Support for ``wsgi.file_wrapper`` --------------------------------- Waitress supports the `WSGI file_wrapper protocol `_ . Here's a usage example:: import os here = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)) def myapp(environ, start_response): f = open(os.path.join(here, 'myphoto.jpg'), 'rb') headers = [('Content-Type', 'image/jpeg')] start_response( '200 OK', headers ) return environ['wsgi.file_wrapper'](f, 32768) The file wrapper constructor is accessed via ``environ['wsgi.file_wrapper']``. The signature of the file wrapper constructor is ``(filelike_object, block_size)``. Both arguments must be passed as positional (not keyword) arguments. The result of creating a file wrapper should be **returned** as the ``app_iter`` from a WSGI application. The object passed as ``filelike_object`` to the wrapper must be a file-like object which supports *at least* the ``read()`` method, and the ``read()`` method must support an optional size hint argument and the ``read()`` method *must* return **bytes** objects (never unicode). It *should* support the ``seek()`` and ``tell()`` methods. If it does not, normal iteration over the filelike object using the provided block_size is used (and copying is done, negating any benefit of the file wrapper). It *should* support a ``close()`` method. The specified ``block_size`` argument to the file wrapper constructor will be used only when the ``filelike_object`` doesn't support ``seek`` and/or ``tell`` methods. Waitress needs to use normal iteration to serve the file in this degenerate case (as per the WSGI pec), and this block size will be used as the iteration chunk size. The ``block_size`` argument is optional; if it is not passed, a default value``32768`` is used. Waitress will set a ``Content-Length`` header on the behalf of an application when a file wrapper with a sufficiently filelike object is used if the application hasn't already set one. The machinery which handles a file wrapper currently doesn't do anything particularly special using fancy system calls (it doesn't use ``sendfile`` for example); using it currently just prevents the system from needing to copy data to a temporary buffer in order to send it to the client. No copying of data is done when a WSGI app returns a file wrapper that wraps a sufficiently filelike object. It may do something fancier in the future.