The Web Server Gateway Interface (WSGI) is a standard interface between web server software and web applications written in Python. By using this standard, it will be easy to migrate your site to a different hosting platform should that become necessary.
This guide is not about how to use the Django framework. Rather, it describes the Princeton CS environment and how one might set up a Django site in "project space" at https://mywebsite.cs.princeton.edu that has reasonable portability to other hosting services when/if the need should arise.
Last major update: 2022-08-15
NOTE (2019-06-20): If your project relies on Python packages that CS Staff has previously installed at the system level, please migrate your project to a virtual environment immediately. We no longer install packages at the system level and, at our next major update of the Linux distribution on cycles, ionic, courselab, and armlab, we will not carry forward such packages.
The CS project web server has Phusion Passenger (Version 6.0.19) which allows for support of Ruby, Node.js, and Python/WSGI web applications through the Apache webserver. The instructions below will walk you through creating simple applications under each of these frameworks.
FastCGI is an extension of the CGI way of doing things. FastCGI will exec your program one time instead of once-per-request. Your program must then handle the input. Using available libraries, it is simple to use FastCGI. Here are a few examples in various interpreted languages.