Using django for non http requests

Question

Can I use django to handle non http-requests and responses? I have a django web application serving up webpages, and I would like to use it to also communicate with other devices (hand-held gps sending in status reports and receiving ack) over tcp, but django reports that the requests are "

code 400, message Bad HTTP/0.9 request type".

    [28/Sep/2015 15:14:26] code 400, message Bad HTTP/0.9 request type ('[V1.0.0,244565434376396,1,abcd,2015-09-28')
    [28/Sep/2015 15:14:26] "[V1.0.0,244565434376396,1,abcd,2015-09-28 14:14:12,1-2,865456543459367,2,T1]" 400 -

The message from the device is sent as text over tcp with no http parameters at all.

I haven't found any information on how to do this with django, but it would make my life easier if it was possible.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Not that I know of.

Django is a web framework, so it's designed around a certain paradigm if not a certain protocol.

The design is heavily informed - if not by HTTP - by the notions of URL, request, a stateless protocol, et cetera.

If the template system and the routing system were taken away you would be left with a glorified ORM and some useless bits of code.

However, unless you are dealing with existing devices with their own protocol, you can use Django to build a RESTful service to successfully exchange information with something other than bipeds in front of a web browser.

This article on Dr. Dobb's is very informative.

Django REST, although by no means necessary, can help you.

If you are really stuck with legacy devices and protocols, you could write an adapter/proxy that would receive your devices' requests and translate them to RESTful calls, if you protocol looks enough like HTTP semantically rather than syntactically (as in, if you just have to translate QUUX aaa:bbb:ccc: to GET xx/yy/zz).

If it does not share the slightest bit of HTTP's semantics, I'd say Django can't help you much.