Python on IIS: how?

Question

I have background in PHP, dotNet and fascinated by Python. I want to gradually transfer functionality from PHP to Python, using bits and pieces side by side. During this transition, which may take 2 years from the moment the application is huge, I am tied to IIS. I have 15 years of web programming experience, including some C working in the IIS ISAPI module, which is the job that I no longer want to dive into.

Python seems to just not work on IIS. I struggled with FastCGI (not supported, only for PHP) and PyIsapie (poorly documented, could not start and run it). As a result, I got it and worked with the HeliconZoo BUT dll:

My next problem: how to debug / develop the site? In PHP, you install a debugger and whenever you have problems on your website, you just debug it, set a breakpoint, look at the code, check the clock, etc. It seems to me that this is the most rudimentary kind of developer work or troubleshooting. I bought WingIDE, which is a great tool and debugger, but for some reason it cannot connect to the Python instance in the IIS process, so there is no debugging. I noticed that Helicon runs Python with -O , so I even recompiled Python to ignore this flag altogether, but my debugger (WingIDE) just won't appear.

I can set up the PHP hello world website on IIS in half an hour, including loading time. I think I spent about 120 hours or more to get this working in Python to no avail. I bought Python Programming and Learning Python, which is about 3,000 pages. And I googled until I fell.

I think Python is a great language, but I'm on the verge of interrupting my attempts. Is there anyone who can give me step-by-step instructions on how to configure this on IIS7?

Answer 1

I just did it in 5 minutes.

• Make sure you have IIS. run: %windir%\system32\OptionalFeatures.exe . Or through pointy-clicky: Get started ... Control Panel ... Programs and Features ... (and then on the left) Turn Windows features on or off. Make sure CGI is installed under the IIS node.

  

• Download Python for Windows from python.org. I grabbed Python2.7. Make sure you get the x64 version if you have the x64 version for Windows installed.

• Unzip and install this MSI python. Choose the default value that puts python in c:\Python27

• Create a directory in which your "development" of python scripts will be stored. For example, c:\dev\python

• Set permissions for files in the c:\dev\python so that IIS can read and execute. Do this by running these two icacls.exe commands from the command line:

   cd \dev\python icacls . /grant "NT AUTHORITY\IUSR:(OI)(CI)(RX)" icacls . /grant "Builtin\IIS_IUSRS:(OI)(CI)(RX)" 

• Open IIS Manager. Run %windir%\system32\inetsrv\iis.msc or do it through the control panel: Start ... Control Panel ... Administrative %windir%\system32\inetsrv\iis.msc ... Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager. Create a new application. Specify the virtual path as /py and the physical path as c:\dev\python .

  

  

• In this IIS application, add a script map for *.py and map it to c:\python27\python.exe %s %s

  

  

  

• create the file "HelloWorld.py" in c:\dev\python with this as content:

   print('Content-Type: text/plain') print('') print('Hello, world!') 

• invoke http://localhost/py/helloworld.py

Answer 2

When you are developing a web application with Python, you are not using IIS / Apache / etc. These web servers are for deployment only. Frames like Pyramid / Pylons / Django have built-in web servers. The pyramid in particular has excellent documentation that should help you get started: http://docs.pylonsproject.org/docs/pyramid.html

When you get to the deployment point, Linux + Apache will be a much smarter choice than Windows + IIS. If you absolutely must use Windows + IIS, do not use isapi-wsgi, as it has phantom performance problems: http://groups.google.com/group/isapi_wsgi-dev/browse_thread/thread/9fade6efca6c5b89

PyISAPIe works well enough for me, but I had to compile my own PyISAPIe.dll for Python 2.7.

Answer 3

just make sure the path to the directory containing the cgi scripts does not have spaces or &.

I tried many things many times and nothing worked, then I changed the path and it worked