What modules ought I to consider in Python if I wish to use CGI sessions?

Question

Given that I know no web frameworks in Python and would like to keep it Very Simple at the moment (as I am Very Stupid), for what is a prototype of sketchy longevity, are there any streamlined, simple, "batteries-included" modules for this? (It is also too early in my Python career to evaluate frameworks, select one, and learn it.) I see a module named "Cookie," which could serve as a foundation, but nothing session-specific.

I'm familiar with the basic session concepts, having used them in classic ASP and gotten into the nuts-and-bolts of them in Perl, but I am not seeing a lot for Python. Beaker looks interesting, but then the documentation seems to require middleware with WSGI and I'm back to the frameworks problem.

I've found an old recipe on ActiveState for sessions, which could obviously use some buffing up. The information being held is not anything anyone would mind having been grabbed, so while I am normally quite security conscious, I would be willing to be a little bit more lax with this prototype.

Or is this a "roll-your-own" problem?

I will be using Python 2.6 on IIS 7.0.

Answer 1

I think the web2py (web framework) is easy enough for you. I think it is the simplest approach of making a website or webservice. It will be also easier, than to understand Cookie or the other modules of python related to web-things.

You can start a session, by just typing:

session.your_session_name = "blabla" # or whatever you want to store

To make a cookie, just look here.

In web2py you don't have to configure anything. Just download it and start web2py.py. (you must have python 2.6 < installed.) You can also find some examples and a web-slide.

The Python Cookie module does nothing more than to hold some values in a dictonary-like object, but I think you have to store it yourself on your harddisk.

Answer 2

CherryPy is worth looking into. Yes it is a framework, and yes it requires WSGI, but it is extremely lightweight compared to other more robust alternatives.

There is another question that was answered on SO that gives a brief example on how to manage sessions with CherryPy. As you can see it makes it very easy to get up and running quickly.

Lastly, here is a little document about setting up IIS for use with CherryPy.

Answer 3

WSGI is not a framework, nor does it require that you choose one -- it's THE standard way to run any Python web app framework on any Python-supporting web server, including a CGI one. If you have a WSGI application named app, and want to run it on CGI, see the docs and use wsgiref.handlers.CGIHandler().run(app), as the docs say.

So, you can perfectly well use Beaker via WSGI (on top of CGI) -- e.g., take the example in Beaker's docs and just add (the needed imports and) the run call above (using the wsgi_app object that example constructs, plus of course a session.save and as well needed as, again, the Beaker docs explain right afterwards).

Rich or heavy frameworks have their place but so do lightweight, flexible components like Beaker -- and WSGI middleware is a great way to leverage such components without requiring any "framework-y" arrangements, just good old WSGI (on top of CGI or anything else).

BTW, the best way to run WSGI on IIS might be isapi-wsgi (I can only say "might" because I have no IIS installation on which to test it;-). But as long as you code to WSGI (with any framework or with none at all), that will only be an optimization -- your application won't change (net of what handler's run or equivalent method you need to call;-) whether it's running on CGI, IIS via ISAPI, Google App Engine, or any other server-and-interface-thereto combination