CherryPy behind blue eyes of apache

Well, a big change is coming. We are going to switch our web app from PHP+jQuery to CherryPy+jQuery+some kind of ORM+some db back-end (and with a little intrusion of PHP, but #!).

It won't be easy... First of all I've put all parts of a new system together:

• CherryPy 3.1.2 for "pythonization"
  
• SQLObject 0.10.2 as out ORM
  
• Cheetah 2.2.2 for templates
  
• sqlite or mysql for db back-end (still not decided)
  

I want to run CherryPy application in a standalone server, probably as a deamon, on our www host and communicate with it using apache + mod_proxy.

1. deamonization
   
   Sound easy but it took me two days to understand cherryd usage. After that I've wrote a shell script to run my CherryPy application as a deamon under Fedora (I hope it would work also under RHEL..):
   
   

   
   #!/bin/sh
   #
   # Comments to support chkconfig on RedHat Linux
   # chkconfig: 35 96 96
   # description: Cherrypy start/stop script
   #
   #
   ### BEGIN INIT INFO
   # Provides: cherrypy 
   # Required-Start: $local_fs $syslog
   # Required-Stop: $local_fs $syslog
   # Default-Start: 2345
   # Default-Stop: 90
   # Short-Description: run CherryPy web server
   # Description: CherryPy is a python framerwork for CMT 
   #
   ### END INIT INFO
   
   . /etc/init.d/functions
   
   serverdir=/home/cibak/CheRTTyPy
   prog=get
   server=${serverdir}/get.py
   config=${serverdir}/conf/get.conf
   pidfile=${PIDFILE-/var/run/CheRTTyPy.pid}
   lockfile=${LOCKFILE-/var/lock/subsys/CheRTTy}
   
   PYTHONPATH=${serverdir}
   
   RETVAL=0
   
   start() {
       echo -n "Starting $prog:"
       cherryd -d -p ${pidfile} -c ${config} -i get
       RETVAL=$?
       [ $RETVAL = 0 ] && touch ${lockfile}  
       echo_success
       echo
       return $RETVAL
   }
   
   stop() {
       echo -n "Stopping $prog:"
       if test -f ${pidfile}; then
           killproc -p ${pidfile} -d 10 $prog
           rm -f "$pidfile"
           RETVAL=$?
       else
           RETVAL=1
       fi
       RETVAL=$?
       echo_success
       echo
       [ $RETVAL = 0 ] && rm -f ${lockfile} ${pidfile}
   }
   
   
   case "$1" in
        start)
           start
           ;;
        stop)
           stop
           ;;
        status)
           status -p ${pidfile} $server
            RETVAL=$?
           ;;
        restart)
    stop
    start
    ;;
        *)
           echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|status}"
           exit 1
   esac
   exit $RETVAL
   

   
   
   
2. apache and mod_proxy
   
   I want to run CherryPy app behind apache and use mod_proxy to redirect ajax calls to it. So the vhost configuration:
   
   

   
   <VirtualHost cibak.fedora12.mbp:443>
       ServerAdmin krzysztof.ciba@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
       ServerName cibak.fedora12.mbp
       ProxyPreserveHost On
       
       DocumentRoot /home/cibak/CheRTTyPy
       ErrorLog logs/cibak.fedora12.mbp_error.log
       TransferLog logs/cibak.fedora12.mbp_access.log 
   
       SSLEngine On
       SSLProtocol all -SSLv2
       SSLProxyEngine On
   
       SSLCipherSuite ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT:!SSLv2:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW
   
       SSLCertificateFile /etc/pki/tls/certs/localhost.crt
       SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/pki/tls/private/localhost.key
      
       <Proxy *>
           Order allow,deny
           Allow from all
       </Proxy>
       ProxyPass /query/ https://127.0.0.1:8083/
       ProxyPassReverse /query/ https://127.0.0.1:8083/
   </VirtualHost>
   

   
   
   
3. ORM
   SQLObject, looks pretty nice, especially sqlbuilder classes for constructing SQL query. For prototype I choose simple sqlite3 DB-API, as it is already built in python, but for production version I'll switch to ORACLE or mysql.
   
   BTW switch of db back-end is very easy with SQLObject ORM — only place for that is changing connection string passed to sqlconnector. :)
   

After 6-7 weeks of rather extensive work the prototype for Atlas experiment RTT web page is ready and released to the public. Now I'm waiting for the feedback.



!!!WORK IN PROGRESS!!!