Data

Tools

Indexes

Applications

Experiments

Awesome

An open API service indexing awesome lists of open source software.

https://github.com/douban/douban-quixote

Douban's Quixote
https://github.com/douban/douban-quixote

Last synced: 3 months ago
JSON representation

Douban's Quixote

Awesome Lists containing this project

README 

          
Quixote

=======



Quixote is yet another framework for developing Web applications in

Python.  The design goals were:



  1) To allow easy development of Web applications where the

     emphasis is more on complicated programming logic than

     complicated templating.



  2) To make the templating language as similar to Python as possible,

     in both syntax and semantics.  The aim is to make as many of the

     skills and structural techniques used in writing regular Python

     code applicable to Web applications built using Quixote.



  3) No magic.  When it's not obvious what to do in

     a certain case, Quixote refuses to guess.



If you view a web site as a program, and web pages as subroutines,

Quixote just might be the tool for you.  If you view a web site as a

graphic design showcase, and each web page as an individual work of art,

Quixote is probably not what you're looking for.



An additional requirement was that the entire system had to be

implementable in a week or two.  The initial version of Quixote was

indeed cranked out in about that time -- thank you, Python!



We've tried to reuse as much existing code as possible:



  * The HTTPRequest and HTTPResponse classes are distantly

    derived from their namesakes in Zope, but we've removed

    huge amounts of Zope-specific code.



  * The quixote.fcgi module is derived from Robin Dunn's FastCGI module,

    available at

      http://alldunn.com/python/#fcgi



Quixote requires Python 2.1 or greater to run.  We only test Quixote

with Python 2.3, but it should still work with 2.1 and 2.2.



For installation instructions, see the doc/INSTALL.txt file (or

http://www.mems-exchange.org/software/quixote/doc/INSTALL.html).



If you're switching to a newer version of Quixote from an older

version, please refer to doc/upgrading.txt for explanations of any

backward-incompatible changes.  



Overview

========



Quixote works by using a Python package to store all the code and HTML

for a Web-based application.  There's a simple framework for

publishing code and objects on the Web, and the publishing loop can be

customized by subclassing the Publisher class.  You can think of it as

a toolkit to build your own smaller, simpler version of Zope,

specialized for your application.



An application using Quixote is a Python package containing .py and

.ptl files.  



webapp/				# Root of package

	__init__.py			

	module1.py

	module2.py

	pages1.ptl

	pages2.ptl



PTL, the Python Template Language, is used to mix HTML with Python code.

More importantly, Python can be used to drive the generation of HTML.

An import hook is defined so that PTL files can be imported just like

Python modules.  The basic syntax of PTL is Python's, with a few small

changes:



def plain [text] barebones_header(title=None,

                                  description=None):

    """

    

    %s

    """ % html_quote(str(title))

    if description:

        '' % html_quote(description) 



    ''



See doc/PTL.txt for a detailed explanation of PTL.



Quick start

===========



For instant gratification, see doc/demo.txt.  This explains how to get

the Quixote demo up and running, so you can play with Quixote without

actually having to write any code.



Documentation

=============



All the documentation is in the doc/ subdirectory, in both text and

HTML.  Or you can browse it online from

  http://www.mems-exchange.org/software/quixote/doc/



Recommended reading:



  demo.txt            getting the Quixote demo up and running, and

                      how the demo works

  programming.txt     the components of a Quixote application: how

                      to write your own Quixote apps

  PTL.txt             the Python Template Language, used by Quixote

                      apps to generate web pages

  web-server.txt      how to configure your web server for Quixote



Optional reading (more advanced or arcane stuff):



  session-mgmt.txt    session management: how to track information

                      across requests

  static-files.txt    making static files and CGI scripts available

  upload.txt          how to handle HTTP uploads with Quixote

  upgrading.txt       info on backward-incompatible changes that may

                      affect applications written with earlier versions

  widgets.txt         reference documentation for the Quixote Widget

                      classes (which underly the form library)

  web-services.txt    how to write web services using Quixote and

                      XML-RPC



Authors, copyright, and license

===============================



Copyright (c) 2000-2003 CNRI.



Quixote was primarily written by Andrew Kuchling, Neil Schemenauer, and

Greg Ward.



Overall, Quixote is covered by the CNRI Open Source License Agreement;

see LICENSE for details.



Portions of Quixote are derived from Zope, and are also covered by the

ZPL (Zope Public License); see ZPL.txt.



Full acknowledgments are in the ACKS file.



Availability, home page, and mailing lists

==========================================



The Quixote home page is:

    http://www.mems-exchange.org/software/quixote/



You'll find the latest stable release there.  The current development

code is also available via CVS; for instructions, see

    http://www.mems-exchange.org/software/quixote/cvs.html



Discussion of Quixote occurs on the quixote-users mailing list:

    http://mail.mems-exchange.org/mailman/listinfo/quixote-users/



To follow development at the most detailed level by seeing every CVS

checkin, join the quixote-checkins mailing list:

    http://mail.mems-exchange.org/mailman/listinfo/quixote-checkins/



-- 

A.M. Kuchling    

Neil Schemenauer 

Greg Ward