PySite Project Structure

This page discusses how PySite interprets the project structure.

Basic flow of PySite projects

PySite is a plugable web-site framework. Pages are driven by Jinja2 templates supported by subhandlers that are normal python scripts with a function or class-based entry-point.

Pages are path controlled in a very simple manner. If a user accesses “/main” relative the project’s root path, PySite will by default render the templates/main.jinja template. But before rendering, it will check if there is a corresponding subhandler: subhandlers/main.py. If such a subhandler exists and there is an initialization entry-point, this will be called first. The initializer recieves all the necessary input to interpret the request, and the handles to pass data on to the jinja2 template system.

Special file types

PySite defines a standard list of file types (identified by file-extension) which are handled as raw downloads. The mime-type of the download can differ depending on the specific file type. Examples:

• js
  • Content-Type: application/javascript
  • Content-Encoding: gzip
• html
  • Content-Type: text/html
  • Content-Encoding: gzip
• png
  • Content-Type: image/png

Project tree

• site
  • templates
    • main.jinja
    • login.jinja
    • ...
  • subhandlers
    • main.py
    • login.py
    • ...
  • static
    • js
      • script-1.js
      • script-2.js
      • ...
    • css
      • bluestyle.css
      • graystyle.css
      • ...
    • images
      • topborder.png
      • leftborder.png
      • ...
    • ...
  • conf.py

Subhandlers

Subhandlers deliver the logical layer of PySite. Everytime PySite is accessed and the target is not a Special file types the framework will attempt to load a subhandler that corresponds to request path. If the subhandler exists and an entry-point is identified, it will be called. For example let us say that the end-user accessed “/main” and the main.py subhandler looks like this:

import time

def init(template_info,response_headers,environ,translate,req_data):
        template_info['cur_ctime'] = time.time()

With the initializer code above the current unix timestamp will be accessible via {{ cur_ctime }} in main.jinja.

Templates

The template system uses Jinja2 for rendering - please refer to the Jinja2 documentation