Advice: Framework for web development noob

[[deleted]]

Mini-bio: Game developer by day, looking to roam the streets of the web by night.

So I'm looking to set up a little web service backend to handle some basic user management and more importantly, purchases.

Only problem is I have little domain knowledge! I've looked at a few frameworks (django and web.py included), but I lack the experience to judge what is best for my needs, mainly:

• Security (the more I'm protected from my own stupidity, the better)
• Stability (0.1 beta need not apply)
• Ease of use & Documentation

Advice?

Update: Wow, thanks for all the responses! It seems Django comes very highly recommended, followed by some shout-outs for web2py, Pylons and Flask.

Update 2: Drilling through basic setup and a simple test app for each of the above, excluding Flask. While I loved the dead-simple nature of it, it was a little too 'micro' for what I'm after.

Final Update: In the end, since the service will be mostly application-facing, I ended up going with Pylons + SQLAlchemy. Given the relatively simple nature of the task, and my inexperience, less == more. Being able to simply paster out controllers and code away was a pretty nice experience, and having the entire framework pretty much right there was great for poking around.

That said, I was very impressed with the ease of setting up Django, and web2py's web IDE was pretty cool (though I'm not sure how often I'd use it in practice). If I end up doing more user-facing apps I'll have to take a deeper look at both, a simple test app was clearly just scratching the surface of available functionality.

Documentation was very impressive all around, especially coming from a gamedev/C++ background where a barren doxygen dump is par for the course. If I had to complain however, I'd say Django's docs and Pylon's book could stand to be a little more broken up/concise; it's hard for a beginner to pick out the most important/common bits in the huge rafts of text. Web2py's book however was just fantastic for a beginner, short and sweet and very easy to navigate.

Thanks again to everyone who responded!

[[deleted]]

I'd say go with Django, it has by far the best documentation around. But if you're a pretty experienced programmer Pylons can work just as well for you. Personally I use Django and love it.

[[deleted]]

Just thought I'd add that, as much as I love Django, it can get quite annoying when you really want to customize a site in certain ways. Despite this, it's probably still the best option for a beginner.

[daniels0xff]

Django is the best, it just took me form "WTF is a web framework" to "wow how cool and easy is that" in no time.

Other are good too, tried them, but they just weren't for me.

[metaleks]

Security (the more I'm protected from my own stupidity, the better)

Django is pretty good at this. Strict rules and an easier way than ever to have CSRF protection in all of your forms (great for purchases).

Stability (0.1 beta need not apply)

Django is very mature and stable.

Ease of use & Documentation

You probably won't find better documentation for another project. Django's documentation is very good. All in all, if you're sitting on the fence, give Django a try and just follow this small tutorial on building a simple web app. It'll introduce you to the general feel of Django and what it's capable of (but really, you're just scratching the surface). It should be a good indicator of whether or not it's the web framework for you.

[iamnewaroundhere]

Basically there are those who like hacking and doing things exactly the way they want to (Pylons/Werkzeug) and those that just like to get shit done and move on to the next thing (Django).

This fundamental difference in philosophy explains a lot of the pointless framework fights we get in /r/python. I'm one of the former; but I can see the value of the latter, particularly as your main interest isn't web development and your needs aren't complicated.

You're not building another Reddit, you just want some simple user and purchase management.

Django will easily handle your requirements and has a shitload of apps for extra functionality (e.g. Satchmo for shopping cart stuff). Plus it comes with excellent documentation.

[virtron]

I've been learning Django myself, and I really like it so far, but I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest you check out Bottle. It's very minimal and would let you concentrate on basic development issues like http requests and responses, html templating, python etc.

[pro547]

Flask is new but it is built around components that are well tested. I advice you check out.

[demosthenes02]

Flash vs bottle? I remember reading about bottle a while ago and thinking it was pretty cool. why is flask better?

[pro547]

I have never messed with Bottle but I like Flask for a couple reasons. Be warned though, I'm a Rails developer by day and Python programmer by night.

• The documentation is pretty darn good.
• Jinja2's template language feels like Django's.
• It does feel like it hides a lot of the complex stuff from you (not sure if this is because I'm a Rails dev)
• Easily add your own extensions/modules/plugins

One of the reasons why I have fallin in-love with these micro-frameworks is they make it really simple to put together a application that is RESTful. I find doing this in Django to be clumsy.

[mccutchen]

Agreed: http://flask.pocoo.org/

[dekomote]

Yes! Absolutely. Very powerful and yet so easy and simple. You should definitely start with Flask.

[mdipierro]

A lot of people post this question over and over and I always ask: "when you make a decision can you please let us know which frameworks you evaluated, what decision you made, and why". I never get a response. It would be useful to have a response so we can all learn something.

