<% header(name + ' 0.9 Release Notes') %>

<p><% name %> version 0.9 released on 11/13/05</p>

<a id="Introduction"></a><h2>Introduction</h2>

<p>It has taken much longer than usual to finish this release,

and it is impossible to track and list every change.

So the following will mention only a few of the many changes,

improvements and bugfixes that have been made.</p>

<a id="NewFeatures"></a><h2>New Features</h2>

<ul>

<li>Added If-Modified-Since support to HTTPServlet. A Servlet can provide a

lastModified() method which returns the modification time of the data.

This has been integrated into the UnknownFileType servlet for handling

static files.</li>

<li>The <span class="filename">AppServer</span> script detects

<code>-u</code> (unbuffered output) and <code>-O</code> (optimize)

parameters and passes them to Python. These parameters must precede

any other parameters. Other parameters will be passed to

<code>ThreadedAppServer</code> normally.</li>

<li>Configuration parameters can now be overridden with the command line.

You can run <span class="filename">AppServer</span> with switches in the

form <code>ClassName.SettingName=value</code>, e.g.

<code>AppServer.AdapterPort=8087</code>.</li>

<li>Configuration files can be written as Python modules instead of as

Python dictionaries. Any global variables in the module are equivalent

to top-level keys in the configuration dictionary.</li>

<li><span class="filename">MakeAppWorkDir.py</span> accepts a new option

<code>-d</code> allowing to point the default context to a location not

inside the working directory, so you can keep your code completely separate

from the working directory. It also accepts <code>-l</code> options to

add multiple application library dirs to the Python path, and options to

set the ownership of the working directory files. To see all options,

run the command without any parameters.</li>

<li>Added <code>EnterDebuggerOnException</code> option to

<span class="filename">Application.config</span>. If True, and if the

AppServer is running from an interactive terminal, an uncaught exception

will cause the AppServer to enter the debugger, allowing the developer to

call functions, investigate variables, etc. See Python debugger (pdb) docs

for more information. You will certainly want to turn this off when

deploying the site. Defaults to False (off).</li>

<li>The AppServer now includes an experimental built-in HTTP web server.

See the <a href="InstallGuide.html">InstallGuide</a> for more details.</li>

<li>Added new <span class="filename">Application.config</span> option

<code>UseCookieSessions</code> that defaults to True. If set to False,

then a session cookie will never be sent in the response. Use this along

with <code>UseAutomaticPathSessions</code> to <em>only</em> use path

sessions and never use cookie sessions.</li>

<li>Added <code>HTTPRequest.setSessionId()</code> method which allows

the use of session IDs that are sent via means other than cookies or

URL parameters (an example would be via an XML-RPC parameter).

See the docstring for more details.</li>

<li>Added <code>DebugAppServer</code>, a single-threaded app server

that makes it possible to debug servlets using a standard Python

debugger. Tested on Windows only, using both PythonWin and JEdit with

the JPyDbg plugin. See

<span class="filename">WebKit/DebugAppServer.py</span> for details.</li>

<li>New debugging feature: by turning on the configuration variable

<code>IncludeEditLink</code> in

<span class="filename">Application.config</span>, an <a href="#">[edit]</a>

link will be put next to each line in tracebacks. That link will point

to a file of type <code>application/x-webkit-edit-file</code>, which you

should configure your browser to run with

<span class="filename">Webware/bin/editfile.py</span>.

If you configure <span class="filename">editfile.py</span> correctly,

then it will automatically open the respective Python module with your

favorite Python editor and put the cursor on the erroneous line.</li>

</ul>

<a id="Improvements"></a><h2>Improvements and Refinements</h2>

<ul>

<li><code>WebKit.Object</code> now inherits Python's object.

