2.1 `httpy` -- Smooth out WSGI's worst warts

The request side of WSGI--the "commons" of the environ mapping--is quite nice. It honors the tradition of CGI, and it's just a mapping. Simple.

The response-side API is a little stiffer, because WSGI has to support edge cases like serving large files, complex exception handling, and HTTP/1.1 features. This results in warts like start_response, and the requirement that apps return an iterable. The intention in PEP 333 is that these warts be smoothed over at other layers; this is such a layer.

httpy provides the following classes:

class Responder( app): Constructs a new Responder object. app is an extended WSGI application: it may alternately return a string, or return or raise a Response object.

class Response( [code] [, body] [, headers]): Constructs a new Response object. If given, code must be an integer; the default is 200 (see the HTTP spec for other values that will be meaningful to most HTTP clients). body must be a string. headers may be a dictionary or a list of 2-tuples. body is second rather than headers because one more often wants to specify a body without headers than vice versa.

2.1.1 `Responder` Objects

Instances of httpy.Responder are callables that speak plain WSGI on the server side, but they also accept strings and Response objects from the application side. When a Responder receives a Response object, that becomes the WSGI endpoint. When a Responder receives a string, it creates a Response object with the string as the body, and the Content-Type: set to text/html. This implicit Response then becomes the endpoint.

2.1.2 `Response` Objects

Instances of httpy.Response are plain WSGI applications, with the following data attributes. Note that values are only validated in the constructor, so it is currently possible to return/raise a malformed Response by setting instance attributes post-instantiation.

code: The HTTP code as an integer.

body: The message body as a string.

headers: The message headers as an instance of the standard library's email.Message.Message.

When called, Response instances call start_response with adaptations of code and headers, and return a one-item list containing body.

2.1.3 Example

Here is an example:

Python 2.5 (r25:52005, Sep 25 2006, 21:37:36)
[GCC 3.4.4 [FreeBSD] 20050518] on freebsd6
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>
>>> import httpy
>>> app = lambda env, start: "Greetings, program!"
>>> app = httpy.Responder(app)
>>>
>>> from wsgiref.simple_server import make_server
>>> server = make_server('', 8080, app)
>>> server.serve_forever() # now hit http://localhost:8080/
>>>
192.168.1.100 - - [09/Nov/2006 23:52:45] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 19

2.1 httpy -- Smooth out WSGI's worst warts

2.1.1 Responder Objects

2.1.2 Response Objects

2.1.3 Example

2.1 `httpy` -- Smooth out WSGI's worst warts

2.1.1 `Responder` Objects

2.1.2 `Response` Objects