Setting up Web2Py in a Subdirectory using FastCGI

This documents the steps I did in order to get Web2Py running on dreamhost.com hosting service in a subdirectory using FastCGI.

Python 2.5 virtualenv

Install Python 2.py and virtualenv on Dreamhost

In this example Python 2.5 is installed to /home/yourdomain/local/bin.

Use setuptools/easy_install to add MySQL and flub;

[dreamhost] $ wget http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py
[dreamhost] $ /home/yourdomain/local/bin/python ez_setup.py

Install flup (and MySQL if you need it):

[dreamhost] $ ./local/bin/easy_install MySQL-python
[dreamhost] $ ./local/bin/easy_install flup

web sub-directory

The web directory of the hosting service is /home/yourdomain/yourdomain.com. The URL for this is http://www.yourdomain.com.

The web2py directory will be in a subdirectory, /home/yourdomain/yourdomain.com/web2py, http://www.yourdomain.com/web2py.

Get and Unzip web2py

Copy or check out web2py;

[dreamhost] $ wget http://mdp.cti.depaul.edu/examples/static/web2py_src.zip
[dreamhost] $ unzip web2py_src.zip -d /home/yourdomain/yourdomain.com

This will make a sub-directory, /home/yourdomain/yourdomain.com/web2py.

Create web2py defaults

Run web2py.py to have it create example apps and password file:

[dreamhost] $ /home/yourdomain/local/bin/python web2py.py
The profile/pstats modules cannot be found
Please install the python-profiler package
web2py Enterprise Web Framework
Created by Massimo Di Pierro, Copyright 2007-2010
Version 1.76.1 (2010-03-01 19:56:55)
Database drivers available: SQLite3, MySQL
Starting cron...
choose a password:

Enter in a password and hit enter;

please visit:
        http://127.0.0.1:8000
use "kill -SIGTERM 21310" to shutdown the web2py server

Stop the script with Ctrl-C.

Redirect and .htaccess

Create a file web2py.fcgi at the root of the web2py directory with the following content:

#!/home/yourdomain/local/bin/python
import sys
from flup.server.fcgi_fork import WSGIServer
import gluon.main
application=gluon.main.wsgibase
## or
# application=gluon.main.wsgibase_with_logging
WSGIServer(application).run()

Note that the 1st line has the full path to the Python 2.5 virtualenv location.

Make this file executable:

[dreamhost] $ chmod +x web2py.fcgi

Create .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^web2py\.fcgi/ - [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ web2py.fcgi/$1 [L]

Fix urls

Rename routes.example.py to routes.py and edit:

routes_in=(('/web2py/(?P<a>.*)','/\g<a>'),)
...
routes_out=(('/(?P<a>.*)','/web2py/\g<a>'),)

Now web2py should be accessable through the URL http://www.yourdomain.com/web2py.

Addendum - web2py admin page

The web2py admin page does not work without changing code in appadmin.py file.

Addendum - Command Line testing

Running from the command line.

The web2py.fcgi script will throw an exception because the REMOTE_ADDR is not available. Set this on the command line and run the dispatch script to verify web2py runs;

export REMOTE_ADDR=192.168.0.1
./web2py.fcgi