I'm running Mac OS X Leopard and wanted to know what the easy way to setup a web development environment to use Python, MySQL, Apache on my machine which would allow me to develop on my Mac and then easily move it to a host in the future.
I've been trying to get mod_wsgi installed and configured to work with Django and have a headache now. Are there any web hosts that currently use mod_wsgi besides Google, so I could just develop there?
FWIW, we've found virtualenv [http://pypi.python.org/pypi/virtualenv] to be an invaluable part of our dev setup. We typically work on multiple projects that use different versions of Python libraries etc. It's very difficult to do this on one machine without some way to provide a localized, customized Python environment, as virtualenv does.
Most Python applications are moving away from mod_python. It can vary by framework or provider, but most development effort is going into mod_wsgi.
Using the WSGI standard will make your Python application server agnostic, and allow for other nice additions like WSGI middleware. Other providers may only provide CGI (which won't scale well performance wise), or FastCGI.
I've worked with Django using only the included server in the manager.py script and have not had any trouble moving to a production environment.
If you put your application in a host that does the environment configuration for you (like WebFaction) you should not have problems moving from development to production.
I run a Linux virtual machine on my Mac laptop. This allows me to keep my development environment and production environments perfectly in sync (and make snapshots for easy experimentation / rollback). I've found VMWare Fusion works the best, but there are free open source alternatives such as VirtualBox if you just want to get your feet wet.
I share the source folders from the guest Linux operating system on my Mac and edit them with the Mac source editor of my choosing (I use Eclipse / PyDev because the otherwise excellent TextMate doesn't deal well with Chinese text yet). I've documented the software setup for the guest Linux operating system here; it's optimized for serving multiple Django applications (including geodjango).
For extra added fun, you can edit your Mac's /etc/hosts file to make yourdomainname.com resolve to your guest Linux boxes internal IP address and have a simple way to work on / test multiple web projects online or offline without too much hassle.
What you're looking for is Mod_Python. It's an Apache-based interpreter for Python. Check it out here:
http://www.modpython.org/
Google App Engine has done it for you. Some limitations but it works great, and it gives you a path to hosting free.
Of course Mac OS X, in recent versions, comes with Python and Apache. However you may want to have more flexibility in the versions you use, or you may not like the tweaks Apple has made to the way they are configured. A good way to get a more generic set of tools, including MySQL, is to install them anew. This will help your portability issues. The frameworks can be installed relatively easily with one of these open source package providers.
Fink
MacPorts
MAMP
mod_wsgi is really, really simple.
Pyerweb is a really simple (~90 lines including comments/whitespace) WSGI-compliant routing-framework I wrote. Basically the WSGI API is just a function that gets passed environ, and wsgi_start_response, and it returns a string.
envrion is a dict with the request info, for example environ['PATH_INFO'] is the request URI)
wsgi_start_response which is a callable function which you execute to set the headers,:
wsgi_start_response(output_response, output_headers)
output_response is the string containing the HTTP status you wish to send (200 OK etc), and output_headers is a list-of-tuples containing your headers (for example, [("Content-type", "text/html")] would set the content-type)
Then the function returns a string containing your output.. That's all there is to it!
To run it, using spawning you can just do spawn scriptname.my_wsgi_function_nae and it will start listening on port 8080.
To use it via mod_wsgi, it's documentation is good, http://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/wiki/QuickConfigurationGuide and there is a django specific section
The up-side to using mod_wsgi is it's the standard for serving Python web-applications. I recently decided to play with Google App Engine, and was surprised when Pyerweb (which I linked to at the start of this answer) worked perfectly on it, completely unintentionally. I was even more impressed when I noticed Django applications run on it too.. Standardisation is a good thing!
You may want to look into web2py. It includes an administration interface to develop via your browser. All you need in one package, including Python.
Check out WebFaction—although I don't use them (nor am I related to / profit from their business in any way). I've read over and over how great their service is and particularly how Django-friendly they are. There's a specific post in their forums about getting up and running with Django and mod_wsgi.
