layout: default

title: Webpy + Apache with mod_wsgi on Ubuntu

Webpy + Apache with mod_wsgi on Ubuntu

The following steps were tested on:

Ubuntu 10.04, with Apache 2.2.16 and mod_wsgi 3.2-2, and
Ubuntu 12.04, with Apache 2.2.22 and mod_wsgi 3.3-4.

The same steps should work in other versions of Ubuntu as well.

Note:

You may replace appname with your own project name.
You may replace code.py with your own file name.
/var/www/webpy-app found below refers to the path to the directory contains your code.py.
/var/www/webpy-app/code.py is the full path to your python file.

Steps:

Install mod_wsgi:
```
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-wsgi
```
This will install a .so module in Apache's module directory:
```
/usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_wsgi.so
```
It will also automatically configure Apache to load the mod_wsgi module upon restart. You can confirm the presence of the module in Apache's available modules directory…
```
/etc/apache2/mods-available/wsgi.conf
/etc/apache2/mods-available/wsgi.load
```
…as well as in Apache's enabled modules directory:
```
/etc/apache2/mods-enabled/wsgi.conf
/etc/apache2/mods-enabled/wsgi.load
```
Configure a website on Apache to load the mod_wsgi module. This can either be your default website, or another Virtual Host, which you can create by copying /etc/apache2/sites-available/default to something like /etc/apache2/sites-available/my-website. Add the following lines, under the DocumentRoot directive:
```
WSGIScriptAlias /appname /var/www/webpy-app/code.py/
AddType text/html .py
```
Typically, the above two lines are the only ones necessary to serve a website built with web.py. Most probably, you will additionally need to define a subdirectory in your application, from which static files will be served. In this case, add:
```
Alias /appname/static /var/www/webpy-app/static/
```
After you have finished editing your website definition, you need to enable it (in case it is not already enabled). Do:
```
sudo a2ensite my-website
```

Finally, create a sample file /var/www/webpy-app/code.py:

import web


urls = (
    '/.*', 'hello',
    )


class hello:
    def GET(self):
        return "Hello, world."


application = web.application(urls, globals()).wsgifunc()

Point your browser to 'http://yourservername/appname' to verify whether it works for you.

Note: mod_wsgi + sessions

If you use sessions with mod_wsgi, you should change you code like below:

app = web.application(urls, globals())

curdir = os.path.dirname(__file__)
session = web.session.Session(app, web.session.DiskStore(os.path.join(curdir,'sessions')),)

application = app.wsgifunc()

mod_wsgi performance:

For modwsgi performance, please refer to modwsgi wiki page:

http://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/wiki/PerformanceEstimates