HTTP Debugging Server in Django

Feb 28, 2009 · 2 minute read

I’ve been busy building and playing with various HTTP clients recently, mainly due to more playing with RESTful web services. I took a couple of hours out to build something to make my life easier - namely a very simple logging HTTP server in Django.

All the application does is accepts HTTP requests and log the results to a file. I’ve been using it to make sure the requests I’m sending from elsewhere are correct, before pointing the client at a web service that actually does something useful. It supports POST, GET, PUT, DELETE, etc. So far so simple.

I ended up using Django mainly because I did most of the work on the train, and I know my way around it pretty well by now. I did originally thing it might have been better to use something simpler but I did end up learning a few new tricks that I’ll use for future projects.

• In theory Django doesn’t need a database. While this is true for the most part, the in-built test runner does require a database. One thing I’ve talked about before is the usefulness of creating your own custom test runner. If anyone else runs into this specific problem have a look at the nodatabase.py file.
• The logging is handled via Python’s inbuilt logging module. It has some nifty features (like log rotation, maximum file sizes and different logging levels) but is a little fiddly to get working correctly. Tales abound of log messages appearing multiple times, or permission errors causing problems. At least for this project I think I have everything working. I’ll try using this module on a couple of other projects and maybe spin it off into a small reusable app.

For something that took only a few hours to write it was both good fun and a useful learning tool. And Django proved itself more useful that I though for smaller services like this.