Install Apache Python mod_wsgi

Posted under » Apache » Python on 17 April 2021

To run python script by command line, you normally

$ python3 ~/submit_grades.py

When you install LAMP, php is installed with apache and mysql. To run python script over the web, it is slightly harder. First you need to install Python Apache Mod_wsgi. The mod_wsgi is an Apache module used to serve Python scripts over HTTP.

For python 3 you need to install for py3.

$ sudo apt install libapache2-mod-wsgi-py3

Restart Apache. Now create a file on webfolder 'test_wsgi_script.py'.

def application(environ, start_response):
    status = '200 OK'
    headers = [('Content-Type', 'text/plain; charset=utf-8')]
    start_response(status, headers)
    
    # Returns an iterable containing bytes
    return [b"Hello, WSGI World!"]

Now create a configuration file eg. /etc/apache2/conf-available/mod-wsgi.conf with the following contents.

WSGIScriptAlias /test_wsgi /var/www/scripts/test_wsgi_script.py

Enable it.

$ sudo a2enconf mod-wsgi
$ sudo systemctl restart apache2

The Python script is ready to serve over Apache. You can test the script by accessing the URL http://fi3fi.com/test_wsgi in a web browser.

You will notice that this applies system wide and may not be ideal if you have several virtual sites or environment. So lets do for a specific vhost.

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName fi3fi.com
 ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
   WSGIScriptAlias /test_wsgi /var/www/scripts/test_wsgi_script.py
        DocumentRoot /var/www/scripts/

        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews

        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error-fi3fi.log
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access-fi3fi.log combined
</VirtualHost>

If you want to use django, read this