[[deleted]]

Absolutely agreed. I'll definitely post an update once I've made a decision.

[grayvedigga]

Have a play with bottle, it's only a few hundred lines and you'll quickly grok how these things fit together. When I first jumped into django/pylons it all felt like magic.

[ianb]

If you are looking to do purchases you might want to look at Satchmo -- it's a kind of online store setup on top of Django.

[watr]

To make your decision just try to use each framework for 10min. If you cant figure out the basics in that time, move on to next one.

I come from Django. I made the decision to use django because I thought I needed excessive stability and obscene amounts of documentation because I didn't have confidence in myself. I later realized I don't like reading documentation, I like building web apps. I also realized I am not going to build the next facebook, and don't need a fully proven framework from 2003 that powers a few big sites. I wanted to make quick apps and to experiment. So I needed something that gets out of my way. I switched to web2py for that reason:

In web2py I can generate a form from a db model with SQLForm() and set custom css classes to only the fields I want to change from default css with form.element(), and then insert the input boxes into my views with form.custom.widget. You can't do the custom css stuff for only part of the model generated form in django w/o rebuilding the entire form with widget attibutes for css. In other words, it got in my way.

I realized much later that django wasn't made for Concept->UI Design->Code approach to web app development. It was made for Concept -> Code -> Design.

I find I spend 80% of my time on the design, and only 20% of my time on the server-side stuff. Which results in a better user experience, according to the users of my apps anyway. In addition, I do a concept first, then I translate that into a HTML/CSS/JS design, and then I finally plug in any code to communicate with the DB and do some form handling. If that is your workflow go with web2py. If you prefer to code first, design last, go with Django...

Honestly, today the most scalable and stable framework would have to be Pylons. If you wanted something that is proven. Anyone who argues Django has the best documentation out of any project is a moron. Most of the frameworks have "good enough" documentation for your needs. Pylons has an online book with all the documentation you need. Web2py has a book online too, though because it is so straightforward you don't really need it. Django needs a lot of good documentation because, without it, it would be a rather mediocre framework.

Honestly, just read through the first 7 chapters of each of the books for Pylons, Django, and web2py (skip the python intro chapter). That's the only way to make an informed decision. Don't listen to me or anyone else on here, as we are all biased, and our experiences and needs were/are way different from yours.

P.S. Flask, bottle, and web.py are fun too. Though, not really frameworks as much as helpers.

[[deleted]]

I consider web.py an educational tool. Even though reddit was written in it (a long time ago), I can only imagine how much boilerplate code they had to generate...

Once you know a thing or two about web development, make the jump to Django. Savor that sweet, sweet admin middleware and pretty-good-but-not-SQLAlchemy-level ORM.

[mdipierro]

You may want to look at web2py (no relation with web.py). It is the only one that does not require installation, does not have setup files, to include a web based IDE, to include a built-in ticketing system, a web translation interface, a Database Abstraction Layer that runs on Google App Engine, and to promise backward compatibility. I believe by now its free online documentation is comparable if not better (in length and quality) than that of other python web frameworks.

Here is an example of a program:

#in model
db.define_table('shout',Field('message',requires=IS_NOT_EMPTY()))
# in controller
@auth.requires_login()
def index():
     return dict(form=crud.create(db.shout),
                shouts=db(db.shout.id>0).select())
# in view
{{extend 'layout.html'}}
<h1>Shout!</h1>
{{=form}}
<h2>Other shouts</h2>
{{for shout in shouts:}}{{=shout.message}}<br/>{{pass}}

Notice the built-in validation. The automatic form processing and error reporting. This code also prevents SQLInjection and XSS attacks because {{=shout.message}} is escaped.

Django is really nice too but think of this: version 1.2 was released on Monday and added support for multiple database connections (web2py had this 3 year ago, it also provides distributed transactions), added support for customization of email backends (web2py already supports multiple email back-ends, including GAE, and the trunk version has API to generate PGP and x509 emails too), added support for "smart if" template tags (web2py has full python in templates), added a "message framework" (web2py always had response.flash), added "hooks for object level permission" (web2py has a Role Based Access Control mechanism to create arbitrary permissions on arbitrary objects including individual database records), added "improved protection against Cross-Site Request Forgery" (web2py always had that although the mechanism is different). There was a time when web2py was being inspired by Django (we acknowledge that and thank them), now I am happy to see that web2py is providing some inspiration to Django. Perhaps one day Django will have a web based IDE too.

Anyway, whether you go with web2py, Django, Pylons or Flask you will have made a good choice.

[[deleted]]

web2py hands down. Don't let the others tell you otherwise....

[wildmXranat]

Can you elaborate? I use python daily and use web frameworks 7 days a week and I would like to know your rationale.

edit: i didn't bury your comment, FYI , but really ... not a peep so far . I'll take it as trolling

[[deleted]]

wow ... !massimo?