Like others before me in this thread, I highly recommend using Ian Bicking's virtualenv to isolate your development environment; there's a dedicated page in the mod_wsgi documentation for exactly that sort of setup.
I'd also urge you to check out pip, which is basically a smarter easy_install which knows about virtualenv. Pip does two really nice things for virtualenv-style development:
Knows how to install from source control (SVN, Git, etc...)
Knows how to "freeze" an existing development environement's requirements so that you can create that environment somewhere else—very very nice for multiple developers or deployment.
Related
I'm investigating ways to add vagrant to my development environment. I do most of my web development in python, and I'm interested in python-related specifics, however the question is more general.
I like the idea of having all development-related stuff isolated in virtual machine, but I haven't yet discovered an effective way to work with it. Basically, I see 3 ways to set it up:
Have all services (such as database server, MQ, etc) as well as an application under development to run in VM. Developer would ssh to VM and edit sources there, run app, tests, etc, all in an ssh terminal.
Same as 1), but edit sources on host machine in mapped directory with normal GUI editor. Run application and tests on vagrant via ssh. This seems to be most popular way to use vagrant.
Host only external services in VM. Install app dependencies into virtualenv on host machine and run app and tests from there.
All of these approaches have their own flaws:
Developing in text console is just too inconvenient, and this is the show-stopper for me. While I'm experienced ViM user and could live with it, I can't recommend this approach to anyone used to work in any graphical IDE.
You can develop with your familiar tools, but you cannot use autocompletion, since all python libs are installed in VM. Your tracebacks will point to non-local files. You will not be able to open library sources in your editor, ctags will not work.
Losing most of "isolation" feature: you have to install all compilers, *-dev libraries yourself to install python dependencies and run an app. It is pretty easy on linux, but it might be much harder to set them all up on OSX and on Windows it is next to impossible I guess.
So, the question is: is there any remedy for problems of 2nd and 3rd approaches? More specifically, how is it possible to create an isolated and easily replicatable environment, and yet enjoy all the comfort of development on host machine?
In most IDE you can add "library" path which are outside the project so that your code completion etc works. About the traceback, I'm unfamiliar with python but this sounds like issue that are resolved by "mapping" paths between servers and dev machine. This is generally the reason why #2 is often the way to go (Except when you have a team willing to do #1).
I have been looking at setting up a web server to use Python and I have installed Apache 2.2.22 on Debian 7 Wheezy with mod_wsgi. I have gotten the initial page up and going and the Apache will display the contents of the wsgi file that I have in my directory.
However, I have been researching on how to deploy a Python application and I have to admin, I find some of it a little confusing. I am coming from a background in PHP where it is literally install what you need and you are up and running and PHP is processing the way it should be.
Is this the same with Python? I can't seem to get anything to process outside of the wsgi file that I have setup. I can't import anything from other files without the server throwing a "500" error. I have looked on Google and Bing to try to find an answer to this, but I can't seem to find anything, or don't know that what I have been looking at is the answer.
I really appreciate any help that you guys can offer.
Thanks in advance! (If I need to post any coding, I can do that, I just don't know what you guys would need, if anything, as far as coding examples for this...)
Python is different from PHP in that PHP executes your entire program separately for each hit to your website, whereas Python runs "worker processes" that stay resident in memory.
You need some sort of web framework to do this work for you (you could write your own, but using someone else's framework makes it much easier). Flask is an example of a light one; Django is an example of a very heavy one. Pick one and follow that framework's instructions, or look for tutorials for that framework. Since the frameworks differ, most practical documentation on handling web services with Python are focused around a framework instead of just around the language itself.
Nearly any python web framework will have a development server that you can run locally, so you don't need to worry about deploying yet. When you are ready to deploy, Apache will work, although it's usually easier and better to use Gunicorn or another python-specific webserver, and then if you need more webserver functionality, set up nginx or Apache as a reverse proxy. Apache is a very heavy application to use for nothing but wsgi functionality. You also have the option of deploying to a PaaS service like Heroku (free for development work, costs money for production applications) which will handle a lot of sysadmin work for you.
