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Entries published on November 5, 2007

1 entry published on this date. See also: all entries published in November 2007, full archive.

Server startup” and its discontents

A fairly common question people ask on the Django mailing lists and in the IRC channel is “how do I have something run when the server starts up?” This is a somewhat tricky question to answer, because in many ways there’s no concept of “server start” in Django, and because the reasons behind the question vary from one use case to the next. So let’s take a look at just what people are wanting to do at “server start”, what that means (and, just as importantly, what it doesn’t mean) and how to handle it in a Django-based application.

The protocol without a state

Every so often someone will complain about frameworks like Django or Rails, alleging that they’re “just” light wrappers around HTTP (for example) and implying that this is a bug which needs to be fixed. Personally, I think this overlooks the power of HTTP, and that …

Entry published November 5, 2007. Read full entry.