Programming Python, 3rd Edition

Python Server Pages

Python Server Pages (PSP) is a server-side templating technology that embeds Python code inside HTML. PSP is a Python-based answer to other server-side embedded scripting approaches.

The PSP scripting engine works much like Microsoft’s ASP (described earlier) and Sun’s Java Server Pages (JSP) specification. At the risk of pushing the acronym tolerance envelope, PSP has also been compared to PHP, a server-side scripting language embedded in HTML.

All of these systems, including PSP, embed scripts within HTML and run them on the server to generate portions of the response stream sent back to the browser on the client. Scripts interact with an exposed object model API to get their work done, which gives access to input and output components. PSP is portable to a wide variety of platforms (ASP applications run on Microsoft platforms).

PSP uses Python as its scripting language—by all accounts, this is a vastly more appropriate choice for scripting web sites than the Java language used in JSP. Since Python code is embedded under PSP, scripts have access to the large number of Python tools and add-ons from within PSP.

We can’t cover PSP in detail here; but for a quick look, Example 18-20 illustrates the structure of PSP.

Example 18-20. PP3E\Internet\Other\PSP\hello.psp

$[ # Generate a simple message page with the client's IP address ]$ <HTML><HEAD> <TITLE>Hello PSP World</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> $[include banner.psp]$ <H1>Hello PSP World</H1> <BR> $[ Response.write("Hello ...