Karrigell is a simple web programming solution, written in Python, designed for web sites with moderate traffic, such as personal sites running on a home computer. It also provides an easy way to develop stand-alone applications using a web interface

With Karrigell you have

• a web server, so there's no need to download, install and configure a seperate one
• a relational database, supporting a large subset of the SQL syntax : gadfly

Python scripts are executed in a "clean" namespace including HTTP environment, form fields and custom exceptions. When a form includes an <INPUT name="myfield"> field, the value is available in the script under the name _myfield

Two ways of mixing HTML and Python code are allowed :

• "Python Inside HTML" (same principle as PHP, JSP, ASP) : insert Python code inside an HTML page between the tags <% and %> this way :

  <h1>Squares</h1>
  <%
  for i in range(10):
  	print "%s :<b>%s</b>" %(i,i*i)
  %>
  

• "HTML Inside Python", an easier way to include HTML inside Python scripts than with "print" statements

For authentication and session, two functions (unsurprisingly named Authentication and Session) can be used in scripts. Authentication takes an authentication test function as first argument, which checks if the AUTH_USER and AUTH_PASSWORD are accepted. Session() is used to initialize or retrieve a session object to which attributes can be set or read

The Include(file_or_script) function inserts the output of the script or file inside the output of current script ; this is useful for headers or footers for instance. If it's a script it is executed in current namespace. With IncludeComponent(component) a reusable component (a set of scripts performing a given task : calendar, forum, etc) can be included in any page

The gadfly database can be used through the gadflyStorage module with a syntax similar to Python dictionaries instead of raw SQL requests

Karrigell comes with a detailed documentation (en français), and a set of demo files, including a minimal Wiki server

You can take a tour and see Karrigell in action !

Go to the Sourceforge project page to download Karrigell

See the article in Linux Gazette : Dynamic Web Content with Karrigell

Last update 13 05 06