Scripting Programming

Python has a very extensive, well documented and portable module library that provides a large variety of useful modules. The Internet -related collection is particularly impressive, with modules that dealwith everything from parsing and retrieving URLs to retrieving mail from POP servers, including CGI scripting.

Python is suitable for CGI programming on Windows, Mac, and UNIX platforms, allowing the creation of programs that provide services over the Internet. Its capability to create dynamic content makes thetask of generating Web pages on -the -fly a very easy thing to do.

However, before starting to implement your Web pages using CGI scripts, you need to think aboutwhether it is really necessary to build dynamic pages for your site. Keep in mind that if the informationis not modified very often, static pages are the best solution because dynamic pages always slow downthe server. You can decide whether to use it, but if you conclude that it would work for you, this chapter might help you a lot.

Note: It's also good to mention that if you need a way to periodically build auto -generated pages, you canimplement solutions based on the use of cronon UNIX -like systems. For the Windows NT, youhave both the atcommand, and the scheduled tasks extensions found in the newer copies of the Internet Explorer.

If your site becomes busy enough that the cost of starting a Python interpreter for each CGI request becomes significant, you can use Web Server modules (such as mod _python) to embed the Python interpreter in the server, hence, avoiding the startup time. Zope provides yet another way to have Python scripts without the interpreter startup time to worry about. Python code can also be invoked ontop of Active Server Pages (ASP) under IIS.