Scandium is a replacement for Appcelerator's Titanium Desktop that enables deployment of Python web applications on the desktop.

A scandium app is basically just a Flask app inside a chromeless QtWebKit widget.

Scandium depends on:

• twisted
• flask
• qt4reactor
• PySide
• py2exe

The most hassle-free installation method is to download and install twisted, qt4reactor, PySide and py2exe separately. Setuptools will install Flask for you.

Running scadmin.py startproject projectname will produce the following in the current directory::

- scandium-projectname
| - runapp.py
| - setup.py
\ - projectname
  | - __init__.py
  | - settings.py
  | - static
  | | - css
  | | - icons
  | \ - js
  | - templates
  |  \ - index.html
  \ views.py

If you've got your dependencies in order, python runapp.py will generate a Scandium 'hello world' application from a blank project.

Add views, templates and static content in the obvious places.

You can override the default configuration by modifying settings.py. Available settings and defaults are as follows:

Debug flag for the Scandium app. Enables

Default: True

Sets the debug flag on the Flask app. Enables in-browser tracebacks etc.

Default: True

Port to listen for HTTP connections.

Default: 8080

Defines where to find static resources. Can be a filepath or a tuple of (package, directoryname). You must use the latter format if you want to deploy your application using a compressed or bundled distributable. The default value for this setting is defined in settings.py because the project name is required.

Default: (projectname, 'static')

Defines where to find templates. Can be a filepath or a tuple of (package, directoryname). You must use the latter format if you want to deploy your application using a compressed or bundled distributable. The default value for this setting is defined in settings.py because the project name is required.

Default: (projectname, 'templates')

If enabled, views may return twisted deferred objects. The response will be returned to the browser when the deferred fires.

Default: False

Defines the image to use for the application icon. Can be a filepath or a tuple of (package, directoryname). You must use the latter format if you want to deploy your application using a compressed or bundled distributable.

Default: None

Title to be displayed in the browser window. Adding a <title></title> tag to your HTML page won't affect this.

Default: "Scandium Browser"

Size and position for the application window, specified as (x, y, width, height).

Default: (100, 100, 800, 500)

It is possible to define custom settings in settings.py for use in your web application code. Just do from projectname import sc and reference the settings using sc.conf.SETTING_NAME.

The template project layout includes a setup.py file that will generate an executable using py2exe when invoked. Running python setup.py py2exe will generate a dist directory containing::

- projectname.exe
- QtGui4.dll
- QtNetwork4.dll
- QtCore4.dll
\ - imageformats
  | - qgif4.dll
  | - qjpeg4.dll
  | - qsvg4.dll
  ...

The Qt4 DLLs and imageformats formats directory need to be there for image processing support. I can't figure out how to embed them inside the executable, so you need to distribute this whole directory.

Target machines must have the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable installed, available from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=29