Quick hack to develop web2py on a different machine

For security reasons web2py will not allow you to log in as administrator unless you are logging in from the same workstation. (There are exceptions, but they are cumbersome: See the official book for full details.)

However, there is a quick hack that allows you develop from any machine: Just set up a ssh tunnel:

ssh username@ip_address_or_dns_name -L 8000:127.0.0.1:8000 -N

As usually, I didn't come up with this myself. This time I found it here: http://www.revsys.com/writings/quicktips/ssh-tunnel.html

(However, if you read a few of the samples available on the internet, you'll see that may of them miss the point that in the local_port:ip_address:remote_port part you can and should use 127.0.0.1 instead of the external ip address. The reason is that this is the address that the request seems to come from in the server program at the remote computer.)

Using web2py, first impressions

I've had the opportunity to do some quick prototyping in web2py in my spare time over the last few weeks. Here are some very quick notes about what to like and what not to like:

Good:

• Works out of the box. Just download, open, choose password, press start. Your default browser starts automatically.
• Automatic updates (beta warning, bur works.)
• Built in editor and version control.
• Built in user registration and management.
• Automagic migrations (connecting to legacy databases are supported and documented, too)
• Built in support for multiple databases, including distributed transactions.
• Built in sqlite database, and postgres, mysql and even mssql seems to be just one config setting away.
• The whole official book is available online.
• Author intends to keep the api stable. (For anybody who has had the joy of supporting an application over multiple years and multiple versions of the same framework.)
• Bonus point 1: Nice default look and feel, and it is easily customizable. It's just html with placeholders.
•  Bonus point 2: Applications built on top of web2py can be packed, downloaded and installed on another instance.

Needs improvement:

• The documentation. There is lots of official documentation, but the search engine is next to useless, and google picks up old, outdated blog post before the official documentation.
•  Routing: From the official documetation: The url http://127.0.0.1:8000/examples/default/status/x/y/z?p=1&q=2 will presented to the controller as:
• request.args ['x', 'y', 'z']
• request.get_vars <Storage {'p': 1, 'q': 2}>
  Why you'd like to separate between those are beyond my understanding. I always thought unifying those was one of the features of modern web frameworks.

Preliminary conclusion:


web2py is production ready and is already used a few public facing sites. To me it seems like a perfect match for small "intranet applications" but it is in no way limited to this.

Although I've not programmed apex myself, it often comes to mind because of features like online editing and redistributable applications built on top of it.