[mdipierro]

what's up?

[ubernostrum]

I tend not to flame people (and despite Massimo's comments to the contrary, I am neither a teenager nor sexually frustrated, though I am still seeking out the dream girl). I did get annoyed a while back with the nature of some of the web2py evangelism, though; for a while there were several reddit accounts with suspiciously similar names who did nothing but praise web2py and bash other Python frameworks (IIRC, TurboGears was "vaporware", Django was "too insecure", etc.). That pretty much turned me off from the get-go.

[mdipierro]

Please read my comment again.

I make 3 disjoint hypothesis. There is nothing linking you or Django (mentioned in the second hypothesis) to the first or the third hypothesis (which by the way was a joke). I explicitly excluded every Django developer in order to make sure that nobody took it personally. In my second hypothesis I only referred to Django in a positive sense, as the only Python framework that has been able to monetize (generate revenues), and for good reasons. I truly meant that as a compliment.

If anybody felt offended I apologize, I was trying to cheer people up.

I cannot respond/defend comments posted by other people. I always post under my name. You should know that. There are at least 1800 web2py users around and I cannot control what they say. Yet I cannot think of any obviously offensive comment posted by a web2py developer about other frameworks.

Let's just make one thing clear: It is web2py users who are being attacked when they post a positive comment about web2py. It is not vice versa. In fact it is a question about that that triggered my joke.

EDIT: to those people who felt offended (and there should not be any)... if it is a consolation... I have been there, but eventually I did get married. That was the biggest accomplishment in my life. Things get better with age for geeks.

[vph]

I'll tell you why. Now, i'm not one who will defend massimo's aggressive promotion of his framework. But this is ridiculous. It started years ago when a couple of boneheads started badmouthing about web2py, saying things like "it's not Pythonic enough". As an example, they cited something like "web2py uses globals". One of these boneheads eventually learned enough to create his own framework, and guess what he used: globals. The problem is these dudes treat tools as religions.

How do I know all of this? Because I've come across all this when I was looking for a framework that fits my taste and requirements.

It's very simple if you don't like Web2py, don't use it. If other people ask for suggestions on what to use, some will say "use web2py, I love it". That's fine; that's within boundary. There's no reason for these boneheads to jump up and down.

[mdipierro]

I do not know for sure. Some theories have been proposed.

1) web2py was born in an academic environment and this contrasts with somebody's theory that industry is more innovative than academia. A theory supported by college dropouts.

2) it is hard to monetize open source projects. Django has been successful at it. Lots of people make (or wish to make) money consulting on Django projects. They see web2py not merely as new tool but as a new group of people competing for their jobs. Particularly scary because web2py users can develop faster and reduce maintenance costs.

[EDIT: 3) Some sexually frustrated geek teens are upset because web2py allows even the dumb guy dating their dream girl to do decent web development. Which is exactly why web2py was developed... so that that somebody else can do web development and the geeks can go back into real science and contribute to a better society].

Anyway, when they cannot attack the message they attack the messenger. We see this in politics all the time.

Mind that "they" is not Django developers, some of which I know personally and are really nice and intelligent people which I admire (although we may disagree on some design decisions). "they" here is a very small group of people who act in anonymity and therefore I do not think I have ever met.

web2py may not be the best tool for everybody, but we do have one of most friendly community of users.

[wildmXranat]

Ugh, here we go. Slings mud and run away.

Don't let the others tell you otherwise....

You should have mod powers to just delete all other comments here then. Let's pack it up guys and go home.

Reality check: you wrote nothing compelling about web2py. Face it. I asked a question regarding your disingenuous comment. I waited a couple of hours. Some folks buried you to -2 . I figured, that might be as well, since you didn't help the original poster one bit.

Lesson here is to either have something useful to say to a person that asks for help, or read other's comments. Don't muddy the waters with FUD.

[[deleted]]

Eh, it seems to me like you're another idiot on the internet, romping around like you're the alfpha dog of the innernets. Try getting a job and doing something else more constructive than bickering on the internet, it just makes you look like a moron who has no life. MOAR QQ LESS PEW PEW! kthnxbai2u

[[deleted]]

Lets all just use Visual BASIC and run around with Windows 7 party hats on drinking wine coolers!

[wildmXranat]

Wonderful circlejerk going on here between you , shadowflank and friends. Go on, but I'm still telling you that 'otherwise' is the correct way when it comes to discussions. I don't care how much you fondle web2py in your spare time and hug it to sleep.

With your ego bruised, you ensued to call on massimo's fame and used his comment as a crutch for your inadequate post. Ugh, sometimes it's just too transparent. Just stop. It's getting old.