This affects all other classes for which super() should now work.</li>

<li>Unknown file types (those for whom <code>mimetypes.guess_type()</code>

cannot return something meaningful) are now served up with a mime type of

<code>application/octet-stream</code> instead of <code>text/html</code>.</li>

<li>Fixed incompatibility between the NT Service code and win32all 163.</li>

<li>AutoReload no longer catches servlet updates (since servlets can be

reloaded without restarting the entire server anyway).</li>

<li><code>XMLRPCServlet</code> now allows <code>xmlrpclib.Fault</code>

exceptions to be passed through unmolested.</li>

<li><code>Page</code> has been refactored into <code>HTTPContent</code>

and <code>Page</code>. <code>HTTPContent</code> can be used as a base

class for servlets which generate non-HTML content. As <code>Page</code>

inherits from <code>HTTPContent</code> (which inherits from

<code>HTTPServlet</code>), <code>Page</code> still contains all the

methods it previously did, and this change should not require any changes

to end-user code.</li>

<li><code>XMLRPCServlets</code> are now allowed to return None as part of

their marshaled response. This improves usability in an all-Python

environment at the possible cost of compatibility problems

with non-Python clients. To revert to the old behavior, where an

attempt to respond with <code>None</code> caused an exception, add

<code>allow_none = False</code> to your <code>XMLRPCServlet</code>-derived

servlets at class level (adding <code>self.allow_none = False</code>

in the <code>__init__</code> should also work).</li>

<li>Fixed problem where SessionDynamicStore would unpickle the same object

twice.</li>

<li>Added <code>transaction()</code> method to <code>RPCServlet</code>

so that there's a way for a method to get the transaction object if

needed.</li>

<li><p>Previously, attempting to start an already-running AppServer

would fail when it couldn't grab the socket to listen on, but it would

have already overwritten the pid file.</p>

<p>Now pid file handling is much improved:</p>

<ul>

<li>The AppServer will refuse to start if it detects that the pid file

exists and the process is still running.</li>

<li>A stale pid file left over from a crash or forcible termination

will be detected and removed.</li>

<li>You can override the path of the pid file using the

<code>PidFile</code> setting in

<span class="filename">AppServer.config</span>. By default,

the pid is written to <span class="filename">appserverpid.txt</span>

in the working directory (or WebKit path if you're not using a working

directory).</li>

<li>You can disable the use of the pid file by setting it to

<code>None</code> in <span class="filename">AppServer.config</span>.

This seems to be a good idea on Windows because Windows often

reuses the same pid right away, so if the appserver crashes, and it

tries to restart and it happens to reuse the same pid, the restart

will fail.</li>

</ul></li>

<li><p>The shutdown handling has been improved. Sending <code>SIGHUP</code>

now results in exiting with exit code 3 which is used for reloading via

the AppServer script.</p></li>

<li>The <span class="filename">Launch.py</span> file has been improved

and supports several new command line options.</li>

<li>The <span class="filename">AppServer</span> and

<span class="filename">Launch.py</span> don't need to be called from

the working directory any more, and the location of the working

directory is assumed to be the location of the script,

and not hard coded in <span class="filename">Launch.py</span>.

You can still change this at the top of the script, however.</li>

<li>The Unix start script <span class="filename">WebKit/webkit</span>

which was based on RedHat Linux has been replaced by a folder

<span class="filename">WebKit/StartScripts</span> with a bunch of

start sripts for various flavors of Unix, including a "generic" version.

The installer will try to copy the most appropriate start script

to <span class="filename">WebKit/webkit</span>. If instead of copying,

you create a link to the start script in your working directory, it will

find out the location of the working directory automatically.</li>

<li>The Examples and Admin sections have been improved and adapted

to the API changes.</li>

</ul>

<a id="Changes"></a><h2>Changes</h2>

<ul>

<li>The <code>Port</code> setting in

<span class="filename">AppServer.config</span> has been deprecated in

favor of the new <code>AdapterPort</code> setting. The <code>Port</code>

setting in your config file will still be honored, but you are encouraged

to update your <span class="filename">AppServer.config</span> as the

<code>Port</code> setting will be removed in the future.</li>

<li>The scripts <span class="filename">ThreadedAppServerService.py</span>

in the WebKit directory and <span class="filename">NTService</span> created

by <span class="filename">MakeAppWorkDir.py</span> were both renamed to

<span class="filename">AppServerService.py</span>.</li>

<li>Removed the <span class="filename">Application.config</span> setting

<code>OldStyleActions</code> and re-implemented support of the

<code>methodNameForAction()</code> transformation. Note that "old style"

