Programming Python, 4th Edition

Part IV. Internet Programming

This part of the book explores Python’s role as a language for programming Internet-based applications, and its library tools that support this role. Along the way, system and GUI tools presented earlier in the book are put to use as well. Because this is a popular Python domain, chapters here cover all fronts:

Chapter 12

This chapter introduces Internet concepts and options, presents Python low-level network tools such as sockets, and covers client and server basics.

Chapter 13

This chapter shows you how your scripts can use Python to access common client-side network protocols like FTP, email, HTTP, and more.

Chapter 14

This chapter uses the client-side email tools covered in the prior chapter, as well as the GUI techniques of the prior part, to implement a full-featured email client.

Chapter 15

This chapter introduces the basics of Python server-side Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts—a kind of program used to implement interactive websites.

Chapter 16

This chapter demonstrates Python website techniques by implementing a web-based email tool on a server, in part to compare and contrast with Chapter 14’s nonweb approach.

Although they are outside this book’s scope, Chapter 12 also provides brief overviews of more advanced Python Internet tools best covered in follow-up resources, such as Jython, Django, App Engine, Zope, PSP, pyjamas, and HTMLgen. Here, you’ll learn the fundamentals needed to use such tools when you’re ready to step up.

Along the way, we’ll ...