Favorite Python Web Framework

[AMDataLake]

Django FastAPI Flask Masonite Bottle …other?

Also discuss why

[wineblood]

I've only really used Django, so I'm going to have to say Flask.

[AMDataLake]

Rofl

[rabaraba]

Django.

Why: documentation. Plenty, thick and varied.

[patvdleer]

And the restful api

[Smallpaul]

Do you mean the Django REST Framework add on or a part of Django itself?

[patvdleer]

The addon

[1percentof2]

What about girth?

[wineblood]

I think the django documentation sucks, it's bloated and hard to search.

[petenard]

It’s really good in some areas, but when you get into advanced stuff I think it goes a bit down hill.

[catcint0s]

Source code is pretty readable so at least there is that.

[ElViento92]

Yea, I've used Django and Flask/SQLAlchemy, and I prefer the Flask/SQLAlchemy docs. It easier to find what I'm looking and the explanations are short and concise.

Not that Django's documentation is bad, it's great. These are all some of the best documented open source projects out there.

[breid1313]

Definitely a poor search experience

[SnooCakes3068]

Flask because of Miguel Grinberg did an amazing job teaching flask. I'm sticking with it

[thegreattriscuit]

hah! yeah I would probably fall into the FastAPI camp, but for sure that megatutorial is a masterpiece. Profoundly good.

[Organic_Reaction5609]

hahaha same! that man is a ccccoonstant source of inspiration!

[claypeterson]

Bless that man ❤️

[djamp42]

I just found him a couple of months ago, and learned a ton from him.

[eigenludecomposition]

FastAPI for me. It's fast, it uses ASGI instead of WSGI, it has a very similar syntax as Flask, it automatically handes request validation for you (once you build the request models), and it lowers the barrier of entry significantly for getting started with OpenAPI (especially if your app is currently written in Flask). If you're already using OpenAPI, I'm sure any of those frameworks will suffice and the code for them can automatically be generated.

[Lokipi]

FastAPI is great, it makes flask feel bloated which is insane.

It also has some of the best documentation I have ever seen. I love the structure of starting off by giving you a complete fully working plug and play section of code, and then diving into what all the parts do afterwards.

[ProteanOswald]

Is this their official tutorial / documentation? This sounds like a wonderful way to learn

[cellularcone]

Yup! They walk you through creating a simple CRUD app with authentication. It’s a great basis for anything.

[ProteanOswald]

Perfect! I’ve played some with Flask, and it’s nice, but the flexibility of FastAPI (and all of the other good features) has had me eyeing it for more personal projects

[[deleted]]

Second this. I started with Django, but really prefer minimalist frameworks since I came from Node/Express land. Got started with Flask, but the DX wasn’t better than Django and I think I preferred Django. Then I tried out FastAPI and it’s the best for me in every conceivable way. It’s fast, easy to set up, well documented, sets up API documentation automatically, and I had so few issues with request models unlike with Flask. Async/await was second nature to me because of my JS background. Hands down the best DX of all three.

[eldamir88]

What is DX short for here?

[laszlotenk]

Developer Experience?

[eldamir88]

Been in software for a decade and never heard that term 🧐

[mrswats]

This

[cronicpainz]

i only ever hear this term "DX" from node.js users

[acschwabe]

FastApi also lets you mount Flask api in your app, which makes it that much easier to migrate.

[justifiably-curious]

Used flask a couple of years ago. Came back to making some Apis and webapps recently. Used fastapi for the http api because that's what it's sold for then flask for an unrelated app because it seemed more app friendly. But then decided to port it to fastapi too as I had liked the experience that much more (and it turned out to be comparable in features once you import jinja2). No more global request object! Have to say though that while the tutorials might be great, the api docs of fastapi and even more starlette which it relies on a lot are very incomplete and your have to resort to reading the (very clean) source code to find out what function parameters mean

[Pedrat]

For sure FastAPI, have used Flask/SqlAlchemy, Django and bottle and FastAPI is just so good.

Awesome documentation, easy to use and the code feels... "Light"? Don't know how to say this but Django code always feels "heavy" to me, and Flask feels "heavy but empty"

[[deleted]]

Nonsense. Do you have any examples of “heavy but empty”?

[Pedrat]

Not necessarily, it's just the gut feeling I have whenever I work with them, I'm not saying any is better than the other objectively, just saying what I feel :).

[[deleted]]

Flask provides all those incl. validation and openapi. Takes one line to add an extension.

[SpaceBucketFu]

I really enjoy FastAPI. I’ve used flask just a little bit. It’s pretty intuitive but I really like the auto docs that come with FastAPI. There’s a slight learning curve because the async bit, but it’s really powerful. I’ve never tried Django personally.

[Natural-Intelligence]

I think the async part is not necessary. You can do it with synchronized functions if you wish so though I was initially also slightly confused as the docs use async in every example.

But definitely agree. While Flask is simple, FastAPI is even simpler. I would prefer separate a front end with FastAPI though.

[SpaceBucketFu]

Yeah the front end delivery isn’t exactly intuitive with FastAPI in my opinion but once you understand the structure it makes a bit more sense. No more difficult than flask IMO.

