How to let the webserver (e.g. Apache) call Python directly?

Question

(Important) Disclaimer: I know it's probably not a good idea, that Python is not like PHP, and that the "natural" way to do web with Python is more by using a framework like Bottle, Flask, Django (that I already use), etc. But still, just out of curiosity, I'd like to see how the following is possible .

When Apache + PHP are installed, we can access a page like http://www.example.com/index.php .Internally, Apache probably passes the request to PHP which executes code, produces a text output, which is then served by Apache.

Question: how could we do something similar in Python? ie by accessing http://www.example.com/index.py , Apache would call the script index.py :

print("<html><body>Hello world</body></html>")

and then Apache would serve this page to the client.

NB:

Calling http://www.example.com/index.py?foo=bar could even give the params to the Python script in sys.argv
I already did it like this: http://www.example.com/index.php :
```
 <?php $out = shell_exec("python index.py"); echo($out); ?>
```
which then calls the Python script and produces the output. It works, but I'd like to do it without PHP.
Said in another way, is there something like mod_php for Python?

Answer 1

There exists a similar mod for python, but it's not as widely used and does not seem to have been updated for a few years.

Note: A common way of doing things is using apache/nginx as a web server, and uwsgi as an application server, with the web server redirecting to the application server for non-static content urls.

Answer 2

I finally managed to do it thanks to the other answer:

Do:
```
 apt-get install libapache2-mod-python
```
Then create or open the .htaccess file in your website folder, and add
```
AddHandler mod_python.py PythonHandler mod_python.publisher
```

Then create a file test.py :

 def index(req): return("<html><body>Hello world</body></html>")

Now accessing www.example.com/test.py works!

NB:

def index(req) is really required: using another name will make it fail.
I don't know why, but it's not possible to set AddHandler mod_python.py in a .htaccess , I only managed to do it globally for a <VirtualHost> . Does someone have an idea about how to do it directly in the .htaccess ?
if mod_python is already installed but not enabled, you have to do:
```
 a2enmod python service apache2 restart
```
but this is done automatically when installing libapache2-mod-python .
This is needed in the Apache VirtualHost 's Directory : AllowOverride All , Require all granted , to allow handlers to be added directly in a .htaccess file. Without it, an alternative is to add the directives AddHandler... directly in the VirtualHost definition.

Answer 3

There is one more module apache can able to server python apart from mod_python which is mod_wsgi you may have tried it already if not this can be done like below.

First install if not already installed

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-wsgi -y

Create vhost

<VirtualHost *:8081>

    #ServerName www.example.com
    #ServerAlias example.com
    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/wsgi

    <Directory /var/www/html/wsgi>
    <IfVersion < 2.4>
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </IfVersion>
    <IfVersion >= 2.4>
        Require all granted
    </IfVersion>
    </Directory>

    WSGIScriptAlias /myapp /var/www/html/wsgi/index.py #path to file

    <Directory /var/www/html/wsgi>
    <IfVersion < 2.4>
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </IfVersion>
    <IfVersion >= 2.4>
        Require all granted
    </IfVersion>
    </Directory>

</VirtualHost>

Create index.py

def application(environ, start_response):
    status = '200 OK'
    output = b'<h2>Hello World!</h2>'

    response_headers = [('Content-type', 'text/html'),
                        ('Content-Length', str(len(output)))]
    start_response(status, response_headers)

    return [output]

How to let the webserver (e.g. Apache) call Python directly?

Question

3 answers

solution1
1 2019-10-16 13:12:19

solution2
1 ACCPTED 2019-10-16 13:30:23

solution3
1 2019-12-31 06:44:07

How to let the webserver (e.g. Apache) call Python directly?

Question

3 answers

solution1 1 2019-10-16 13:12:19

solution2 1 ACCPTED 2019-10-16 13:30:23

solution3 1 2019-12-31 06:44:07

solution1
1 2019-10-16 13:12:19

solution2
1 ACCPTED 2019-10-16 13:30:23

solution3
1 2019-12-31 06:44:07