As an aside, if you're not using virtualenv to set up your Python environment, you should look into it. It will make it much easier to keep track of what you have installed, to install new packages, and to isolate an environment so you can work on multiple projects on the same computer.
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 9 years ago.
Improve this question
I have been working on Python quite a lot recently and started reading the doc for Django, however I can't deny the fact that most of the video tutorials I find usually shows Linux as the chosen OS. I've ignored this mostly, but I started to come upon some problems with people using commands such as "touch" for which I have no idea about what the equivalent is in the Windows 7 command prompt. I've heard about New-Item in Power Shell, however it's messy and I am fearing that this "equivalent hunt" might come again and again...
So I started to wonder why were most of the people using Linux with Python, would be a good move (knowing that my Linux knowledge is completely null) to learn to use Linux for development purpose? Would it allow me to be more efficient at developing with Python in general? Would it be possible to list the benefits of doing so?
I used Windows for quite some time for Django development, but finally figured out that Linux is simply the better way to go. Here are some reasons why:
some Python packages can not be installed at all or correctly in Windows OR it will create a lot of hassle for you to do so
if you need to deploy your Django app it makes more sense to use a Unix-flavored system, simply because its 99% likely that you deployment environment is the same. Doing a dry run on your local machine with the same configuration will save you a lot of time later on + here you are "allowed" to make mistakes.
If your apps gets complex its way easier in Linux to get the required dependencies, be it extensions, libraries, etc.. In Windows you end up looking for the right site to download everything and go through some hassle of installation and configuration. It took me lots of time to just search for some specific things sometimes. In Linux its often just an "apt-get" (or similiar) and you are done.
Did I mention that everything is faster to get and install in Linux?
Of course if your app is simple and you don't need to care about the deployment then Windows is fine.
Although there are some benefits in using Linux for Python development (for example, some libraries only work on Linux); there is nothing stopping you from using Windows for django work; I use it everyday and nothing has yet to crop up.
The right IDE that you are comfortable with will go a long way towards making your development experience more enjoyable. Many people use Pydev with Eclipse; but I prefer PyCharm
A lot of the tutorials will show you a Linux or Mac desktop (and shell) and you can get the equivalent commands (like touch, ls and others) by installing unixtools - which are native versions of common unix tools.
You should bookmark this website which has Windows installers for common Python libraries.
It depends what operating system do you like most.
You could use Aptana 3 with pydev(included) for development.
When developing remember about use of "os" python lib for paths to dirs, so your application will work correctly under windows and linux.
For example:
PROJECT_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))
MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(PROJECT_DIR, 'site_media')
I normally use OSX on my desktop, but I use Linux for Python because that's how it will get deployed. Specifically, I use Ubuntu Desktop in a virtual machine to develop Python applications and I use Ubuntu on the server to deploy them. This means that my understanding of library and module requirements/dependencies are 100% transferrable to the server when I'm ready to deploy the application.
If I used OSX (or Windows) to develop Python apps I would have to deal with two different methods of handling requirements and dependencies --- it's just too much work.
My suggestion: use VMWare Player (it's free) and find a Ubuntu VM to start learning. It's not too complicated and is actually quite fun.
django is written in pure python, so using Windows + Eclipse + PyDev for development is enough.
if you really want to follow the cool guys using some Linux commands, then have cygwin or mingWin installed and set the system PATH to BIN directive. Then, you could use them (include your touch).
Linux is best choice for deployment of a django project, where you can easily compile / install / configure some cool things like nginx, uWSGI, mod_wsgi, Apache2, and many many useful Python C extensions.
Another reason for using Linux, is that virtual private servers, which are used to host projects, are more likely to support it.
I've made a small little "application" utilizing Django as a framework. This is an application that is not ment to be deployed to a server but run locally on a machine. Thus the runserver.py works just nice.
I, as an developer is comfortable with fireing up the terminal, running python manage.py runserver and using it.
