Question

So I’m getting into the process of putting some of my first python code online and I’m a little fuzzy about some things. When we assign app to web.application(urls, globals()), what is going on exactly? Also, the line form = web.input(name="Nobody", greet=None) is referring to the two input forms in my other script called hello_form, but what is its purpose here? We’re calling form.greet and form.name on the next line I see, but those should be variables created based on user input, (yet we say name = "Nobody"?).

import web

urls = (
    '/hello', 'Index'
)

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

render = web.template.render('templates/', base="layout")

class Index(object):
    def GET(self):
        return render.hello_form()

    def POST(self):
        form = web.input(name="Nobody", greet=None)
        greeting = "%s, %s" % (form.greet, form.name)
        return render.index(greeting = greeting)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app.run()

Answer 1

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

creates a variable named app and stores the result of calling web.application() in it. In other words, you create a web application object, and store that object in app.

form = web.input(name="Nobody", greet=None)

The values specified for name and greet here are the default values – namely, those used if no user specified values are provided in the request.