Twisted is designed for complete separation between logical protocols (usually relying on stream-based connection semantics, such as HTTP or POP3) and transport layers supporting such stream-based semantics (such as files, sockets or SSL libraries). Connection between a logical protocol and a transport layer happens at the last possible moment — just before information is passed into the logical protocol instance. The logical protocol is informed of the transport layer instance, and can use it to send messages back and to check for the peer's identity. Note that it is still possible, in protocol code, to deeply query the transport layer on transport issues (such as checking a client-side SSL certificate). Naturally, such protocol code will fail (raise an exception) if the transport layer does not support such semantics.
Deferreds
Central to the Twisted application model is the concept of a deferred (elsewhere called a future). A deferred is an instance of a class designed to receive and process a result which has not been computed yet, for example because it is based on data from a remote peer. Deferreds can be passed around, just like regular objects, but cannot be asked for their value. Each deferred supports a callback chain. When the deferred gets the value, it is passed to the functions on the callback chain, with the result of each callback becoming the input for the next. Deferreds make it possible to operate on the result of a function call before its value has become available.
For example, if a deferred returns a string from a remote peer containing an IP address in quad format, a callback can be attached to translate it into a 32-bit number. Any user of the deferred can now treat it as a deferred returning a 32-bit number. This, and the related ability to define "errbacks" (callbacks which are called as error handlers), allows code to specify in advance what to do when an asynchronous event occurs, without stopping to wait for the event. In non-event-driven systems, for example using threads, the operating system incurs premature and additional overhead organizing threads each time a blocking call is made.
Thread support
Twisted supports an abstraction over raw threads — using a thread as a deferred source. Thus, a deferred is returned immediately, which will receive a value when the thread finishes. Callbacks can be attached which will run in the main thread, thus alleviating the need for complex locking solutions. A prime example of such usage, which comes from Twisted's support libraries, is using this model to call into databases. The database call itself happens on a foreign thread, but the analysis of the result happens in the main thread.
Foreign loop support
Twisted can integrate with foreign event loops, such as those of GTK+, Qt and Cocoa (through PyObjC). This allows using Twisted as the network layer in graphical user interface (GUI) programs, using all of its libraries without adding a thread-per-socket overhead, as using Python's native library would. A full-fledged web server can be integrated in-process with a GUI program using this model, for example.
The original version of social networking and microblogging site Jaiku used Twisted.[citation needed]
Fluidinfo, an online cloud data-store, uses Twisted extensively for internal RPC (partly in combination with Thrift and AMQP), for its internal services, and for external APIs.
Nevow (pronounced like the French nouveau) is a Pythonweb application framework originally developed by the company Divmod. Template substitution is achieved via a small Tag Attribute Language, which is usually embedded in on-disk XML templates, though there is also a pure-Python domain-specific language called Stan, for expressing this markup programmatically. Nevow integrates well with Twisted.
Nevow was deployed on several high-profile web sites, most notably the official Python site.[19]
As of mid-2010, Divmod went out of business,[20] causing development work on Nevow to all but cease, and in 2011 its homepage was no longer accessible.[21] There is a project on Launchpad, hosting the source code of Divmod[22] including the source code of the Nevow project.[23]
↑Subject: Re: ANN: Twisted 1.1.0, the framework of *your* internet, From: Donovan Preston, Date: 2003-10-27, Newsgroups: gmane.comp.python.twisted, nevow was originally a research project -- a weekend's worth of hacking whose benefits turned out to be so great that we decided to focus on bringing it up to a usable state for Quotient as soon as possible. And that's where it is now.
↑PythonWebsitePyramidDocs, Pyramid is the internal website templating system used to build the python.org pages. (It is not connected to the Pyramid web framework, formerly named BFG, that's used with Pylons.) Pyramid uses Nevow as its templating system and YAML as the format for its file based data - PythonInfo Wiki, python.org
↑HistoryArchived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine, Nevow Athena from Scratch, or The Evolution of a Chat Application — Divmod Nevow vtrunk documentation
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