Hello Jason,

Thank you very much for your kind and swift offer. I'll do it gladly ... 
but I need to set-up Skype on my station :-( and register a Skype account.
I'm an old-timer and my only contact is Gmail. I have no G+, no Facebook, 
no Twitter, ...

What is your preferred day and time for a Skype call.
I live in the Paris-Luxembourg-Brussels time zone. For instance it is now 
Saturday Aug. 2, 20:05.

When you say privately, I suppose a one-to-one call on Skype and I suppose 
I can easily find your name there.

Have a nice Sunday and thanks again,

René

On Saturday, August 2, 2014 6:35:33 PM UTC+2, Jason Garber wrote:
>
> Hi Rene,
>
> I offer to do a skype call with you to review all of this as I have been 
> there done that and have a crisp understanding of all the working parts. 
>
> Contact me privately if you want to do this.
>
> Thanks,
> Jason
> On Aug 2, 2014 12:32 PM, <[email protected] <javascript:>> wrote:
>
>> Dear Graham & al.,
>>
>> Congratulations for your software and documentation. I have however some 
>> difficulties as outlined in the subject caption.
>>
>> I'm building a case study for an application on an intranet within a 
>> company where the users would interact with their browser communicating 
>> with the Apache2/mod_wsgi server (daemon mode + multi-threads).
>>
>> However I'm afraid I'm misunderstanding some important underlying 
>> concepts of the architecture. Please allow me to give an example and to 
>> give you my thoughts - which could go wrong somewhere.
>>
>> *Part 1:*
>>
>> I wrote a simple HTML page with a one field input form.
>>
>> In my `environment` dictionary, I have, among other key/value pairs, the 
>> following:
>>
>>         REQUEST_METHOD: POST
>>         REQUEST_URI: /core/my-wsgi-app
>>         mod_wsgi.callable_object: application
>>
>> The first two values come obviously from my html <form 
>> action="core/my-wsgi-app" method="post">...</form>, and the third value is 
>> the default value in the configuration directive (WSGICallableObject 
>> application).
>>
>> In my my-wsgi-app script, I have of course:
>>
>>         def application (environment, start_response):
>>                [my code here]
>>                return [response_body]
>>
>> So all is fine and works well but there is something I don't get (I mean 
>> I haven't fully assimilated), certainly in a multi-users, multi-threads, 
>> ... environment. The main question is about the WSGICallableObject. 
>>
>> The documentation (
>> https://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/wiki/ConfigurationDirectives#WSGICallableObject)
>>  
>> says "*The WSGICallableObject directive can be used to override the name 
>> of the Python callable object in the script file which is used as the entry 
>> point into the WSGI application.*" [underlining is mine]. For me the 
>> WSGI application is the whole application: when finished the target 
>> application I'm case studying could serve one hundred users, delivering 
>> thousands of pages built dynamically over hundreds of SQL tables, ... Am I 
>> right in thinking than one entry point would be fit for such purpose. The 
>> size of the application is such that I already opted for a daemon 
>> configuration with multi-threads (I do not wish to have users waiting in a 
>> single queue because one of them is building a page that takes seconds to 
>> assemble).
>>
>> Having one single callable object seems to give me these only 4 options:
>>
>> 1) Have only one single REQUEST_URI, say /core/my-wsgi-app,  where only 
>> one callable object (function, class, ...) is used under the one and same 
>> name (application). In such case that callable object is the one and only 
>> full single entry point to the overall application (thousands of pages 
>> built dynamically) and I must care for checking, authorisation, parsing, 
>> dispatching, ... and finally assembling the response and returning it. I'm 
>> wondering if this single script/callable-object could become a bottleneck. 
>> It is the concern I've just expressed. Of course, Python can handle 
>> hundreds of function calls and instance calls. This option makes me doubt I 
>> fully understand the mechanism. I call this option N to 1.
>>
>> 2) Have various REQUEST_URI (even one per page if need be) and in each 
>> called script, there would be one callable object with the same name 
>> ("application" as defined in the WSGICallableObject directive). In that 
>> case, I could create a callable instance of a base class but that instance 
>> should bear the application name and use the two positional arguments 
>> passed by mod_wsgi. This option, if used exclusively, seems to me like a 
>> normal "CGI static serving", i.e. one request activates one script (the 
>> whole logic and dynamism is in the script). This point too makes me doubt I 
>> understand the real nature of WSGI. I call this option N to N.
>>
>> 3) One could combine option 1 and 2 to create more dynamism without 
>> risking the potential (?) bottleneck of option 1 when used alone. I call 
>> this option N to M (<<N)
>>
