Aguirre

Let Python webservers self-host JS/CSS/etc assets like unpkg does

Warning: The utility functions have been proven out, but the integrations have had limited usage. Treat them with caution.

When your Python application needs a Python dependency from PyPI you can lean on tools like pip and venv to manage that. But what if its a web application that needs a Javascript or CSS dependency from NPM? Large applications run by large teams can justify elaborate build and deployment pipelines. But a smaller app? Something internal? A demo? Or a learning exercise? You want a lighter solution...

In recent years it's become popular to lean on unpkg for this. (Or jsdelivr, or cdnjs, or another service.) How easy it is to drop one line into your template and let a CDN look after serving the file to your users:

<script src="https://www.unpkg.com/jquery@3.7.1/dist/jquery.min.js"></script>

But there are disadvantages to relying on a third party like this. It needs to be up whenever your app is up, and be reliable. You are vulnerable to takedowns (remember left-pad?). Your users give up more privacy. And worst of all: you can't develop your application offline.

Aguirre lets you download NPM tarballs and add them to your app. (And probably commit them in too.) Then you can drop a line into your app and let Aguirre serve the desired file straight out of the tarball:

<script src="/pkgs/jquery@3.7.1/dist/jquery.min.js"></script>

Sure, it's not the most scalable solution. But it's a great way to quickly get things moving. And if you have a frontend (edge) server configured to do caching you may find it can handle the scaling for you!

Installation

This code is not currently on PyPI. Consequently you should add the following line to your requirements.txt file:

git+https://github.com/pscl4rke/aguirre.git

Integrations

There are some integrations into frameworks inside aguirre.integrations. Their usage is documented in the module docstrings...

• Flask
• Quart
• Django (Partial!)

Development and Testing

This codebase uses ephemerun to test against multiple Python versions. (It's a bit like Tox, except is uses containers for isolation rather than virtualenvs.)

Roadmap

• Better Django support
• Handle pathlib.Path arguments
• Prove the headers etc for caching middleware/frontends
• Make sure no Set-Cookie headers exist to stop caching proxies

Licence

This code is copyright P. S. Clarke and is licensed under the BSD-3-Clause licence.

The test suite contains real-world example files. These are covered by their own embedded licences.