Twisted Documentation: Twisted.Web2 Deployment with mktap

# Twisted.Web2 Deployment with mktap

While Twisted.Web2 can be deployed in a variety of flexible and complicated ways, occasionally a simpler approach is desired. For this Web2 makes use of TAPs created by the mktap commandline utility. This document outlines a few of the approaches for creating, configuring, and deploying a Twisted.Web2 with mktap.

Since the Web2 mktap plugin is a work in progress it is suggested that you refer to the output of the following command for further information

    % mktap web2 --help

## Simple Servers

### Static Files

Perhaps the simplest possible Twisted.Web2 configuration is to serve a bunch of static files from a directory.

    % mktap web2 --path /some/path

In case you've forgotten mktap 101 this will create a file in the current directory called web2.tap, you can then launch this server configuration with the following command.

    % twistd -nf web2
    2006/03/02 00:29 PST [-] Log opened.
    2006/03/02 00:29 PST [-] twistd SVN-Trunk (/usr/bin/python 2.4.2) starting up
    2006/03/02 00:29 PST [-] reactor class: twisted.internet.selectreactor.SelectReactor
    2006/03/02 00:29 PST [-] Loading web2.tap...
    2006/03/02 00:29 PST [-] Loaded.
    2006/03/02 00:29 PST [-] twisted.web2.channel.http.HTTPFactory starting on 8080
    2006/03/02 00:29 PST [-] Starting factory <twisted.web2.channel.http.HTTPFactory instance at 0x7787ee4c>

You now have a HTTP server serving static files on port 8080, and if you open it in a web browser you'll see something like this in your terminal.

    2006/03/02 00:29 PST [HTTPChannel,0,127.0.0.1] 127.0.0.1 - - [02/Mar/2006:00:29:14 -0700] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 2577 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060224 Ubuntu/dapper Firefox/1.5.0.1"

By default the TAP plugin logs to the standard twistd logfile. However if you specify the `--logfile` option twistd will log to the specified file in the Common Access Logging format.

    % mktap web2 --path /some/path --logfile ./access.log

### Dynamic Resources

Twisted.Web2's tap plugin is also perfectly capable of serving up a dynamic Resource or two. In the name of completeness here is a simple resource.

    from twisted.web2 import http, resource

    class HelloWorld(resource.Resource):
        def render(self, req):
            return http.Response(200, stream="Hello, World!")

Listing 1: Hello World - ../examples/hello.py

To use it from mktap you simply have to make sure it's in your PYTHONPATH and tell mktap to use it as its root resource.

    % mktap web2 --class=hello.HelloWorld

It's important to keep in mind that this class will be created with no arguments passed to the constructor.

### The one line WebDAV configuration

Creating a WebDAV server is as easy as serving a static directory. In fact you could say it's even easier, because there is one character less to type.

But before I tell you how to do it, a word of warning: This is a fully writeable webdav server with absolutely no protections of any kind, no HTTP Authentication, no DAV ACLs, just a directory on your hard disk that you're presenting to the world to be written by whomever should stumble across it. In other words, don't do this on a publically accessible system. It's simply here for you to fool around with in the privacy of your own home.

    % mktap web2 --dav /some/path

## Virtual Hosts

Now for something a little different, and a little more advanced. The TAP plugin supports several ways of configuring a server that uses Named Virtual Hosting.

### Just a bunch of directories

The first method of serving virtual hosts involves a bunch of directories that correspond to the root directory of a virtual host.

For example:

    % ls servers
    test.example.com
    foo.example.com
    mail.example.com
    % mktap web2 --vhost-path servers/

Each of the directories under `servers` is served out as a `static.File` when you visit the appropriate url, for example http://test.example.com:8080/ will give you the contents of `servers/test.example.com` (assuming test.example.com points to the actual place where the server is running.)

### Adding a Single Virtual Host

You can also add a single virtual host at a time, either in a seperate directory structure with `--vhost-static` or as a dynamic resource with `--vhost-class`. You can use as many of these arguments as you wish, even combining them with `--vhost-path`.

For example the following command will give us a web2.tap that serves two virtual hosts, images.example.com and example.com which will serve our dynamic application ( Hello World.)

    % mktap web2 --vhost-static=images.example.com=images/ --vhost-class=example.com=hello.HelloWorld

## Conclusion

Web2's TAP plugin is a great way to get start a server and start playing around. However there are many other ways to deploy web2, and the TAP plugin is meant to be a stepping stone to more advanced techniques such as those mentioned in the deployment howto.

Index

Version: 0.2.0