Twisted Glossary¶
adaptee
An object that has been adapted, also called “original” . See Adapter .
An object whose sole purpose is to implement an Interface for another object. See Interfaces and Adapters .
A
twisted.application.service.Application()
. There are HOWTOs on creating and manipulating them as a system-administrator, as well as using them in your code.
Avatar
(from Twisted Cred ) business logic for specific user. For example, in PB these are perspectives, in POP3 these are mailboxes, and so on.
The low-level data marshalling layer of Twisted Spread . See
twisted.spread.banana
.
A
twisted.spread.pb.Broker
, the object request broker for Twisted Spread .
cache
A way to store data in readily accessible place for later reuse. Caching data is often done because the data is expensive to produce or access. Caching data risks being stale, or out of sync with the original data.
component
A special kind of (persistent)
Adapter
that works with atwisted.python.components.Componentized
. See also Interfaces and Adapters .
A Componentized object is a collection of information, separated into domain-specific or role-specific instances, that all stick together and refer to each other. Each object is an
Adapter
, which, in the context of Componentized, we call “components” . See also Interfaces and Adapters .
Twisted’s SSH implementation.
Connector
Object used to interface between client connections and protocols, usually used with a
twisted.internet.protocol.ClientFactory
to give you control over how a client connection reconnects. Seetwisted.internet.interfaces.IConnector
and Writing Clients .
Consumer
An object that consumes data from a Producer . See
twisted.internet.interfaces.IConsumer
.
Cred
Twisted’s authentication API,
twisted.cred
. See Introduction to Twisted Cred and Twisted Cred usage .
credentials
A username/password, public key, or some other information used for authentication.
credential checker
Where authentication actually happens. See
ICredentialsChecker
.
CVSToys
A nifty set of tools for CVS, available at http://twistedmatrix.com/users/acapnotic/wares/code/CVSToys/ .
Daemon
A background process that does a job or handles client requests. Daemon is a Unix term; service is the Windows equivalent.
An instance of
twisted.internet.defer.Deferred
, an abstraction for handling chains of callbacks and error handlers (“errbacks” ). See the Deferring Execution HOWTO.
Enterprise
Twisted’s RDBMS support. It contains
twisted.enterprise.adbapi
for asynchronous access to any standard DB-API 2.0 module. See Introduction to Twisted Enterprise for more details.
errback
A callback attached to a Deferred with
.addErrback
to handle errors.
In general, an object that constructs other objects. In Twisted, a Factory usually refers to a
twisted.internet.protocol.Factory
, which constructs Protocol instances for incoming or outgoing connections. See Writing Servers and Writing Clients .
Basically, an asynchronous exception that contains traceback information; these are used for passing errors through asynchronous callbacks.
im
Abbreviation of “(Twisted) Instance Messenger” .
Instance Messenger
Instance Messenger is a multi-protocol chat program that comes with Twisted. It can communicate via TOC with the AOL servers, via IRC, as well as via PB with Twisted Words . See
twisted.words.im
.
Interface
A class that defines and documents methods that a class conforming to that interface needs to have. A collection of core
twisted.internet
interfaces can be found intwisted.internet.interfaces
. See also Interfaces and Adapters .
Jelly
The serialization layer for Twisted Spread , although it can be used separately from Twisted Spread as well. It is similar in purpose to Python’s standard
pickle
module, but is more network-friendly, and depends on a separate marshaller (Banana , in most cases). Seetwisted.spread.jelly
.
Manhole
A debugging/administration interface to a Twisted application.
Microdom
A partial DOM implementation using SUX . It is simple and pythonic, rather than strictly standards-compliant. See
twisted.web.microdom
.
Names
Twisted’s DNS server, found in
twisted.names
.
Nevow
PB
Abbreviation of “Perspective Broker” .
Perspective Broker
The high-level object layer of Twisted Spread , implementing semantics for method calling and object copying, caching, and referencing. See
twisted.spread.pb
.
Portal
Glues credential checkers and realm s together.
Producer
An object that generates data a chunk at a time, usually to be processed by a Consumer . See
twisted.internet.interfaces.IProducer
.
In general each network connection has its own Protocol instance to manage connection-specific state. There is a collection of standard protocol implementations in
twisted.protocols
. See also Writing Servers and Writing Clients .
PSU
There is no PSU.
Reactor
The core event-loop of a Twisted application. See Reactor Basics .
Reality
See “Twisted Reality”
realm
(in Twisted Cred ) stores avatars and perhaps general business logic. See
IRealm
.
A
twisted.web.resource.Resource
, which are served by Twisted Web. Resources can be as simple as a static file on disk, or they can have dynamically generated content.
Service
A
twisted.application.service.Service
. See Application howto for a description of how they relate to Applications .
Spread
Twisted Spread is Twisted’s remote-object suite. It consists of three layers: Perspective Broker , Jelly and Banana. See Writing Applications with Perspective Broker .
SUX
S mall U ncomplicated X ML, Twisted’s simple XML parser written in pure Python. See
twisted.web.sux
.
TAC
A T wisted A pplication C onfiguration is a Python source file, generally with the .tac extension, which defines configuration to make an application runnable using
twistd
.
TAP
T wisted A pplication P ickle (no longer supported), or simply just a*T* wisted AP plication. A serialised application that was created with
mktap
(no longer supported) and runnable bytwistd
. See:doc:Using the Utilities <basics> .
Trial
twisted.trial
, Twisted’s unit-testing framework, based on theunittest
standard library module. See also Writing tests for Twisted code .
Twisted Matrix Laboratories
The team behind Twisted. http://twistedmatrix.com/ .
Twisted Reality
In days of old, the Twisted Reality multiplayer text-based interactive-fiction system was the main focus of Twisted Matrix Labs; Twisted, the general networking framework, grew out of Reality’s need for better network functionality. Twisted Reality has been superseded by the Imaginary project.
The
twisted.python.usage
module, a replacement for the standardgetopt
module for parsing command-lines which is much easier to work with. See Parsing command-lines .
Words
Twisted Words is a multi-protocol chat server that uses the Perspective Broker protocol as its native communication style. See
twisted.words
.
Woven
W eb O bject V isualization En vironment. A templating system previously, but no longer, included with Twisted. Woven has largely been superseded by Divmod Nevow .