If you are a web.py / lighttpd newbie like me, this app might be useful.

It helps you figure out what's inside ctx and ctx.env at your specific deployment (i.e. the kind of server[s] you use and the way everything is configured).

It also displays some "lighttpd.conf wisdom" I've picked up during my short experience with lighty, but the app itself might be useful for other kinds of deployment if you try to figure out how exactly your environment appears from the web.py app's point of view.

"Out of the box" it runs a stand-alone http server.

As soon as you configure your apache/lighttpd/etc. as needed, uncomment a single line to go fastcgi

Enjoy

The Dod

Jump to example output

#!/usr/bin/python
"""I Wrote this app to answer the question "where the hell is SCRIPT_NAME?",
but it can be useful for fellow web.py newbies with similar questions.

Uses "pure prints" (no templating), so that it stays useful regardless of
your knowlegde [and beliefs ;)] in that area.

    Enjoy,
    The dod
"""

import web
urls=(
    '/','index',
    '/funng(.*)','funng',
)
 
class index:
    def GET(self):
        print """<html>
 <head>        
  <title>Fun and games (in general)</title>
 </head>
 <body>
  For fun and games,
  <a href="funng/a/%3Cmessy/%3E/%22little%22/url?style=%3Cb%3E&so=on">click
  here</a><br>
  Here's the <a href="http://zzzen.jottit.com/Webpy_on_lighttpd">source</a><br>
  <br>
  Lighttpd settings are:
  <small>(only this way I had no base-url problems etc.)</small>
  <pre>#### begin /test1/ ####
fastcgi.server = ("/test1" => (
    "/" => (
        "bin-path" => "/path/to/this/code.py",
        "socket"          => "/tmp/test1.socket",
        "max-procs"       => 1,
        "check-local" => "disable"
)))

### redirect /test1 -> /test1/

# uncomment if lighttpd wouldn't bloody restart ;)
#server.modules += ( "mod_redirect" )

$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/test1$" {
    url.redirect = ( "^/test1$" => "/test1/" )
}
#### end /test1/ ####</pre>
 </body>
</html>"""

class funng:
    def GET(self,path):
        path=web.htmlquote(path) or '/'
        print """<html>
 <head>        
  <title>Fun and games at %s</title>
 </head>
 <body>""" % path
        print '<h2>Fun and games at %s</h2>[<a href="%s">Home</a>]<br>' % (path,web.ctx.home)
        for name,storage in [('query',web.webapi.input()),
                             ('ctx',web.ctx),
                             ('env',web.ctx.get('env',{}))]:
            if not storage:
                continue
            print '<h3>%s</big></h3>' % name
            for k in storage:
                if k in ['output','env','environ','DOCUMENT_ROOT',
                         'SCRIPT_FILENAME','PATH_TRANSLATED']:
                    continue # too long, redundant, or too private :)
                print '<b>%s:</b> %s<br/>' % tuple(
                        map(web.htmlquote,(k,`storage[k]`)))
        print """ </body>
</html>"""


if __name__ == "__main__":
    web.webapi.internalerror = web.debugerror

    ## You can run this app as a standalone server, and browse to
    ## http://localhost:8080
    ## (you can supply a different port as a command line argument)
    ## Once you've read the advice there and told your lighttpd
    ## to treat this app as a fastcgi sever, uncomment the line below
    
    #web.wsgi.runwsgi = lambda func, addr=None: web.runfcgi(func, addr)

    web.run(urls, globals(),web.reloader)

Example output:

Fun and games at /a/<sneaky>&tricky/url

[Home]

query

style: '<b>'
so: 'on'

ctx

status: '200 OK'
homedomain: 'http://localhost'

ip: '127.0.0.1'
fullpath: '/funng/a/%3Csneaky%3E&tricky/url?style=%3Cb%3E&so=on'
headers: []
host: 'localhost'

home: 'http://localhost/test1'
homepath: '/test1'
path: '/funng/a/%3Csneaky%3E&tricky/url'
query: '?style=%3Cb%3E&so=on'

method: 'GET'

env

wsgi.multiprocess: False
HTTP_REFERER: 'http://localhost/test1/'
REDIRECT_STATUS: '200'

SERVER_SOFTWARE: 'lighttpd/1.4.13'
SCRIPT_NAME: '/test1'
REQUEST_METHOD: 'GET'
PATH_INFO: '/funng/a/<sneaky>&tricky/url'

SERVER_PROTOCOL: 'HTTP/1.1'
QUERY_STRING: 'style=%3Cb%3E&so=on'
HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET: 'UTF-8,*'
HTTP_USER_AGENT: 'Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20061201 Firefox/2.0.0.6 (Ubuntu-feisty)'

HTTP_CONNECTION: 'keep-alive'
SERVER_NAME: 'localhost'
REMOTE_PORT: '2262'
wsgi.url_scheme: 'http'
SERVER_PORT: '80'

SERVER_ADDR: '127.0.0.1'
wsgi.input: <flup.server.fcgi_base.MultiplexedInputStream object at 0x8287d8c>
HTTP_HOST: 'localhost'
wsgi.multithread: True
REQUEST_URI: '/test1/funng/a/%3Csneaky%3E&tricky/url?style=%3Cb%3E&so=on'

HTTP_ACCEPT: 'text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,/;q=0.5'
wsgi.version: (1, 0)
GATEWAY_INTERFACE: 'CGI/1.1'
wsgi.run_once: False
wsgi.errors: <flup.server.fcgi_base.OutputStream object at 0x82877ec>

REMOTE_ADDR: '127.0.0.1'
HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE: 'en,he;q=0.8,th;q=0.6,ar-jo;q=0.4,en-us;q=0.2'
HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING: 'gzip,deflate'
HTTP_KEEP_ALIVE: '300'

changed October 9, 2007

And Zzzen again

Example output:

Fun and games at /a/<sneaky>&tricky/url

query

ctx

env