Tornado is a relatively simple non blocking web server framework written in Python can somewhat expl
Tornado is a powerful, non-blocking web server framework written in Python. It's designed for building high-performance, scalable, and real-time web applications. In this tutorial, we'll explore what "non-blocking" means in the context of web servers and provide a simple code example to get you started with Tornado.
In traditional web server architectures, when a client sends a request to the server, the server typically blocks (waits) until it has completed the request and can respond. This means that for each incoming request, the server dedicates a thread or a process to handle it. If the server receives many concurrent requests, it can quickly run out of resources, resulting in slow response times or even crashes.
Tornado, on the other hand, is non-blocking. It uses an event-driven, single-threaded architecture that allows it to efficiently handle many connections concurrently without dedicating a thread or process to each one. When a request arrives, Tornado doesn't block the entire server but processes the request and responds when ready. This approach is particularly well-suited for applications requiring high concurrency, such as real-time applications, chat servers, and long-polling APIs.
Before you start using Tornado, you need to install it. You can do this using pip, the Python package manager:
Let's create a basic Tornado web application that listens on a specific port and serves a "Hello, Tornado!" message when accessed.
In the code above, we import the necessary Tornado modules and create a MainHandler class, which is a Tornado RequestHandler. This class defines how to respond to HTTP GET requests to the root path ("/"). In this case, it responds with "Hello, Tornado!".
We then create a Tornado application using the make_app function and specify the route for our MainHandler. Finally, we start the Tornado I/O loop, which is responsible for handling incoming requests and responses.
