Twisted has undergone several major revisions since Moshe Zadka and I wrote the "The Twisted Network Framework". Most of these changes have not deviated from the central vision of the framework, but almost all of the code listings have been re-visited and enhanced in some way.
So, while the paper was correct at the time that it was originally written, a few things have changed which have invalidated portions of it.
Most significant is the fact that almost all methods which pass
callbacks of some kind have been changed to take no callback or
error-callback arguments, and instead return an instance of a
twisted.python.defer.Deferred
. This means that an
asynchronous function can be easily identified visually because it will
be of the form:
async_obj.asyncMethod("foo").addCallbacks(succeded,
failed)
. There is also a utility method
addCallback
which makes it more convenient to pass
additional arguments to a callback function and omit special-case error
handling.
While it is still backwards compatible,
twisted.internet.passport
has been re-named to
twisted.cred
, and the various classes in it have been
split out into submodules of that package, and the various
remote-object superclasses have been moved out of twisted.spread.pb and
put into twisted.spread.flavors.
Application.listenOn
has been replaced with the more
descripively named Application.listenTCP
,
Application.listenUDP
, and
Application.listenSSL
.
twisted.web.widgets
has progressed quite far since the
paper was written! One description specifically given in the paper is
no longer correct:
The namespace for evaluating the template expressions is obtained by scanning the class hierarchy for attributes, and getting each of those attributes from the current instance. This means that all methods will be bound methods, so indicating "self" explicitly is not required. While it is possible to override the method for creating namespaces, using this default has the effect of associating all presentation code for a particular widget in one class, along with its template. If one is working with a non-programmer designer, and the template is in an external file, it is always very clear to the designer what functionality is available to them in any given scope, because there is a list of available methods for any given class.This is still possible to avoid breakages in old code, but after some experimentation, it became clear that simply passing
self
was an easier method for creating the
namespace, both for designers and programmers.
In addition, since the advent of Zope3, interoperability with Zope has
become increasingly interesting possibility for the Twisted development
team, since it would be desirable if Twisted could use their excellent
strategy for content-management, while still maintaining Twisted's
advantages in the arena of multi-protocol servers. Of particular
interest has been Zope Presentation Templates, since they seem to be a
truly robust solution for keeping design discrete from code, compatible
with the event-based method in which twisted.web.widgets processes web
requests. twisted.web.widgets.ZopePresentationTemplate
may be opening soon in a theatre near you!
The following code examples are corrected or modernized versions of the ones that appear in the paper.
Listing 9: A remotely accessible object and accompanying call# Server Side class MyObject(pb.Referenceable): def remote_doIt(self): return "did it" # Client Side ... def myCallback(result): print result # result will be 'did it' def myErrback(stacktrace): print 'oh no, mr. bill!' print stacktrace myRemoteReference.doIt().addCallbacks(myCallback, myErrback)
Listing 10: An object responding to its calling perspective# Server Side class Greeter(pb.Viewable): def view_greet(self, actor): return "Hello %s!\n" % actor.perspectiveName # Client Side ... remoteGreeter.greet().addCallback(sys.stdout.write) ...
Listing 12: A client for Echoer objects.from twisted.spread import pb from twisted.internet import main def gotObject(object): print "got object:",object object.echo("hello network".addCallback(gotEcho) def gotEcho(echo): print 'server echoed:',echo main.shutDown() def gotNoObject(reason): print "no object:",reason main.shutDown() pb.getObjectAt("localhost", 8789, gotObject, gotNoObject, 30) main.run()
Listing 13: A PB server using twisted's "passport" authentication.from twisted.spread import pb from twisted.internet import main class SimplePerspective(pb.Perspective): def perspective_echo(self, text): print 'echoing',text return text class SimpleService(pb.Service): def getPerspectiveNamed(self, name): return SimplePerspective(name, self) if __name__ == '__main__': import pbecho app = main.Application("pbecho") pbecho.SimpleService("pbecho",app).getPerspectiveNamed("guest").makeIdentity("guest") app.listenTCP(pb.portno, pb.BrokerFactory(pb.AuthRoot(app))) app.save("start")
Listing 14: Connecting to an Authorized Servicefrom twisted.spread import pb from twisted.internet import main def success(message): print "Message received:",message main.shutDown() def failure(error): print "Failure...",error main.shutDown() def connected(perspective): perspective.echo("hello world").addCallbacks(success, failure) print "connected." pb.connect("localhost", pb.portno, "guest", "guest", "pbecho", "guest", 30).addCallbacks(connected, failure) main.run()
Listing 15: A Twisted GUI applicationfrom twisted.internet import main, ingtkernet from twisted.spread.ui import gtkutil import gtk ingtkernet.install() class EchoClient: def __init__(self, echoer): l.hide() self.echoer = echoer w = gtk.GtkWindow(gtk.WINDOW_TOPLEVEL) vb = gtk.GtkVBox(); b = gtk.GtkButton("Echo:") self.entry = gtk.GtkEntry(); self.outry = gtk.GtkEntry() w.add(vb) map(vb.add, [b, self.entry, self.outry]) b.connect('clicked', self.clicked) w.connect('destroy', gtk.mainquit) w.show_all() def clicked(self, b): txt = self.entry.get_text() self.entry.set_text("") self.echoer.echo(txt).addCallback(self.outry.set_text) l = gtkutil.Login(EchoClient, None, initialService="pbecho") l.show_all() gtk.mainloop()
Listing 16: an event-based web widget.from twisted.spread import pb from twisted.python import defer from twisted.web import widgets class EchoDisplay(widgets.Gadget, widgets.Presentation): template = """<H1>Welcome to my widget, displaying %%%%echotext%%%%.</h1> <p>Here it is: %%%%getEchoPerspective()%%%%</p>""" echotext = 'hello web!' def getEchoPerspective(self): return ['<b>', pb.connect("localhost", pb.portno, "guest", "guest", "pbecho", "guest", 1). addCallbacks(self.makeListOf, self.formatTraceback) ,'</b>'] def makeListOf(self, echoer): return [echoer.echo(self.echotext).addCallback(lambda x: [x])] if __name__ == "__main__": from twisted.web import server from twisted.internet import main a = main.Application("pbweb") a.listenTCP(8080, server.Site(EchoDisplay())) a.run()