CherryPy Essentials: Rapid Python Web Application Development

This book covers the CherryPy library for Python web development from its history and installation through its main features and core concepts to its integration with Python and other products to construct, test, and deploy a sample photoblog application. The author Sylvain Hellegouarch is dedicated to the development of free software projects and has been coordinating and administrating the community efforts around the CherryPy project since 2004. The approach based on an example application introduces many other common Python libraries, providing transferable skills also relevant for non-web Python projects. CherryPy is a Python library for web development that allows developers to build web applications in the same way as any other object-oriented Python program. Enriched by several years of active development, it has become one of the most established toolkits for building solid and high-performance web applications in Python. CherryPy abstracts the complex low-level HTTP protocol into an easy-to-use interface that respects Python idioms. The library aims at being simple to learn for a beginner while offering the most advanced features to fluent Python developers.For these reasons CherryPy was chosen to be at the heart of the popular and feature-rich TurboGears web framework. CherryPy-powered web applications are stand-alone Python applications with their own embedded multi-threaded web server, but can also run behind Apache or IIS for scalability. Among the many topics covered are: CherryPy installation using tarball, egg, and subversion; The CherryPy library in depth: its design and how to use it; Using CherryPy with common Python and non-Python products; Object Relational Mapping with SQLObject, SQLAlchemy, and Dejavu; Web Services via REST and the Atom Publishing Protocol; AJAX and client-side scripting via MochiKit; Unit, functional, and load testing; and, CherryPy, Apache, and lighttpd deployment solutions. The book starts with two chapters dedicated to CherryPy itself, its history and installation. Then it moves through a gentle introduction to the main features and concepts of CherryPy to a thorough review of its core capabilities. After laying this foundation the book dives into a real-world example, detailing important steps in the creation of a photoblog application.These chapters cover database manipulation via Object Relational Mapping (ORM), using web services to enhance the application, and client-side scripting through AJAX. Finally, the book covers the need for unit, functional, and performance testing before closing with deployment solutions for a CherryPy-based application. This book is principally geared towards web developers who wish to learn how the Python programming language can fit their requirements. Although the CherryPy toolkit is at the core of the book, many other common libraries are introduced and therefore the book is relevant to a larger audience of non-web Python developers.