Ooble

It's not that CGI is bad, but that frameworks such as CherryPy offer numerous advantages and no real disadvantages over it.

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DaWei

A very real disadvantage is that your host might not provide it. My host just now added Python. The word, Python, is now in the advertising blurbs, but there isn't a single word anywhere else telling how you need to use it. There's a lot on PHP, Ruby on Rails, etc., so I presume SOME instructions or a FAQ will eventually appear, but who knows where the wild goose goes when it snows?

At any rate, I just harked back to my Perl days and bumbled through it, and eventually noticed the cgi module, and Bob's your aunt.

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Arevos

CGI is lowest common denominator stuff. It's both the slowest, and most basic, way in which to use Python to create a web app.

I'd be tempted by Django or Turbogears for a project of reasonable size. Smaller projects I'd use PHP for, I think. Perhaps mod_python if it were available.

But if you wish to use Python, and your host doesn't have mod_python or FastCGI or whatever, you're pretty much stuck with basic CGI.

DaWei

It might be worth nothing that CGI is an interface specification and that many "non-cgi" approaches are merely CGI wrappers. It is actually a standard dealing with interfacing with protocols such as http.

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Contributor's Corner: Grumpy on C++ Exceptions DaWei on Pointers

Arevos

Although my knowledge of CGI is somewhat limited, I don't think that's altogether the case, DaWei. CGI is a way of encoding information about a HTTP request that can be passed into the STDIN of an external program.

The problem with this approach is that it requires a new instance of the program for every HTTP request. FastCGI gets around this problem by caching the program in memory, but it describes itself as an "open extension to CGI", indicating that it's doing something outside the CGI spec. So far as I know, CGI itself is fairly primative.

A fair few web programming languages nowadays can connect directly to the server through binary interfaces. ASP, PHP, mod_perl, mod_python J2EE and so forth take this approach, and I'd imagine that's the majority of the net right there.

Another technique which is gaining in popularity is to wrap the HTTP server with the programming library. CherryPy, Turbogears, Ruby on Rails and Django default to this position. This gives the developers somewhat more control than they would have otherwise.

CGI by itself is probably fairly rare. When it does show up, it's either for small applications or extended somehow with a binary interface that caches the executed programs. Otherwise, it just doesn't scale particularly well.

DaWei

The fact that it is a standard doesn't mean that an implementation has to use it. It remains, nevertheless, quite pervasive.

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Contributor's Corner: Grumpy on C++ Exceptions DaWei on Pointers

Arevos

Mm, well, I'd still debate that "many" non-CGI approaches are CGI wrappers, though it rather depends on the definition of "many", and that hardly seems worth arguing. Suffice to say that I'd consider CGI wrappers, and CGI in general to be in the minority. I suspect server-specific binary interfaces are the most common method of tying web applications to web servers.

DaWei

I think we differ on our interpretation of the meaning of CGI, and that the resolution isn't worth pursuing. If I happen to stumble over any figures, I'll suck 'em up, but I ainnagonnago looking this month or next. I'd be interested in hearing anything you stumble across, though. I can't keep up, that's for sure.

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Contributor's Corner: Grumpy on C++ Exceptions DaWei on Pointers

Arevos

To be honest, I don't think I'll be hunting around for CGI figures, either

titaniumdecoy

Well, my real issue here is that I'm looking for a way to access these variables that is portable--I am writing a script that needs to work without having to install anything besides Python itself. Do any of these modules (the Python CGI module, mod_python, CherryPy, etc.) come standard with a basic installation of Python?

Also it seems like a bad idea to have so many different ways to go about doing the same thing. It would make it much more difficult for other programmers to maintain Python code if they have to learn a new module/method each time.