But I have some Mac OS X and Windows friends wanting to use my application, and they dont have virtualenv, git or anything else.
Is there a way I can package this to be a standalone product? Of course it would depend on Python being installed on the system, but it is possbile to package the virtualenv — with django and everything, and just copy it to another system and make it work?
And maybe even run the runserver in some kind a deamon mode?
Use setuptools and easy_install.
Here's an introductory article.
Yes, you can package it. Django may not be the easiest to do this with, but the principles are the same for other frameworks. You need to make an installer that installs everything you need. And that installer needs to be different for different platforms. such as Windows, Ubuntu, OS X etc. That also means that the answer is significantly different for each platform, and only half of the answer is dependning on Django. :-(
This kinda sucks, but that's life, currently. There is no nice platform independent way to install software for end users.
I also haven't found the perfect solution for this yet.
My current approach is to provide a docker image because that's really easy to use for everyone. This includes an alpine base image because it's tiny and python + django and the app itself. You can also include a webserver like nginx and an app server like uwsgi or gunicorn and expose a port for it.
So in the end your user would just run the container and access the web app under http://localhost:9000/ or something like this.
This is really handy and also my preferred way of trying out some app I've found.
The "proper" way would be do build a package for every OS and distribution you are targeting and a simple zip bundle so people can also install the app manually.
To build the packages I suggest using fpm. It takes most of the pain of doing the packaging with their native tools away. The packages would then depend on a proper application server like uwsgi or gunicorn.
So in the end you could then install it like apt install your-package and it would depend on python-django, uwsgi etc.
For the location and where to put all the files in the package every distribution has their own way of doing it. I prefer putting everything under /usr/share/webapps/myapp/ and having the config under /etc/myapp/config.py or something like that.
For Windows and macOS there are solutions like PyInstaller. I haven't used it yet for a django app but it should do the job. You should include a app server like uwsgi in there too.
In generel you don't want to run the django dev server in a production environment. So keep that in mind when packaging.
I hope that helps a bit.
There are several ways of doing this. I think you are looking more for build tools (which includes packaging) rather than just a Python solution. Here are a couple that I've used in the past:
zc.buildout: Used to build and deploy Python modules and applications, but is also able to work with other languages with a little massaging. Easy to use (for a build tool).
make: The software build classic. Works with practically all languages but a little archaic and hard to learn for a first timer.
The new snap package manager for Linux should suit the task perfectly. It provides all the solutions that were quite a pain for Python apps so far (dependencies, interpreter etc) and at the same time avoiding the complexity of Docker.
These days Docker is probably a good answer
User needs to install Docker first, but it runs on Windows and OSX as well as Linux.
Your Dockerfile takes care of installing all the dependencies and then runs the devserver (or you could even run a proper webserver in the container)
I currently work with .NET exclusively and would like to have a go at python. To this end I need to set up a python development environment. I guide to this would be handy. I guess I would be doing web development so will need a web server and probably a database. I also need pointers to popular ORM's, an MVC framework, and a testing library.
One of my main criteria with all this is that I want to understand how it works, and I want it to be as isolated as possible. This is important as i am wary of polluting what is a working .NET environment with 3rd party web and database servers. I am perfectly happy using SQLite to start with if this is possible.
If I get on well with this I am also likely to want to set up automated build and ci server (On a virtual machine, probably ubuntu). Any suggestions for these would be useful.
My ultimate aim if i like python is to have similar sorts of tools that i have available with .NET and to really understand the build and deployment of it all. To start with I will settle for a simple development environment that is as isolated as possible and will be easy to remove if I don't like it. I don't want to use IronPython as I want the full experience of developing a python solution using the tools and frameworks that are generally used.
It's not that hard to set up a Python environment, and I've never had it muck up my .NET work. Basically, install Python --- I'd use 2.6 rather than 3.0, which is not yet broadly accepted --- and add it to your PATH, and you're ready to go with the language. I wouldn't recommend using a Ubuntu VM as your development environment; if you're working on Windows, you might as well develop on Windows, and I've had no significant problems doing so. I go back and forth from Windows to Linux with no trouble.
