Python CGI simultaneous AJAX requests

Question

So here's the deal : I'm writing a simple lightweight IRC app, hosted locally, that basically does the same job as Xchat and works in your browser, just as Sabnzbd. I display search results in the browser as an html table, and using an AJAX GET request with an on_click event, the download is launched. I use another AJAX GET request in a 1 second loop to request the download information (status, progress, speed, ETA, etc.). I hit a bump with the simultaneous AJAX requests, since my CGI handler seems to only be able to handle one thread at a time : indeed, the main thread processes the download, while requests for download status are sent too. Since I had a Django app somewhere, I tried implementing this IRC app and everything works fine. Simultaneous requests are handled properly. So is there something I have to know with the HTTP handler ? Is it not possible with the basic CGI handle to deal with simultaneous requests ? I use the following for my CGI IRC app :

from http.server import BaseHTTPRequestHandler, HTTPServer, CGIHTTPRequestHandler

If it's not about theory but about my code, I can gladly post various python scripts if it helps.

Answer 1

So, after further research, here's my code, whick works :

from http.server import BaseHTTPRequestHandler, HTTPServer, CGIHTTPRequestHandler
from socketserver import ThreadingMixIn
import threading
import cgitb; cgitb.enable()  ## This line enables CGI error reporting
import webbrowser


class HTTPRequestHandler(CGIHTTPRequestHandler):
    """Handle requests in a separate thread."""
    def do_GET(self):
        if "shutdown" in self.path:
            self.send_head()
            print ("shutdown")
            server.stop()
        else:
            self.send_head()


class ThreadedHTTPServer(ThreadingMixIn, HTTPServer):
    allow_reuse_address = True
    daemon_threads = True

    def shutdown(self):
        self.socket.close()
        HTTPServer.shutdown(self)

class SimpleHttpServer():
    def __init__(self, ip, port):
        self.server = ThreadedHTTPServer((ip,port), HTTPRequestHandler)
        self.status = 1

    def start(self):
        self.server_thread = threading.Thread(target=self.server.serve_forever)
        self.server_thread.daemon = True
        self.server_thread.start()

    def waitForThread(self):
        self.server_thread.join()

    def stop(self):
        self.server.shutdown()
        self.waitForThread()

if __name__=='__main__':
    HTTPRequestHandler.cgi_directories = ["/", "/ircapp"]
    server = SimpleHttpServer('localhost', 8020)
    print ('HTTP Server Running...........')
    webbrowser.open_new_tab('http://localhost:8020/ircapp/search.py') 
    server.start()
    server.waitForThread()