Hotdot - Realtime webapp using Django + Orbited + Twisted

What is Hotdot?

A very complete example of how to a create a realtime web application using Django + Orbited + Twisted.

Read more about the motivation behind `Hotdot`: http://clemesha.org/blog/2009/dec/17/realtime-web-apps-python-django-orbited-twisted

Currently the example is: Realtime Voting Both: Collaborative Realtime Voting, Chatting, and Editing Polls.

Is Hotdot a 'Realtime Web Framework'?

Not currently. Maybe it should turn into one? UPDATE [12/27/2009]: I've started work on making Hotdot more "framework" like. That is, I'm making it easier to "plug in" your own application logic, etc, by following a small set of conventions. The work-in-progress code is in this branch: http://github.com/clemesha/hotdot/tree/framework

For comparison, consider Tornado (http://www.tornadoweb.org), which is the 'realtime web framework' used to build FriendFeed. Tornado is minimal and clean, and does include some very nice features beyond just being a non-blocking webserver.

My proposition with Hotdot is that the combination of Django, Orbited, and Twisted results in a more 'full-featured realtime web framework', with a greater community and total features, than can be found in Tornado.

How and Why?

The combination of Django + Orbited + Twisted is everything you need to make a 'real-world' realtime web application with Python.

Their roles:

• Django: Excellent web framework for creating the backbone of a great web application.
• Orbited: Realtime web (Comet) library to build the realtime components with.
• Twisted: Scalable asynchronous network lib, for serving Orbited (and Django too, with WSGI!)

Other reasons for `Hotdot`:

• Incorporate core bits into http://codenode.org (http://github.com/codenode/codenode) to make it realtime.
• My personal education on this awesome topic.

Install

1. Recommended: Use a virtualenv and install with pip, to get them type:

   easy_install virtualenv pip

2. Create a fresh virtualenv:

   virtualenv --no-site-packages hotdot_env

3. Install dependencies into your virtualenv:

   #You must have Django 1.0+ and Twisted 9.0+
   
   pip -E hotdot_env install -U django orbited twisted simplejson

4. Move into your virtualenv and activate it:

   $ cd hotdot_env
   $ source bin/activate

5. Get a copy of Hotdot from here:

   curl http://github.com/clemesha/hotdot/tarball/master
   
   #Or clone a copy:
   
   $ git clone git://github.com/clemesha/hotdot.git

Usage

1. In the directory hotdot/djangoweb, type:

   django-admin.py syncdb --pythonpath='.' --settings='settings'

2. In the toplevel directory hotdot, type:

   twistd -ny server.py 

• Now open browser to http://localhost:8000/
• Also see settings in server.py and djangoweb/settings.py
• To change host interface, see server.py->INTERFACE and djangoweb/settings.py->INTERFACE.

Tests

1. In the directory hotdot/djangoweb, type:

   django-admin.py test --pythonpath='.' --settings='settings'

Details of how Hotdot works

(WORK IN PROGRESS)

• Orbited as a Twisted Service
• Django running from twisted.web.wsgi
• Authentication using Twisted Cred+Django models
• Filtering + modification + logging of in-transit Orbited messages
• STOMP as the default, example protocol.

Why the name Hotdot?

'Hot' as in the latest goodness. 'Dot' as in _D_jango + _O_rbited + _T_wisted.

License, Questions, Contact

Hotdot is licensed under the BSD. Please fork a copy here!: http://github.com/clemesha/hotdot Contact: Alex Clemesha <alex@clemesha.org> | http://twitter.com/clemesha