Strong as an Ox

If, like me, you fancied playing around with IronPython and Silverlight on Apache, here’s how I got mine set-up:

1. Download and unpack DLRConsole.zip from http://silverlight.net/Samples/1.1/DLR-Console/DLRConsole.zip
2. Added the following to my Apache httpd.conf file:

    <VirtualHost 127.0.0.1>
            ServerName DLRConsole
            DocumentRoot "C:/dev/DLRConsole"
            AddType text/python .py
            AddType text/jscript .jsx
   
            DirectoryIndex index.htm index.html
   </VirtualHost>
   
   <Directory "C:/dev/DLRConsole">
            Options Indexes MultiViews
            AllowOverride None
            Order allow,deny
            Allow from all
   
            DirectoryIndex index.htm index.html
   </Directory>
   

3. I also set up the following in my hosts file (typically located on Windows at C:WINDOWSSYSTEM32DRIVERSETCHOSTS):
   127.0.0.1 dlrconsole
4. Re-start Apache and point your browser to http://dlrconsole

You may need to comment out any other Python handlers in you httpd.conf file and add them on a per <Directory> basis, but obviously if you’ve got loads of Python-based sites on your Apache installation then your mileage may vary. Fortunately this wasn’t an issue for me so the following was sufficient:

AddHandler cgi-script .pl
#AddHandler cgi-script .py

For more on the DLRConsole see this article from MSDN Magazine.

I have added OpenSearch to my Google Co-op Search Engine Unobtrusive JavaScript. Now you use the search engine in OpenSearch aware browsers you can add it to the browser’s search box.