Web Servers and Python

Python-based Web servers have been available in the standard library for many years (see the BaseHTTPServer, SimpleHTTPServer and CGIHTTPServer modules). To address various issues of scalability, robustness and convenience with such existing servers, other server frameworks and solutions have been developed since that time.

Web Servers written in Python

• TwistedMatrix includes a very scalable web server written in Python.

• [http://www.amk.ca/python/code/medusa.html Medusa, a simple framework for standalone server applications]

• [http://www.zetadev.com/software/httpy/ httpy - a sane and robust Python HTTP server and library]

• [http://www.cherrypy.org CherryPy - a pythonic, object-oriented HTTP framework]

Web Servers embedding Python

In addition to the above, some non-Python-based Web servers support Python-based applications by embedding the Python virtual machine for improved performance:

• [http://www.modwsgi.org mod_wsgi] embeds Python in the Apache HTTP server

• ModPython embeds Python in the Apache HTTP server

• ["PyWX"] embeds Python in AOLServer

Standard Library Technologies

• [wiki:BaseHttpServer BaseHTTPServer] (along with successors such as DocXmlRpcServer) can be considered as the original Python Web framework, but it really just provides the ability to process HTTP requests and to generate responses using a relatively primitive API. Some WebFrameworks use it as the basis for serving content, however.