Creating your own mod_python request dispatcher

Creating your own mod_python request dispatcher that maps url's to python request handlers.

Conceptually I have something that looks like this:

 +-------------+
 | Clients     |
 | Web Browser |
 +-------------+
   | [http://somecooldomain.com/coorequest]
   |  ^ 
   |  | [Cool Response] 
   V  |
 +--------+     +------------+     +---------------+     +---------+
 | Apache | --> | Mod_Python | --> | dispatcher.py | --> | cool.py | --+
 | (A)    | <-- |            | <-- | (B)           |     | (D)     |   |
 +--------+     +------------+     +---------------+     +---------+   |    
                                        |     ^                        |
                                        |     |                        |
                                        |     +------------------------+
                                        V
                                    +-------------+
                                    | urlmap.conf |
                                    | (C)         |
                                    +-------------+

A) Apache Configuration:
On my server I have mod_python set up to handle any request that comes in without a file extension. That way I can have those cool REST style URI's. I use the apache "FilesMatch" directive in my httpd.conf file to look for any request that does not contain a '.' before the '?' in the query string:

 <FilesMatch "(^[^\.]*$|^[^\?]*[\?]+[^$]+$)">
    SetHandler python-program
    PythonHandler common.dispatch.dispatcher
    PythonDebug On
  </FilesMatch>

B) dispatcher.py
The source for dispatcher.py can be found here.

C) Example urlmap.conf

[somecooldomain.com]
/=cooldomain.handlers.home.handler
/signup=cooldomain.handlers.member.signup
/login=cooldomain.handlers.member.login
/logout=cooldomain.handlers.member.logout
/cool=cooldomain.handlers.cool.handler

D) cool.py
This is the handler that generates your content. In my content handlers I usually do things like query the database, process business logic, select a cheetah template and return the result as html.

In summary I use this approch for a couple of reasons, first it allows me to decouple my url's from my python code that way I don't have python code + html sitting around in the same directory. Secondly I get one piece of code that handles every request. (good for sessions and things like that)