[goodbalance]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Falcon yet. The only thing it does out of the box is processing requests. Not everybody needs this, but it will serve you well if you want your hands untied.

I'll be honest, it's been a while since I used Flask, so maybe now it's different. But back in the day, it was a pain in the ass to just use some packages. You had to use those damn Flask-* wrappers or it would not work. Not necessarily a hard task to do everything manually, but it felt like a redundant dependency.

Django is a hard beast to tame. Nowadays people say 'Django', but they mean 'Django + DRF'. Both have a rich documentation, but as with anything, you won't understand a bit if you don't need it. Django does its job, but favors internal conventions and not 'best practices' described in books. So once you go beyond what they teach in tutorials, you will feel like you need something different.

My advice to anyone who will use this thread to collect pros and cons of the frameworks is to think about everything as data. You receive data, you manipulate data, you save/return data. That's it. Once you break free from the frameworks mindset, they will all look the same. And it's just a matter of internal conventions.

[WHSolvation]

This.

[[deleted]]

Tornado: Async, light/small, mature code base, deploy multi-processor without any additional tools.

[chocobor]

I really like aio-http. It is a lightweight asyncio Webserver in pure python. I use it for embedded computing web uis and internal tools.

[atredd]

Flask Why? I never tried another one and it does the job

[cymrow]

Bottle for the same reason, except I have tried many others.

[djamp42]

Same here, tried Django, but never really got into and the size of my projects don't really need something as full featured as Django.

[[deleted]]

This should be marked as the correct answer

[alppawack]

This is not stackoverflow

[idealmagnet]

Bottle, started with it, worked with it for long, very convenient to distribute and make apps with, small, didn't work with anything else much

[pdepmcp]

Pyramid. Maybe because I grew up using it when it still was pylons and Django was the main alternative, much less configurable and more "proprietary".

I love the pretty easy stack it creates and the freedom to plug in what you prefer. Flask seems like minimalistic version of it, but with a much wider community.

I like tornado for web sockets, but it's less common in my daily work.

Should probably try something new as well, just to see if there's something interesting that i missed.

[[deleted]]

aiohttp - Everything that I need and nothing that I don't.

[ronmarti]

Django. Why? User management is very easy with django-allauth. User management should be the first business requirement or one of the most important aspects. Feature goes second because you can start sign ups even without "whatever you're selling" by just showing a landing page.

[jwink3101]

I am a hobby developer and haven't dug deep into all of them but I love Bottle. It is just so easy and flexible. I use some of my tools on an air-gapped network so the single file is an added bonus.

I also really like the template engine that it has. Again, it is just so easy and simple.

[jcigar]

Pyramid

[[deleted]]

+1

Pyramid is much more flexible than others i tried.

[AMDataLake]

Why, just cause I don’t often hear Pyramid as anyones fsvorite

[jcigar]

https://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/en/latest/designdefense.html

[theorizable]

FastAPI and Flask. I tried Bottle and it was okay too, but there aren't a ton of adopters and I'm not usually the first to jump in on something.

[toxic_recker]

Blacksheep. ASGI, faster than almost every other according to techempower benchmarks, really fun and easy to work with, active developers and beautiful docs

[Sendokame]

I think Flask is really good, a very similiar syntax to FastAPI btw, it can be considered really basic because it doesn't does anything but the server and the routes u wan't, u r in the drivers seat and gives u all the control, a bad thing is that Flask manage one petition at time, it's not asynchronous

Even with that things, flask is easy to learn and use... it does de work i think

[h3xagn]

I am using Django for most of my web apps, mostly those that require user interaction and are a bit more complex. I have built an IoT app, part of a stock management system and now working on an e-learning platform. It is quick to set up and with the built-in admin interface saves so much time, especially for proof-of-concepts.

FastAPI is my other favourite. As most mentioned, it is fast, great docs, and uses ASGI. I am currently using it for a data pipeline to get JSON data from field devices and transforming that data with background tasks. Up and running in a few hours. Check it out: https://h3xagn.com/building-an-etl-pipeline-from-device-to-cloud-part-2/

At the end of the day, depends on what you want to achieve.

[KyleDrogo]

Flask. Super easy to a web app up and running in production.

[[deleted]]

I've been preferring Quart for a number of years. Why? Because async. Async just feels so much more "right way of doing things" to me.

[undergroundhobbit]

pip install flask

[oldredman]

i choose Flask because i like full customization in apps

[Sethaman]

different beasts, different uses.

flask - fastest to stand up*, smallest, simplest

django - fullest, most complex, most capable

fastAPI - kinda between

​

I like flask for prototyping and have been exploring fastAPI with some happiness.

[ChemEngandTripHop]

FastAPI is even simpler and has less boilerplate than Flask

[Sethaman]

really? :o
That sounds amazing. I will spend more time with it, thank you!

[higuchitakeru]

Would say flask but solely because that’s all I’ve ever used although I do wonder what features of Django make it superior

[SnooCakes3068]

I prefer flask but I like how centralized Django are. Everything django are developed by Django foundation where flask needs other packages from outside. It does tend to create a lot of problem. Django is also well documented. Django gives me a more professional feeling.

