How to handle a HTTP GET request to a file in Tornado?

Question

I'm using Ubuntu and have a directory called "webchat", under this directory there are 4 files: webchat.py, webchat.css, webchat.html, webchat.js.

When creating a HTTP server using Tornado, i map the root ("/") to my python code: 'webchat.py' as follow:

import os,sys
import tornado.ioloop
import tornado.web
import tornado.httpserver

#http server for webchat
class webchat(tornado.web.RequestHandler):
  def get(self):
    self.write("Hello, chatter! [GET]")
  def post(self):
    self.write("Hello, chatter! [POST]")

#create http server
Handlers     = [(r"/",webchat)]
App_Settings = {"debug":True}
HTTP_Server  = tornado.web.Application(Handlers,**App_Settings)

#run http server
HTTP_Server.listen(9999)
tornado.ioloop.IOLoop.instance().start()

Accessing http://localhost:9999 will lead me to the 'webchat' handler (class webchat). However, i want to access the other files in the same directory with 'webchat.py', those are webchat.css, webchat.html, and webchat.js.

This URL gives me 404: http://localhost:9999/webchat.html. Any possible solutions to this matter?

Answer 1

Tornado has a default static file handler, but it maps url to /static/, will it be ok if you must access your static file at /static/webchat.css ?

If you are ok with this, I strongly suggest that you handle static file this way.

If you want your static file at root path, have a glance look at web.StaticFileHandler.

In case you missed it, here is the example

(r"/static/(.*)", web.StaticFileHandler, {"path": "/var/www"}),

BTW, File_Name and Handlers are not considered good variable names in Python.