Question

In mod_wsgi I send the headers by running the function start_response(), but all the page content is passed by yield/return. Is there a way to pass the page content in a similar fashion as start_response()? Using the return.yield statement is very restrictive when it comes to working with chunked data.

E.g.

def Application():

    b = buffer()

    [... page code ...]

    while True:
        out = b.flush()    
        if out:
            yield out

class buffer:

    def __init__(self):        
        b = ['']
        l = 0

    def add(self, s):
        s = str(s)
        l += len(s)
        b.append(s)

    def flush(self):

        if self.l > 1000:
            out = ''.join(b)
            self.__init__()
            return out

I want to have the buffer outputting the content as the page loads, but only outputs the content once enough of it has piled up (in this eg. 1000 bytes).

Answer 1

No; But I don’t think it is restrictive. Maybe you want to paste an example code where you describe your restriction and we can help.

To work with chunk data you just yield the chunks:

def application(environ, start_response):
    start_response('200 OK', [('Content-type', 'text/plain')]
    yield 'Chunk 1\n'    
    yield 'Chunk 2\n'    
    yield 'Chunk 3\n'
    for chunk in chunk_data_generator():
        yield chunk

def chunk_data_generator()
    yield 'Chunk 4\n'
    yield 'Chunk 5\n'

---

EDIT: Based in the comments you gave, an example of piling data up to a certain length before sending forward:

BUFFER_SIZE = 10 # 10 bytes for testing. Use something bigger
def application(environ, start_response):
    start_response('200 OK', [('Content-type', 'text/plain')]
    buffer = []
    size = 0
    for chunk in chunk_generator():
        buffer.append(chunk)
        size += len(chunk)
        if size > BUFFER_SIZE:
            for buf in buffer:
                yield buf
            buffer = []
            size = 0

def chunk_data_generator()
    yield 'Chunk 1\n'    
    yield 'Chunk 2\n'    
    yield 'Chunk 3\n'
    yield 'Chunk 4\n'
    yield 'Chunk 5\n'