Implementing An HTTP Server for Python 2 and 3

I've done some work recently to get the blogofile plugins branch working under Python 2.6, 2.7 and 3.2 from single codebase. The blogofile serve command runs an HTTP server on localhost to let you check the results of your blogofile build before you deploy it to the waiting world. In Python 3 (in which the plugins branch was initially implemented) the relevant bits of the implementation go like:

import http.server
import threading

class Server(threading.Thread):
    def __init__(self, port, address):
        HandlerClass = BlogofileRequestHandler
        ServerClass = http.server.HTTPServer
        self.httpd = ServerClass(('127.0.0.1', 8080), HandlerClass)

    def run(self):
        self.httpd.serve_forever()

    def shutdown(self):
        self.httpd.shutdown()
        self.httpd.socket.close()

class BlogofileRequestHandler(http.server.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        http.server.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler.__init__(
            self, *args, **kwargs)

    def translate_path(self, path):
        ...

Some import acrobatics are required to get that to also run under Python 2:

try:
    from http.server import HTTPServer as http_server
except ImportError:
    from SocketServer import TCPServer as http_server
try:
    from http.server import SimpleHTTPRequestHandler \
        as http_handler
except ImportError:
    from SimpleHTTPServer import SimpleHTTPRequestHandler \
        as http_handler
import threading

class Server(threading.Thread):
    def __init__(self, port, address):
        HandlerClass = BlogofileRequestHandler
        ServerClass = http_server
        self.httpd = ServerClass(('127.0.0.1', 8080), HandlerClass)

    def run(self):
        self.httpd.serve_forever()

    def shutdown(self):
        self.httpd.shutdown()
        self.httpd.socket.close()

class BlogofileRequestHandler(http_handler):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        http_handler.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs)

    def translate_path(self, path):
        ...

The six library provides a nice way to clean up the hard to read try:... except ImportError:... blocks:

import threading
from six.moves import SimpleHTTPServer
from six.moves import socketserver

http_server = socketserver.TCPServer
http_handler = SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler

class Server(threading.Thread):
    def __init__(self, port, address):
        HandlerClass = BlogofileRequestHandler
        ServerClass = http_server
        self.httpd = ServerClass(('127.0.0.1', 8080), HandlerClass)

    def run(self):
        self.httpd.serve_forever()

    def shutdown(self):
        self.httpd.shutdown()
        self.httpd.socket.close()

class BlogofileRequestHandler(http_handler):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        http_handler.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs)

    def translate_path(self, path):
        ...

Note that this implementation steps back from the Python 3 http.server.HTTPServer as the server class to the underlying socketserver.TCPServer (or SocketServer.TCPServer in Python 2).