How to install Python/web.py on a shared host

In the past I have written a few Python web applications, but when I asked my host about Python, they told me they where specialized in PHP and nothing but PHP(that is why this site runs Wordpress). If your are lucky and have a very expensive dedicated server you can install whatever you want, but how about my poor projects? I'm not going to re-write them in PHP obviously. I figured that as long as you have a CGI bin, you can do whatever you want. I started writing a CGI script that would install Python and Web.py for me; Check out the resulting web.py example. This is the script that I came up with. It should be doable to customize this for Pylons, TurboGears, Django, or any other Python framework. You should at least fill in your own home directory twice, we're doing a Python installation inside you home directory.

#!/bin/sh

echo "Content-type: text/html

";

curl http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.6.4/Python-2.6.4.tgz | tar -zx
cd Python-2.6.4
./configure --prefix=/your/home/directory #change this to your home
make
make install
cd ..
curl http://www.saddi.com/software/flup/dist/flup-1.0.2.tar.gz | tar -zx
cd flup-1.0.2
/your/home/directory/bin/python setup.py install
cd ..
curl http://webpy.org/static/web.py-0.33.tar.gz | tar -zx
cp -r web.py-0.33/web .

Note that you should add .py as a CGI handler in your .htaccess file:

AddHandler cgi-script .py

Since our fresh Python installation is not on the PATH variable, you should include a shebang header in your scripts to point to the right path:

#!/your/home/directory/bin/python

Again, check the result!