How ZServerSSL Works

Zope is a platform for building dynamic web sites. Out of the box, the Zope platform provides seven server types: http-server, ftp-server, webdav-source-server, persistent-cgi, fast-cgi, monitor-server and icp-server. Among these, the first three are more widely used; indeed, to use Zope at all, its http-server must be running. Zope's built-in servers are based on Medusa, a framework for implementing asynchronous socket programs in Python.

SSL, short for secure sockets layer, is a protocol for encrypted network connections. TLS, short for transport layer security, is an IETF-standardised SSL variant. In general discussion, one may consider SSL and TLS to be synonymous.

HTTPS is simply the running of HTTP over SSL. ZServerSSL derives from Zope's http-server to provide a https-server type for Zope, which handles SSL connectivity between a Zope client and itself; everything else that Zope does remains as is.

In code, Zope's http-server implements classes zhttp_handler, zhttp_server and zhttp_channel, in the source file HTTPServer.py. Analogously, ZServerSSL implements classes zhttps0_handler, zhttps_handler, zhttps_server and zhttps_channel in its https-server, in the file HTTPS_Server.py.