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 os
 import sys
 import web

 app_path = os.path.dirname(__file__)
 if app_path:
     os.chdir(app_path)

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

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

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

Point your browser to ‘http://your_server_name/appname’ to verify whether it works for you.

Note: mod_wsgi + sessions

If you use sessions with mod_wsgi, you should change your 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 mod_wsgi performance, please refer to mod_wsgi wiki page:

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