If you have an editor that you're comfortable with that has basic support for Python, I'd stick with it. If not, I've found Geany to be a nice, light, easy-to-use editor with good Python support, though I use Emacs myself because I know it; other people like SCITE, NotePad++, or any of a slew of others. I'd avoid fancy IDEs for Python, because they don't match the character of the language, and I wouldn't bother with IDLE (included with Python), because it's a royal pain to use.
Suggestions for libraries and frameworks:
Django is the standard web framework, but it's big and you have to work django's way; I prefer CherryPy, which is also actively supported, but is light, gives you great freedom, and contains a nice, solid webserver that can be replaced easily with httpd.
Django includes its own ORM, which is nice enough; there's a standalone one for Python, though, which is even nicer: SQL Alchemy
As far as a testing library goes, pyunit seems to me to be the obvious choice
Good luck, and welcome to a really fun language!
EDIT summary: I originally recommended Karrigell, but can't any more: since the 3.0 release, it's been continuously broken, and the community is not large enough to solve the problems. CherryPy is a good substitute if you like a light, simple framework that doesn't get in your way, so I've changed the above to suggest it instead.
Well, if you're thinking of setting up an Ubuntu VM anyway, you might as well make that your development environment. Then you can install Apache and MySQL or Postgres on that VM just via the standard packaging tools (apt-get install), and there's no danger of polluting your Windows environment.
You can either do the actual development on your Windows machine via your favourite IDE, using the VM as a networked drive and saving the code there, or you can just use the VM as a full desktop environment and do everything there, which is what I would recommend.
Install the pre-configured ActivePython release from activestate.
Among other features, it includes the PythonWin IDE (Windows only) which makes it easy to explore Python interactively.
The recommended reference is Dive Into Python, mentioned many times on similar SO discussions.
You should install python 2.4, python 2.5, python 2.6 and python 3.0, and add to your path the one you use more often (Add c:\Pythonxx\ and c:\Pythonxx\Scripts).
For every python 2.x, install easy_install; Download ez_setup.py and then from the cmd:
c:\Python2x\python.exe x:\path\to\ez_setup.py
c:\Python2x\Scripts\easy_install virtualenv
Then each time you start a new project create a new virtual environment to isolate the specific package you needs for your project:
mkdir <project name>
cd <project name>
c:\Python2x\Scripts\virtualenv --no-site-packages .\v
It creates a copy of python and its libraries in .v\Scripts and .\v\Lib. Every third party packages you install in that environment will be put into .\v\Lib\site-packages. The -no-site-packages don't give access to the global site package, so you can be sure all your dependencies are in .\v\Lib\site-packages.
To activate the virtual environment:
.\v\Scripts\activate
For the frameworks, there are many. Django is great and very well documented but you should probably look at Pylons first for its documentions on unicode, packaging, deployment and testing, and for its better WSGI support.
For the IDE, Python comes with IDLE which is enough for learning, however you might want to look at Eclipse+PyDev, Komodo or Wingware Python IDE. Netbean 6.5 has beta support for python that looks promising (See top 5 python IDE).
For the webserver, you don't need any; Python has its own and all web framework come with their own. You might want to install MySql or ProgreSql; it's often better to develop on the same DB you will use for production.
Also, when you have learnt Python, look at Foundations of Agile Python Development or Expert Python Programming.
Using Python on Windows
SO: Python tutorial for total beginners?
Take a look at Pylons, read about WSGI and Paste.
There's nice introductory Google tech talk about them: ReUsable Web Components with Python and Future Python Web Development.
Here's my answer to similar question:
Django vs other Python web frameworks?
NOTE: I included a lot of links to frameworks, projects and what-not, but as a new user I was limited to 1 link per answer. If someone else with enough reputation to edit wants/can edit them into this answer instead of the footnotes, I'd be grateful.
