Mixing Static and Dynamic Content in CherryPy 3

Here is one way to mix static and dynamic content in the same section with the index handled by a static page:

Example Source

import cherrypy

class StaticAndDynamic(object):
    _cp_config = {'tools.staticdir.on' : True,
                  'tools.staticdir.dir' : '/path/to/your/static/file/directory',
                  'tools.staticdir.index' : 'index.html',
    }

    @cherrypy.expose
    def do_contact(self, **params):
        """Stuff to make a contact happen."""
        pass


cherrypy.quickstart(StaticAndDynamic())

Explanation

The StaticAndDynamic class above is preconfigured with the staticdir tool enabled in the configuration. That means wherever it is attached on the cherrypy.tree it will attempt to serve static content from /path/to/your/static/file/directory. In the example above, it is rooted at the URI / since the cherrypy.quickstart function is used to launch the app and no specific path is specified.

Imagine that /path/to/your/static/file/directory contains the following files:

index.html
about.html
contact.html

Requests to the following URIs will all be handled by CherryPy by loading the associated static file:

http://yourserver:8080/index.html
http://yourserver:8080/about.html
http://yourserver:8080/contact.html

staticdir/staticfile Order: Static First, Dynamic Second

Now, imagine that contact.html contains a form with the action set to http://yourserver:8080/do_contact. Even though the CherryPy application is serving static content at /, if it can't find a file on disk it will try to find a dynamic handler for the requested resource. So after an attempt to serve /path/to/your/static/file/directory/do_contact fails, CherryPy will attempt to lookup a dynamic handler. This is what enables you to easily mix both static and dynamic content in the same section of a site.

In most cases, the above will work just fine. But when running a heavily-loaded site, it may be too slow for CherryPy to load the static tool, search for a matching file on disk, then run the dynamic handler. Instead, you can simply turn off the static tool for any subpath; for example, you can extend the above code as follows:

    @cherrypy.expose
    def do_contact(self, **params):
        """Stuff to make a contact happen."""
        pass
    do_contact._cp_config = {'tools.staticdir.on': False}

...in which case, CherryPy will not even load the tool for that path. This is so because CherryPy always tries to find a handler function first (and load its config); only afterward will it invoke the static tool, and then (if the static tool fails to find a file) the handler function is called.

See Also

http://www.cherrypy.org/wiki/StaticContent