Saturday, February 25, 2006

Getting ISAPI-WSGI from Subversion Repository

Had an anonymous email asking how to check-out isapi-wsgi from subversion. The following command will do it:

svn co http://svn.isapi-wsgi.python-hosting.com/trunk

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Hex Dump Tools written in Python

In reviewing my blog access stats, it would appear that most used search engine keyword combination that sends visitors to my site are "hex" and "dump". So to not disappoint these 20% of visitors, I have tracked down a number of hex dumping tools written in my favorite programming language.

READBIN by Tony Dycks is a Text Console-based program which reads a single Input File specified on the command line one character at a time and prints out a formatted hex "dump" representation of the files contents 16 characters per display line. A prompt for continuation is issued after displaying 20 lines (320 characters of information). An entry of "X" or "x" followed by the key terminates the program execution. Any other entry followed by continues the display of the formatted hex and character information. A "." character is used for any non-displayable hex character

Hex Dumper by Sébastien Keim is a function which will display to stdout, the classic 3 column hex dump of a string passed to it.

Hexdump by Ned Batchelder prints a 3 column hex dump to stdout of a list of files or stdin.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

What's been happening in the world of WSGI

Good to see some activity in the development of WSGI component based microframeworks.

I have been following Ben Bangert and James Gardners' work on Pylons which is based on Myghty, with a custom Resolver, full Paste and WSGI integration. Haven't had a play with it yet, but have an idea for a project where Pylons may be the perfect fit.

Also Julian Krause has just released RhubarbTart, a light object publishing web framework built on WSGI and Paste. It's object publishing model is similar to CherryPy. Since it built on Paste, RhubardTart makes the most of Paste's selection of WSGI middleware components to provide the other functionality expected of a web framework. So if have been using CherryPy because of it's ease in exposing object methods, but want to customise the component stack you use for a web project, have a look at RhubarbTart.

Then again, if you want to create your own WSGI/Paste framework, Ian Bickings has created a great tutorial to get you started. If you have a problem with understanding what WSGI/Paste is all about, read the tutorial, you will be enlightened.

And even Guido this week has nice things to say about WSGI - 'Maybe the current crop of Python web frameworks (as well as Rails BTW) have it all wrong. Maybe the WSGI folks are the only ones who are "getting" it.'

One of the joys of programming in Python is "batteries included" and the fact I get to pick which batteries to use to help me solve the programming task at hand. With WSGI I get the freedom to pick what components I want use in the HTTP request/response area for a web project, and get to focus on solving the actual programming problem or challenge.