There are some Python IDE's such as Wing IDE[1], I believe some people use Eclipse[2] with a python plugin[3] as well. A lot of people in the #python channel of FreeNode seem to prefer vim, emacs, nano and similar text editors in favor of IDE's. My personal preffered editor is Vim, but if you've mostly done .NET development on windows, presumably with the usual Visual X IDE's, vim and emacs will probably cause you culture shock and you'd be better of using an IDE.
Nearly all python web frameworks* support the WSGI standard[4], most of the large web servers have some sort of plugin to support WSGI, the others support WSGI via fast cgi or plain cgi.
The Zope[5] and Django[6] frameworks have their own ORM's, of other ORM's the two most well known appear to be SQL Alchemy[7] and SQL Object[8]. I only have experience with the former, but both support all possible sane database choices, including SQLite which is installed together with Python and hence perfectly suited to testing and experimenting without polluting your .NET environment with 3rd part web servers and database servers.
The builtin unittest[9] and pyunit[10] frameworks seem to be the preffered solutions for unit testing, but I don't have much experience with these.
bpython[11] and ipython[12] offer enhanced interactive python shells which can greatly help speed up and testing small bits of code and hence worth looking in to.
As for a list of well known and often used web frameworks, look into the following frameworks**:
Twisted[13] is a generic networking framework, which supports almost every single protocol under the sun.
Pylons[14] is light-weight framework aimed at being as flexible as possible and leaving all the choices about what ORM, templating language and what-not to you.
CherryPy[15] tries to provide an interface to expose Python objects to the web.
Django[6] attempts to be an all-in-one solution, builtin template system, ORM, admin pages and internationalization. While the previous frameworks have more DIY wiring together various frameworks work involved with them.
Zope[5] is aimed to be suitable for large enterprise applications, I've heard nothing but good things about it, but consensus seems to be that for smaller you're probably better off with one of the simpler and smaller frameworks.
TurboGears[16] is the framework I know the least about, but it seems to be mostly competition for Django.
This is everything I can think of right now, I'll edit and add stuff if I can think of it. I hope this helps you some in the wonderful world of python.
* - The main exception would be Apache's mod_python, which you should avoid for exactly that reason, use mod_wsgi instead.
** - Word of warning, I have not personally used these frameworks this is just a very short impression I have gotten from talking to other people about each framework, it may be wildly inaccurate. (If anyone has any corrections, do comment and I'll try to edit and fix this answer).
(The http:// is missing since they're recognized as links otherwise)
[1] www.wingware.com/
[2] www.eclipse.org/
[3] pydev.sourceforge.net/
[4] wsgi.org/wsgi/
[5] www.zope.org/
[6] www.djangoproject.com/
[7] www.sqlalchemy.org/
[8] www.sqlobject.org/
[9] docs.python.org/library/unittest.html
[10] pyunit.sourceforge.net/pyunit.html
[11] www.bpython-interpreter.org/
[12] ipython.scipy.org/
[13] twistedmatrix.com/trac/
[14] pylonshq.com/
[15] www.cherrypy.org/
[16] turbogears.org/
Environment?
Here is the simplest solution:
Install Active Python 2.6. Its the Python itself, but comes with some extra handy useful stuff, like DiveintoPython chm.
Use Komodo Edit 5. It is among the good free editor you can use for Python.
Use IDLE. Its the best simplest short snippet editor, with syntax highlighting and auto complete unmatched by most other IDEs. It comes bundled with python.
Use Ipython. Its a shell that does syntax highlighting and auto complete, bash functions, pretty print, logging, history and many such things.
Install easy_install and/or pip for installing various 3rd party apps easily.
Coming from Visual Studio and .Net it will sound a lot different, but its an entirely different world.
For the framework, django works the best. Walk thro the tutorial and you will be impressed enough. The documentation rocks. The community, you have to see for yourself, to know how wonderful it is!!
Python has build in SQL like database and web server, so you wouldn't need to install any third party apps. Remember Python comes with batteries included.
If you've worked with Eclipse before you could give Pydev a try