actions took an additional <code>transaction</code> parameter, but

otherwise the action handling is now downward compatible.</li>

<li>In <code>WebKit.Page</code> resp. <code>WebKit.HTTPContent</code>,

removed both the internal method <code>_actionSet()</code> and the internal

dictionary <code>_actionDict</code> which cached the list of actions

for the servlet. This was redundant code, and its removal allows a servlet

to use dynamic actions (i.e. to make the action list dependent on the

permissions of the logged-in user).</li>

<li><p>The semantics for the awake-respond-sleep cycle have changed so

that Servlet.sleep() is <em>always</em> called, even when an unhandled

exception occurs in Servlet.awake() or Servlet.respond().

Servlet.sleep() is called even when Page.endResponse() or

Page.sendRedirectAndEnd() have been called to end servlet

processing prematurely. This behavior differs from previous

versions, in which sleep() was called only if awake() succeeded.</p>

<p>The intent of this change is to guarantee servlets the chance to free

resources, without having to be prepared to catch all possible exceptions

within awake() to do so.</p>

<p>The programmer should ensure that sleep does not attempt to free

resources which were never allocated, as sleep() may be called even when

awake() did not succeed.</p>

<pre class="py">

def awake(...):

initialize resource A

initialize resource B

def sleep(...):

if resource B was initialized:

finalize resource B

if resource A was initialized:

finalize resource A

</pre></li>

<li>The PythonServletFactory had only served <code>.py</code> source files

so far. Now it will serve <code>.pyc</code> and <code>.pyo</code> files as well.

For the default configuration, this makes no difference, since <code>.pyc</code>

and <code>.pyo</code> are in both settings <code>ExtensionsToIgnore</code> and

<code>FilesToHide</code>, so they will not be served anyway. By removing

<code>.pyc</code> and <code>.pyo</code> away from these settings, you can now

install servlets without their source code. This will be a little bit

more efficient in the production environment, but most of all it will

prevent customers and administrators from messing around with the source

code and give a certain level of protection as closed source (this feature

had been requested several times). Before, <code>.pyc</code> and <code>.pyo</code>

had not been executed, but delivered as unknown file types which does not

make much sense and can be a security problem, for instance when database

passwords and other information is stored in the servlets. By using

<code>ExtensionCascadeOrder</code>, you can also determine a priority, such as

<code>.py</code> first (if available), then <code>.pyo</code>, then <code>.pyc</code>.

However, the standard configuration still ignores/hides <code>.pyc</code> and

<code>.pyo</code> files completely and looks only at the <code>.py</code> file,

so you still have to change the settings explicitly in

<span class="filename">AppServer.config</span> if you want to use this.

Also, note that <code>.pyc</code> and <code>.pyo</code> files can be decompiled

so this will be no real insurmountable protection.</li>

</ul>

<a id="Bugfixes"></a><h2>Bugfixes</h2>

<ul>

<li>Fixed handling of expired sessions. Previously, if you tried to access

an expired session before the session sweeper thread had cleaned it out,

you'd get that expired session for one request, but on the second request

you'd get a new session. Now it correctly returns a new empty session with

a new session ID on the first request after expiration.</li>

<li>Fixed a bug in <code>mod_webkit</code> for Apache&nbsp;2.X that might

have been causing <code>mod_webkit</code> to retry connections to the app

server unnecessarily in some cases. (This does not apply to the

Apache&nbsp;1.3 version of <code>mod_webkit</code>.)</li>

</ul>

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