Installation and Startup
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| 1. Create a directory on your home computer that will be the
equivalent of the public_html directory at school. For
the sake of these instructions, I'll refer to it as webdir,
but you can
call yours anything you want, like "web_project" or even "public_html". |
| 2. Download this .zip file:
pws-24.zip |
| 3a. (for Windows): Unzip the contents of that file into the webdir directory.
Examine that directory to make sure that it now has another subdirectory
called ServerTests. If it doesn't,
then start again. |
3b. (for Mac and Unix):
- copy the downloaded .zip file into the webdir
directory
- open a Terminal window and cd to the
webdir directory
- Execute the following command to unzip the files:
unzip pws-24.zip
- make sure that it created the subdirectory called ServerTests. If not, try again to unzip all the .zip files
into this webdir directory.
- Execute the following command to set execution permissions for
the *.py and *.sh files:
sh permissions.sh
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5. Starting the pws server manually from a terminal or cmd window:
Execute the following command:
python -m stuy_server --cgi --bind
127.0.0.1 |
| or |
| 5a: Windows: double-click on the webserver.bat
file in the webdir directory. |
| or |
| 5b. Mac & Unix: execute the sh webserver.sh
command |
6. Shutting the pws server down: When the webserver
starts up, it will create a new window displaying the work that it's
doing. To shut it down, hit Ctrl-C in the web server's window, or just
close that window if repeatedly pressing Ctrl-C doesn't work.
Be sure to shut the server down when not in use!
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Usage
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1. Once pws is running, you can open a
browser and use it to go to address:
http://localhost:8000
...then you should immediately see a webpage telling you that the
server is running, and allow you to test it. If that doesn't work,
check the steps 1-5 in the installation instructions to the left.
In particular, for the Mac/Unix, make
sure that all Python programs in each of the directories that were
downloaded have their execution permissions set. |
Directories: The
webdir directory is equivalent to your public_html
directory at school.
To show you the equivalencies in addresses, let's suppose your school
account is pbrooks and you have a program called fred.py
in your public_html directory. The URL to address that
program would be:
http://lisa.stuy.edu/~pbrooks/fred.py
or
http://moe.stuy.edu/~pbrooks/fred.py
If you put the fred.py file into your webdir directory
at home and bring up the pws webserver, you can access that program (but
only on your own computer) with the url:
http://localhost:8000/fred.py
If you'd rather put your project files
into a directory of their own (say, "my_project"), create a subdirectory
of webdir called my_project and also, at school,
create a subdirectory of public_html called my_project,
and if you've placed your fred.py file into both of these
subdirectories, then you can access the one at home:
http://localhost:8000/my_project/fred.py
and the one at school:
http://lisa.stuy.edu/~pbrooks/my_project/fred.py
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Using subdirectories of
webdir:
If you'd rather put your project files
into a directory of their own (say, "my_project"), create a
subdirectory
of webdir called "my_project" (or some other
name) and also, at school,
create a subdirectory of public_html called "my_project",
and if you've placed your fred.py file into both of these
subdirectories, then you can access the one at home:
http://localhost:8000/my_project/fred.py
and the one at school:
http://lisa.stuy.edu/~pbrooks/my_project/fred.py
Important Note - Problem and Workaround:
There's a peculiarity of the PythonWebServer. When the webserver
executes one of your Python programs, that Python program will think
that it's connected to the webdir directory,
no matter where the Python file is actually located. For instance, if
your Python program fred.py is located in the
webdir/my_project directory, when fred.py starts
executing, it will think it's connected to the webdir
directory and not the webdir/my_project
directory.
This will be a problem if there are files in the same directory as
fred.py, such as harry.csv and when fred.py runs,
it will try to open that file with the command:
f = open("harry.csv", "r")'
This will fail because even though
fred.py and harry.csv are both in the same directory,
fred.py thinks it's in the webdir
directory because of the way the webserver executes fred.py.
Workaround:
You will see a Python file called StuyTools.py in the
webdir directory. Copy StuyTools.py
into the same directory as your fred.py file and put the
following two lines of code near the top of your fred.py file
so that they execute first:
import StuyTools
StuyTools.PWS_startup()
This will automatically change the directory that fred.py
thinks it's connected to, to the same directory that fred.py is
in.
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