>> 4) There seems to be a possibility to define the WSGICallableObject per 
>> directory. My understanding is that the REQUEST_URI belonging to a 
>> directory (and its sub-directories) would use that callable object name. 
>> This means for instance that any URI of the form /core/section-1/abc would 
>> have a callable object Application_1, while any URI under 
>> /core/section-N/... would have a callable object Application_N. I haven't 
>> tried this directive yet so I may misunderstand its role.
>>
>> This is my overall understanding but I'm afraid I'm missing something 
>> fundamental [please note that I'm not an English speaker and I might have 
>> missed subtleties in the documentation which is quite dense]. I tried to 
>> picture this in a diagram but I'm not sure I got it right:
>>
>>  M (html requests) -> 1 (http server) -> N x P (mod_wsgi daemons x 
>> threads) -> X? (Python instance(s) / one per daemon ? I don't know) -> M 
>> (calls to one object in one URI or to many objects - named the same - in 
>> many URI ? ) and back to the user via the same route.
>>
>> I assume that one user html request generates ultimately one call to a 
>> callable object (give or take) : that's why I use M in toth cases. Is this 
>> assumption correct ? My dilemma is that I can't understand the spread of 
>> the load between the 2 extremes: one URI containing the `application` 
>> callable object (that is eventually called hundreds of times per second) or 
>> many hundreds URI each containing a callable object named `application` 
>> that all get called much less frequently.
>>
>> *Part 2:*
>>
>> As a consequence of this hazy understanding of mine, I wonder why can't 
>> the name of the callable object be chosen on demand ?
>>
>> If I refer to PEP3333 (http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3333/) I 
>> understand that:
>>  "
>> *A server or gateway must invoke the application object using positional 
>> (not keyword) arguments. (E.g. by calling result = application(environ, 
>> start_response)*"
>>
>> So my guess is that, still referring to the example at the top, one 
>> thread in mod_wsgi loads (I wouldn't call this an import) the 
>> /core/my-wsgi-app script and calls application(environment, start_response) 
>> that has been defined in it. Is this the correct mechanism ?
>>
>> Could we imagine that mod_wsgi would sometime call my_App (arg1, arg2), 
>> some other time call your_App (req, resp) or call Small_app (in, out) where 
>> my_App, your_App, Small_app would be defined because mod_wsgi would be able 
>> to set dynamically the WSGICallableObject . Imagine that in the 
>> WSGIImportScript script file, we would have:
>>
>>         def my_App (param1, param2):
>>              [code here]
>>              return [my_Response]
>>
>>         def your_App (param1, param2):
>>              [code here]
>>              return [your_Response]
>>
>>         def Small_app (param1, param2):
>>              [code here]
>>              return [Small_response]
>>
>> all the functions would be ready to be called.
>>
>> I suppose that in any case we are limited:
>>
>> A)   by the HTTP protocol (URI given via the action attribute, the POST, 
>> GET, OPTIONS, ... from the method attribute and the key/value pairs from 
>> the various input fields); and
>>
>> B)   by directives we could give to configure mod_wsgi. I guess it is not 
>> the role neither the intend to build some "user logic" within mod_wsgi.
>>
>> *Conclusions:*
>>
>> 1) Am I correct in my understanding of mod_wsgi as expressed here above 
>> (Part 1) ? Beware that I could be out of my depth, i.e. talking about 
>> something I don't properly understand. In that case please correct me or 
>> complement my view.
>>
>> 2) Do we need to dynamically choose the callable object name for the sake 
>> of dynamism and multiplicity ?
>>
>> ->  If not, the current set-up is enough. In which case is the preceding 
>> point ( 1) ) complete and correct ?
>>
>> ->  If yes, how to do it simply and elegantly ?
>>
>>         => Idea 1: create an extra key/value pair (e.g. 
>> wsgi_callable_object=my_application). It seems cumbersome to me.
>>
>>         => Idea 2: if the URI were to have the form 
>> /core/my-wsgi-app/_my_application then mod_wsgi could provide:
>>                         REQUEST_URI: /core/my-wsgi-app
>>                         mod_wsgi.callable_object: my_application
>>              in the 'environment` dictionary because it would strip the 
>> trailing part beginning with an underscore provided it is told to do so by 
>> a directive;
>>              otherwise it would behave as now and deliver:
>>                         REQUEST_URI: /core/my-wsgi-app/_my_application
>>                         mod_wsgi.callable_object: application
>>
>> *Thanks:*
>>
>> I do realize this is an unusual post (maybe it should find its way in the 
>> group working on the documentation) but I would be very happy if some of 
>> you could answer / feedback to me. In any case I do thank you all in 
>> advance.
>>
>> René
>>
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