Embedded Web Server in Python? [closed]

Question

Can you recommend a minimalistic python webserver that I can embedded in my Desktop Application.

Answer 1

If you want to use something from the standard library I would strongly recommend not using SimpleHTTPServer, but instead using wsgiref.simple_server. SimpleHTTPServer is awkward and a rather nonsensical way to implement a web application, and while raw WSGI isn't terribly easy (but certainly possible), you have the option to use any WSGI-based framework on top of it. Also if you use wsgiref you will have the option to change to a server like CherryPy later (note that the server in CherryPy can be used separately from the rest of the framework, and you only need one file for just the server). For a "real" web application CherryPy has several advantages over wsgiref, but for a locally hosted application it's unlikely any of them will matter.

If you are making a desktop application you will need to launch a separate thread for either wsgiref or CherryPy. If that's fine, then a WSGI-based server would probably be easiest. If you don't want to launch a separate thread for the server then you most likely need to use Twisted.

Answer 2

How minimalistic and for what purpose?

SimpleHTTPServer comes free as part of the standard Python libraries.

If you need more features, look into CherryPy or (at the top end) Twisted.

Answer 3

If you're doing a lot of concurrent stuff, you might consider Kamaelia's HTTPServer.

Answer 4

I'm becoming a big fan of the newly released circuits library. It's a component/event framework that comes with a very nice set of packages for creating web servers & apps. Here's the simple web example from the site:

from circuits.lib.web import Server, Controller

class HelloWorld(Controller):
   def index(self):
      return "Hello World!"

server = Server(8000)
server += HelloWorld()
server.run()

Its WSGI support is no more complicated than that, either. Good stuff.

Answer 5

I've found web.py pretty easy to use : http://webpy.org/

Answer 6

I made this one. It just enhances Python's SimpleHTTPServer a bit to let you define custom actions depending on the request.