A Brief Introduction to Apache's mod_python Module
Giving Apache the ability to run Python scripts opens up a wealth of options for eliminating those old CGI scripts and using Python for your Web development tasks—and gives your scripts a big performance boost into the bargain!
by Joshua D. Drake
September 29, 2005
magine that you are a PHP programmer. You use PHP, because it's simple—but powerful enough to provide you with most of the features you need to develop Web-based applications for your customers. You have heard of or perhaps even played with more powerful languages, such as Python. Most of your development involves building Web applications, so you are concerned about performance, scalability, and flexibility.
The answer to this problem is mod_python, an Apache Web server module that embeds the Python interpreter within the Apache server in a manner similar to PHP. The advantages to this are many, but briefly, embedding the Python interpreter into Apache provides a persistent execution stack that eliminates the start-up penalty associated with running CGI scripts. It also lets you store specific information about the environment and visitors to your application—creating a pseudo-state mechanism for your Web site.
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magine that you are a PHP programmer. You use PHP, because it's simple—but powerful enough to provide you with most of the features you need to develop Web-based applications for your customers. You have heard of or perhaps even played with more powerful languages, such as Python. Most of your development involves building Web applications, so you are concerned about performance, scalability, and flexibility.
