29 lines
1.4 KiB
ReStructuredText
29 lines
1.4 KiB
ReStructuredText
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Introduction
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------------
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`Tornado <http://www.tornadoweb.org>`_ is a Python web framework and
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asynchronous networking library, originally developed at `FriendFeed
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<http://friendfeed.com>`_. By using non-blocking network I/O, Tornado
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can scale to tens of thousands of open connections, making it ideal for
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`long polling <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_technology#Long_polling>`_,
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`WebSockets <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebSocket>`_, and other
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applications that require a long-lived connection to each user.
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Tornado can be roughly divided into three major components:
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* A web framework (including `.RequestHandler` which is subclassed to
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create web applications, and various supporting classes).
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* Client- and server-side implementions of HTTP (`.HTTPServer` and
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`.AsyncHTTPClient`).
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* An asynchronous networking library (`.IOLoop` and `.IOStream`),
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which serve as the building blocks for the HTTP components and can
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also be used to implement other protocols.
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The Tornado web framework and HTTP server together offer a full-stack
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alternative to `WSGI <http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3333/>`_.
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While it is possible to use the Tornado web framework in a WSGI
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container (`.WSGIAdapter`), or use the Tornado HTTP server as a
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container for other WSGI frameworks (`.WSGIContainer`), each of these
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combinations has limitations and to take full advantage of Tornado you
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will need to use the Tornado's web framework and HTTP server together.
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