Good morning.
As the title indicates, I've got some questions about using python for web development.
My major concern when I last tried apache + mod_python + CherryPy was having to reload webserver to see the changes. Is it considered normal? For some reason cherrypy's autoreload didn't work at all.
What is the best setup to deploy a working Python app to production and why? I'm now using lighttpd for my PHP web apps, but how would it do for python compared to nginx for example?
Is it worth diving straight with a framework or to roll something simple of my own? I see that Django has got quite a lot of fans, but I'm thinking it would be overkill for my needs, so I've started looking into CherryPy.
How exactly are Python apps served if I have to reload httpd to see the changes? Something like a permanent process spawning child processes, with all the major file includes happening on server start and then just lazy loading needed resources?
Python supports multithreading, do I need to look into using that for a benefit when developing web apps? What would be that benefit and in what situations?
Big thanks!
So here are my thoughts about it:
I am using Python Paste for developing my app and eventually also running it (or any other python web server). I am usually not using mod_python or mod_wsgi as it makes development setup more complex.
I am using zc.buildout for managing my development environment and all dependencies together with virtualenv. This gives me an isolated sandbox which does not interfere with any Python modules installed system wide.
For deployment I am also using buildout/virtualenv, eventually with a different buildout.cfg. I am also using Paste Deploy and it's configuration mechanism where I have different config files for development and deployment.
As I am usually running paste/cherrypy etc. standalone I am using Apache, NGINX or maybe just a Varnish alone in front of it. It depends on what configuration options you need. E.g. if no virtual hosting, rewrite rules etc. are needed, then I don't need a full featured web server in front. When using a web server I usually use ProxyPass or some more complex rewriting using mod_rewrite.
The Python web framework I use at the moment is repoze.bfg right now btw.
As for your questions about reloading I know about these problems when running it with e.g. mod_python but when using a standalone "paster serve ... -reload" etc. it so far works really well. repoze.bfg additionally has some setting for automatically reloading templates when they change. If the framework you use has that should be documented.
As for multithreading that's usually used then inside the python web server. As CherryPy supports this I guess you don't have to worry about that, it should be used automatically. You should just eventually make some benchmarks to find out under what number of threads your application performs the best.
Hope that helps.