maki is a webserving framework built on Python and XML. It allows a web developer to send an XML input document through any number of steps, where each step is either a stylesheet transformation or a custom process. A processor that evaluates embedded Python code is included. The output of each step is passed as the input to the next step (similar to a Unix pipe). Additionally, the output of each processor step can be cached for a user-specified time period. All configuration is done in XML files that allow you to specify rules based on matching paths against Unix-style wildcard patterns or regular expressions.

maki provides a simple, flexible framework that allows you to use XML, XSLT, your webserver, and Python to serve web pages. The core maki engine is webserver-neutral. "Adapters" are provided that allow maki to be used in a few different environments, such as FastCGI, Webware, and mod_python. After installing maki, you configure your webserver such that requests for XML files are handled by maki. When maki receives such a request, it determines the path to the file, then searches through its configuration to find the first rule that matches that path. Each rule specifies one or more steps that are to be sequentially applied.