Python Webservice, part 2 : a twistd integration

2010-02-19T00:01:46+02:00

Twistd

In my previous post I've explained how to generate a SOAP service from a WSDL file, and how to implement the required methods properly. A solution to run such a service is to use the Twisted Daemon, aka twistd. Though not needed, strictly speaking, it provides a nice set of features aimed at easing complex applications development.

In particular, it allows to write so-called plugins that make it possible to just launch services in the following way:

$ twistd echo

To achieve that, one has to create a file twisted/plugins/echo.py accessible somewhere from the python path (that is, the twisted directory should be a subdir of an element of the path).

Manhole

Twisted offers a nice service, that can be used to provide an inspection/debug interface for your main application. This is called manhole and provides a python interpreter interface. This way you can just telnet/ssh the manhole, and execute appropriate commands to introspect the current state of the application, or put it in the desired state.

A nice example of a really useful function to run from the manhole service is the rebuild one. It tries very hard to provide in-place reloading of code (and corresponding objects). Don't expect any wonder here, it will fail in some corner cases. Still, it proves really useful most of the time, and helps a lot not restarting the server every now and then.

Example

Here is a fully working example of a twistd plugin for the Echo service, with a functional manhole service in addition.

from zope.interface import implements
from twisted.python import usage
from twisted.python.rebuild import rebuild
from twisted.plugin import IPlugin
from twisted.application.service import IServiceMaker, MultiService
from twisted.application.internet import TCPServer
from twisted.web.server import Site
from twisted.web.resource import Resource
from twisted.conch.manhole_tap import makeService as makeConsoleService
 
from EchoImpl import EchoService
 
class EchoOptions(usage.Options):
    optParameters = [["port", "p", 8080, "main port", int],
                     ["service-port", "s", 8081, "service port", int],
                     ["service-users", "u", "/etc/passwd",
                      "The path to a passwd-like authentication file"]]
 
class EchoServiceMaker(object):
    implements(IServiceMaker, IPlugin)
    tapname = "echo"
    description = "Sample Echo service"
    options = EchoOptions
 
    def makeService(self, options):
        # Create Service
        srv = EchoService()
 
        root = Resource()
        # we'll serve Echo at http://<ip>:<port>/echo
        root.putChild('echo', srv)
        siteFactory = Site(root)
 
        echo_service = TCPServer(options['port'], siteFactory)
        console_service = makeConsoleService(
            {"telnetPort": str(options['service-port']),
             "sshPort": None,
             "namespace": {"service": srv,
                           "rebuild": rebuild},
             "passwd": options['service-users']})
 
        svc = MultiService()
        echo_service.setServiceParent(svc)
        console_service.setServiceParent(svc)
 
        return svc
 
serviceMaker = EchoServiceMaker()

The code is hopefully rather straightforward. It should be noted that the manhole service (created by the makeConsoleService() call) needs to know about a set of objects (the “namespace” key). Those objects are the roots for everything accessible from the service. Here, the main service object (the srv object) is available to the manhole under the name service. Here is how it can be used:

$ telnet localhost 8081
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
Username: yann
Password: x
 
>>> print service
<EchoImpl.EchoService object at 0x2fc8c10>
>>>

Hint: the password is really 'x', as I'm using /etc/passwd by default, which contains 'x' for every “password” field, since the real passwords are in /etc/shadow. Convenient for a dev deployment ;)

python, code, twisted

Read or add comments to this article

Yann Hodique blog:2010:02:18

Python Webservice, part 2 : a twistd integration

Twistd

Manhole

Example