Chichimec is a packaging of a Twisted Web-based stack for quickly setting up an application environment. The name comes from the D&D Epic monster, which is composed of many wildly flapping wings sticking out in every direction, but is also quite fearsome and powerful.

It includes these Python tools:

Twisted

a Python networking stack

zope.interface

(a dependency of Twisted)

Nevow

a resource publishing API with Comet/AJAX support

Storm

an ORM layer

Fudge

a mock object framework, for doing Test-Driven Development

Genshi

a template system

txGenshi

a dependency for using Genshi with Nevow

PyFlakes

a tool for statically checking your Python source for common errors

Distribute

for making your application easy to package

virtualenv

for making your application easy to package

chichimec

containing some useful utility code, and scripts for working with your stack such as:

boilerplate

for creating the application shell you will need to get started

cycle

for restarting your server continuously in development mode

redeploy

for packaging your application up when you are ready to distribute it

It includes these Javascript tools:

jQuery

A cross-browser Javascript toolkit that makes it easy to work with the DOM and events

Nevow JS

Cross-browser Javascript libraries included with Nevow, for using classes, performing Deferred execution (async javascript), and running Comet/AJAX code.

If you have not already done so, install Chichimec with easy_install. This will fetch and install Chichimec itself, Distribute, Twisted, and virtualenv:

sudo easy_install Chichimec

Now decide what you want to call your project. We're going to use "MyProject" as the name of this project. Chichimec comes with a tool called boilerplate which uses virtualenv to create your project directory. Following are some different ways to use boilerplate:

# Print out help.
boilerplate --help

# create a fresh project directory with all libraries, all defaults enabled
boilerplate MyProject

# create a fresh project directory with no Genshi or Storm installed.
boilerplate --no-genshi --no-storm MyLeanProject

# create a fresh project obeying all recommended best practices for
# project layout.  This gives you a test directory complete with a failing
# test, and all dependencies including test materials.
boilerplate --best-practices MyHardcoreProject

Now you have an application. You can even run it, by doing:

cd MyProject
./cycle

This will start up a webserver, running on port 8080. Visit http://localhost:8080/

Once you have an application, you can write code.

The Root resource is in myproject.resource. It uses templates found in myproject/templates/.

Examples can be found by navigating the localhost:8080 website.

• js.io? for javascript-based networking
• Hooks for swapping out the ORM with a different database architecture, Genshi with a different template system, jQuery with a different js library.
• Hooks for scalable deployment, including but not limited to:
  • Apache or Nginx
  • a load balancer process
  • multiple appserver processes connecting to a single store
  • multiple appserver processes connecting to a distributed nosql database