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I wrote a small desktop application (python 2.7, tkinter) that uses an API key that I'm meant to keep secure - i.e. not keep it in the source python files. The method that was recommended was to have the app send a request to a webserver (I'm going to use pythonanywhere), tack on the API key (with the relevant URL), which would return JSON data to the app (via the server of course). I imagine one can do this without using Django/Flask/etc., and it seemed something in the BaseHTTP... modules would help. However, I am completely new to web programming, so there is a lot I don't understand. Some things I would like help with are:

  1. If I put some random code in my main site folder (say /somefile.py), does a request to http://www.example.com/ automatically run somefile.py? This seems unlikely, where can I read up on this? Do my files need special names? Or just references? to them

  2. Do I even need an actual "visitable" page?

In sum, can someone point me to documentation of the necessary steps for the abovementioned problem, or even some available solution that I may have overlooked in my searches? I have seen examples of BaseHTTPserver run locally, but I'm not sure how I'd get one to work online in a pythonanywhere-type environment.

Examples:

http://www.acmesystems.it/python_httpserver

http://effbot.org/librarybook/simplehttpserver.htm

Regarding ports, this might be relevant: Using PythonAnywhere as a game server

And, I just found this: http://pythonpaste.org/do-it-yourself-framework.html

For anyone who wants a full example (if the above was not clear enough): Someone may want to check data for a profile "Profile". My app will send a request like

http://mypage.pythonanywhere.com/https://euw.api.pvp.net/api/lol/euw/v1.3/stats/by-summoner/Profile/ranked?season=SEASON4&

(or just http://mypage.pythonanywhere.com/stats-by-summoner/Profile/ranked?season=SEASON4 with the other stuff added in a modified BaseHTTPrequesthandler class), which will turn it into:

http://mypage.pythonanywhere.com/https://euw.api.pvp.net/api/lol/euw/v1.3/stats/by-summoner/Profile/ranked?season=SEASON4& api_key=my_api_key_here

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Mahendran Nadesan
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1 Answers1

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PythonAnywhere uses WSGI to communicate between your code and the web servers. You can write a WSGI application directly, but frameworks make it easier. Flask and Bottle are pretty easy to learn and don't introduce much overhead. They also have pretty good tutorials to get you started.

Glenn
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  • You were right about Flask - it turned out to be like two lines of routing code. I know I should avoid "thank you" comments, but this was much appreciated. – Mahendran Nadesan Nov 11 '14 at 10:08