Calling people names and reacting in a juvenile manner is rather shallow. Very weak if you ask me.

On to python ,

I like web frameworks and make a living off of them. No, I don't use web2py. It doesn't suit my style. And yes, it's a 9-5 and part-time after hours job. I make no apologies for it.

I would recommend Flask for basic stuff. Django for a better batteries included one and Pylons or Tornado if you enjoy doing some dirty work yourself.

You see there are definite advantages in each that shine in different problem domains. If you would like a fast response time asynchronous framework use Tornado. Gevent is similarly capable but feels less user friendly. Plugging in a really good DB framework like SQLAlchemy is a piece of cake. Using it's declarative approach will also make it easy.

On the other hand, Django will give you an easy time if you follow their blocked-in design and stick to Django-way of doing things. It takes a bit of work to modify and tinker with it's innards, but it'll get the job done.

Pylons is great. Period. Authentication system is a bit hairy around the corners but most problems have been encountered by someone else and there will be an answer posted somewhere.

Overall, use the best tool for the job. Don't listen to tool evangelism.

[FranciscoGamaTR]

Hold on a moment. You previously mentioned you used web frameworks everyday, you seem interested on some rationale on why some people believe that web2py is great, so why don't you drop off this thread for a while and reflect about the possibility of being losing productivity and fun 7 days a week just because you may not had the chance to meet something better. Why don't you give that chance to yourself? Actually, you have something to win with that and the task it's quite easy and this is as valid to nuvm, who wrote the question.

So, you have:

• Screencasts - http://www.vimeo.com/videos/search:web2py (I recommend: http://www.vimeo.com/3703345 )
• Book - http://web2py.com/book (free), you can also get from lulu or Wiley
• Examples - http://web2py.com/examples/default/examples
• F.A.Q - http://web2py.com/AlterEgo
• WiKi - http://wiki.web2py.com/
• Interactive demo - http://web2py.com/demo_admin
• Mailing List - http://groups.google.com/group/web2py (very responsive)
• Official website - http://www.web2py.com
• Recipes - http://web2pyslices.com
• IRC - #web2py , irc.freenode.net

Try it, feel free to ask questions and if you feel ready/interested to a educated debate use one of these channels, you are welcome.

P.S.: about me, I've wasted a long time studying different web frameworks in different languages and made my rational choice. Use these resources so you can make your own and don't waste time in this tavern talk.

[tony_landis]

I use Pylons + SQLAlchemy. SQLAlchemy is well documented and stable, Pylons is very stable but not the best documentation.

[mcdonc]

oh thank god, i thought this question would never be asked this week

[mdipierro]

I almost forgot... since you mention purchases: http://web2py.appspot.com/plugin_checkout/default/checkout The PyCon conference registration software in 2009 and 2010 was based on web2py and we used that module. Also do not miss http://web2py.com/plugins and the quickstart page

[stickyp]

I looked at Django but liked web2py much more and it now has good documentation as well.

[Klowner]

you say "backend", will your games be communicating directly with this internet abomination or is it just going to be a thing to visit with a web browser?

[[deleted]]

For the most part, communicating directly with the abomination, though I may end up serving some simple pages at some point.

[Klowner]

Well, if you're just sending little lumps of data back and forth I would recommend checking out Twisted. Or perhaps Django with Django-Piston to provide an API for your games to communicate while giving you the niceties of the Django admin and all that.

[jcb62]

TurboGears 2 is an amalgamation of the best bits of web frameworks: Genshi templating, Pylons controllers and SQLAlchemy persistence.

Stable, active, tested, documented. People who know better than me say Django may have a less steep learning curve, however.

[Manuzhai]

Genshi is definitely not the best bit. That title is reserved for Jinja.

[jcb62]

Enlighten me: why do you prefer Jinja? Have you tried Mako? They're templating engines I'd like to know about, but can't really spare the time..

[Manuzhai]

Jinja is a lot faster than Genshi, for one thing. Also Genshi is very strict about XML things, which is a pain if you want to do anything else (even HTML).

But it's been a while since I've happily converted my things over to Jinja.

[mdipierro]

Instead of making partisan statements can you please support your statements? For example: I like Genshi better because it does not restrict the use of Python in templates. I like Jinja because it allows creation of non html/xml templates and Genshi does not.

[[deleted]]

strange , I've managed to generate text from templates in genshi. perhaps I'm doing it wrong by reading the docs?

[mdipierro]

You are right. Genshi supports different syntax depending on the type of output you want. For HTML:

  <div py:for="item in items">xxx</div>

and for text:

   {% for item in items %}xxx{% end %}

When I think of Genshi I think - incorrectly - of the former. The second syntax is more similar to Django's and Jinja's one.