---
id: paste
version: "3.10.1"
license: MIT
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: dormant
---

# Paste — Tools for using a Web Server Gateway Interface stack

License: permissive · Maintenance: dormant · Downloads: 1.3M/mo

## What it is and what it does

Paste is a collection of WSGI middleware and utilities for building, testing, and debugging web applications. It provides components for request/response manipulation, URL dispatching, authentication (HTTP Basic and Digest, signed cookies, CAS), session management, static file serving, and error handling. The package also includes testing fixtures for WSGI applications and command-line tools, plus debugging filters for exception tracking and HTML validation.

The package is in maintenance mode and no longer actively developed—the maintainers explicitly state that patches are accepted only for security issues or major problems, and recommend that new projects consider more modern alternatives. It requires Python 3 and has a single runtime dependency on setuptools.

Use it for:

- Testing WSGI applications in-process using the testing fixture in paste.fixture.
- Dispatching requests to multiple WSGI applications based on URL prefixes using paste.urlmap.
- Implementing HTTP authentication via paste.auth.
- Catching and formatting HTTP exceptions into proper responses with paste.httpexceptions.
- Debugging web applications by capturing print output with paste.debug modules.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

Paste provides WSGI middleware components for building web applications, including request/response utilities, authentication, sessions, error handling, and debugging tools.

No, unless you are maintaining an existing Paste-based application. The maintainers explicitly recommend using other options for new projects. The package is in dormant maintenance mode with infrequent releases and patches accepted only for security issues. For new WSGI development, consider alternatives.

## Install

pip install paste
uv add paste
poetry add paste

## Installing Paste

Before you install: Low install friction with only setuptools as a runtime dependency. However, the package is in dormant maintenance mode—the last release was 835 days ago, and the maintainers explicitly recommend considering other options for new projects.

License in practice: MIT license is permissive and imposes no significant restrictions on use or redistribution.

Quickstart:

pip install Paste

from paste.fixture import TestApp
from paste.httpexceptions import HTTPNotFound

app = TestApp(your_wsgi_app)
response = app.get('/')

Requires Python 3 or later; Python 2 is no longer supported as of release 3.7.0.

Verify before relying:

- Whether existing WSGI applications using Paste will continue to work with future Python versions given the dormant maintenance status.
- Whether the debugging and profiling features remain compatible with modern web frameworks.

## Package facts

- License: MIT (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: dormant
- Downloads: 1.3M/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

wsgi middleware, web application middleware, wsgi request response, http exception handling, wsgi testing fixture, web debugging tools, session management wsgi, wsgi, legacy-maintenance, web-middleware

[View on SkillFed](https://skillfed.io/packages/paste) · [View on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/paste/)