the main app entries when the secondary ones exist, I prefer to avoid this.
Is there a way to log the responses from nginx trough a logging tool or script?

You can use syslog output and chain this to something like logstash that could then push the content to a nosql database like elasticsearch, redis, mongodb among many others.

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How to interpose RabbitMQ between REST client and (Python) REST server?

If I develop a REST service hosted in Apache and a Python plugin which services GET, PUT, DELETE, PATCH; and this service is consumed by an Angular client (or other REST interacting browser technology). Then how do I make it scale-able with RabbitMQ (AMQP)?
Potential Solution #1
Multiple Apache's still faces off against the browser's HTTP calls.
Each Apache instance uses an AMQP plugin and then posts message to a queue
Python microservices monitor a queue and pull a message, service it and return response
Response passed back to Apache plugin, in turn Apache generates the HTTP response
Does this mean the Python microservice no longer has any HTTP server code at all. This will change that component a lot. Perhaps best to decide upfront if you want to use this pattern as it seems it would be a task to rip out any HTTP server code.
Other potential solutions? I am genuinely puzzled as to how we're supposed to take a classic REST server component and upgrade it to be scale-able with RabbitMQ/AMQP with minimal disruption.
I would recommend switching wsgi to asgi(nginx can help here), Im not sure why you think rabbitmq is the solution to your problem, as nothing you described seems like that would be solved by using this method.
asgi is not supported by apache as far as I know, but it allows the server to go do work, and while its working it can continue to service new requests that come in. (gross over simplification)
If for whatever reason you really want to use job workers (rabbitmq, etc) then I would suggest returning to the user a "token" (really just the job_id) and then they can call with that token, and it will report back either the current job status or the result

How can two Python applications hosted in different servers communicate?

I'm having an hard time figuring out how to solve a problem with a little project.
Basically i have a Django application. On the other hand i have an external Python script running. I would like to create a system where, each time a form in my Django app is submitted, the data submitted in the form is sent to the external Python application.
The external Python service should receive the data, read it, and according to who is the user and what did he submit, it should perform some tasks, then send a response.
Here is what i thought: 1) Connect the external Python app to the same database that Django is using. So that when the form is submitted, it is saved on the database and the data can be 'shared' with the second Python service. The problem with this solution is that i would need the second app to query the Database every second and perform a lot of queries, that would be a problem with performances. 2) Create an epi endpoint, so that the external python app would connect to the endpoint and fetch the data saved in the database from there. The problem is the same of the first solution. Would a service like Redis or RabbitMQ help in this case?
Importing the external Python process in my Django app is not a solution, it needs to be separate from the Django app. An important requirement for this, is speed. When new data is submitted, it needs to be received by the second Python app in the shortest time possible.
That said, i'm open to any advice or possible solution to solve this problem, thanks in advance :)
You could use a microservices architecture to build this. Instead of sharing databases between two applications you have them communicate with each other through web requests. Django would shoot a request to your other app with the relevant data, and the other server would respond back with the results.
Usually one would use something like Flask (synchronous server) or Sanic (asynchronous server) to receive/reply, but you can also look into something like Nameko. Would also recommend looking into Docker as eventually, as you set up more of these microservices, you'll need it.
The idea is (i.e. using Flask), to create an access point that does some computation to your data and returns it back to the Django server.
computation.py
from flask import Flask
from flask import request
app = Flask(__name__)
#app.route("/", methods=["POST"])
def computation():
data = request.get_json()
print(data)
return f"Hey! {data}"
app.run(host="0.0.0.0", port=8090)
The Django server is simply sending a request to your server application.
django_mock.py
import requests
req = requests.post('http://0.0.0.0:8090/', json={"data": "Hello"})
print(req.text)
The above will print out on the computation.py app:
{'data': 'Hello'}
and will print out on the django_mock.py example:
Hey! {'data': 'Hello'}
You should build an API. The 2nd app would now be an application server and the 1st app, when it receives a form submission from the user, would persist its data to the DB and then make an API call to the 2nd app via this API. You would include key information in the API request that identifies the record in the DB.
You can use Django (e.g. DRF) or Flask to implement a simple API server in Python.
Now, this requires your app server to be up and running all the time. What if it's down? What should the 1st app do? If you need this level of flexibility, then you need to decouple these apps in some way. Either the 1st app implements some kind of backoff/retry if it can't send to the 2nd app. Or you use a reliable queueing mechanism (something like Amazon SQS).

Do flask threads handle file access?

I am building a Flask app that uses a docx template to build a Word document. If I set threaded=True in app.run() will Flask handle the critical region properly as multiple users access the file on the server concurrently?
Flask doesn't know what your code does. It's up to you to put whatever checks you need before taking an action. HTTP is a stateless protocol, you cannot make assumptions about how and when workers will access other data.
threaded=True just enables multiple workers so that the development server can handle concurrent requests.

Handling multiple requests in Flask

My Flask applications has to do quite a large calculation to fetch a certain page. While Flask is doing that function, another user cannot access the website, because Flask is busy with the large calculation.
Is there any way that I can make my Flask application accept requests from multiple users?
Yes, deploy your application on a different WSGI server, see the Flask deployment options documentation.
The server component that comes with Flask is really only meant for when you are developing your application; even though it can be configured to handle concurrent requests with app.run(threaded=True) (as of Flask 1.0 this is the default). The above document lists several options for servers that can handle concurrent requests and are far more robust and tuneable.
For requests that take a long time, you might want to consider starting a background job for them.

way to fix number of concurrent sessions allowed at app level. django

How can I fix number of concurrent sessions allowed at app level?
Basically I want a limit to how many concurrent requests to this url to keep the server from getting congested.
I guess some middleware hack?
Thanks.
Don't do this in django, but in Apache / nginx / whatever webserver you have in front of Django. They have specific modules exactly for such tasks.
A possible solution for Apache would be: mod_limitipconn2 - http://dominia.org/djao/limitipconn2.html
Django stores session information in the database by default. You could use a middleware, which checks the number of rows (coarsly speaking) in that table. Keep in mind that django won't purge expired sessions from the DB automatically.
On clearing the session table:
http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/http/sessions/#clearing-the-session-table
You're not asking about sessions, you're asking about requests. What you want is known as throttling. However, it would be quite difficult to do it inside the app, because Apache manages multiple processes and threads, so you'd need some external process to keep track of these in order to enable the throttling.
Basically, this sort of thing is best done within Apache itself, by something like mod_throttle.

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