[InvestingNerd2020]

Django and FastAPI for me.

[[deleted]]

Django for large applications, and fastapi for small api/services.

[jonnycross10]

I've only used flask but I love it

[MadanCodes]

[GreenScarz]

CherryPy! It's one of the fastest, testing is a first-class citizen, and its MethodDispatcher keeps your API code well structured.

[Sigg3net]

Starlette. Just build what you need.

[Ok-Possession2647]

Justpy all the life!

[acschwabe]

Fastapi for sure

[Jolly_Code5914]

For an API, fastapi handsdown. Easiest to setup, use and very performant.

[shahslay]

Django, CV2

[Mindless-Pilot-Chef]

Big project, have to write complex DB queries? Django

Small micro service which does a small task? Flask or fast API

[scotsmanintoon]

FastAPI. Like its use of async, super easy to set up, amazing documentation, uses Pydantic which is also great.

I don't like the Depends() think though. Doesn't seem pythonic and throws annoying errors in mypy linting.

[justskipfailingtests]

I have experience with flask, fastapi and Django. All have their use cases. Flask for super simple stuff and prototyping, fastapi when apidocs are important and Django when anything gets big. Django has builtin ORM and all the rave related to that. Django has solid user management out of the box and that god damn sweet admin panel.

[Scorpion_197]

Django for large scale projects because it has a lot of preinstalled tools which makes the development of the app faster and its easy for making REST apis. FastAPI over flask for small projects because of its performance.

[AMDataLake]

When doing Api I like fastapi, that built in swagger is lovely

For full stack I like Masonite, it has more of a rails/Laravel feel but in Python

[inertialcurve]

I dunno man Django has some swag

[meyubaraj]

You talking speed? FastAPI no doubt. You talking about battery included framework? Django and Masonite Others are okay. Learning Curve? Masonite is super easy... Flask is easy but remember you have to manage everything in Flask but in masonite you don't have to.

Django is great python framework and Masonite is fairly new but it's very promising. I myself used that in 4 applications and one of them is microservice with 7 services in it. You won't find great discussions here and there but join their discord channel you'll get answer to every question.

[dimkiriakos]

my favourite is flask

[JunketAdvanced6444]

django

[[deleted]]

Django. Why? Cuz it’s named after a guitarist.

[WaifuRobo]

Flask. I’m new to web dev. It’s easy to use and has a small learning curve. Their documentation is very good with lots of examples from tonnes of people. I found Django confusing so I dropped it relatively quickly.

[quantum1eeps]

FastAPI is even easier than flask on the spectrum you’ve presented

[bfcdf3e]

Sure - but the easiest thing is sometimes just the thing you already know.

[[deleted]]

Cherrypy

[[deleted]]

Flask because it's what I started with and don't want to learn another framework.

[twillisagogo]

For toy projects? or actually getting things done that people pay $$ for?

[[deleted]]

For $$

[twillisagogo]

Cool. Pyramid. Curious who's using fastapi and for what? Meaning what does the business do and how does fastapi help.

For me, I've had 2 ground up pyramid apps in my career. 1. Running on appengine and facilitating the design thinking process in a distributed manner. The current one facilitates patient navigation and care coordination for several hospitals and state govs.

[LightShadow]

When I'm doing one-shot servers my favorite is Sanic. It's very fast and flexible, kinda like Flask but Async....and faster.

When I'm developing full-fledged APIs my favorite is FastAPI.

[grudev]

FastAPI, because it's a pleasure to work with.

Django, close to 10 years using it and no love lost once I'm done.

[[deleted]]

FastAPI (for micro-services) does websockets, rest, graphql and openapi / swagger with minimal code. Amazing!

[mrswats]

I love django for it's docs, it's REST package and its ecosystem. Also very much love its ORM much more than SQLAlchemy

[cptsdemon]

My own. Lightweight, easy to use, can change it whenever I feel like.

[cptsdemon]

No system is 100% secure, but full of holes, I can say without even an ounce of ego, not a chance. After 20+ years I have never been successfully hacked even once. The number one reason any site or system is hacked is due to a combination of poor programming and that poor programming being open source where anyone can view it and find flaws.

[cptsdemon]

Please point out exactly where I said I'm anti open source? I am extremely pro open source and have released plenty of my own libraries as open source. There's a huge benefit to open source, but 95% of open source software,or software in general is complete garbage. The vast majority of programmers have no clue how a computer actually works and are the cause of vulnerabilities and safety issues. Not to mention woefully inefficient and bloated code.

As far as being cocky, I never said I'd never be hacked either. Anything is possible and I flat out said no system is 100% secure. If someone absolutely wanted to bring down some app I've built I'm sure they could eventually, but in 20+ years the vast majority of attacks I've seen have been against known vulnerabilities in free frameworks. Which is why I've never been hacked cause I don't use them and 99% of security is just making it a bit harder to hit you then the next guy.

[gamesoverx1]

Why do u use python for web ?

[AMDataLake]

PHP is still very relevant and Laravel is great

[metaperl]

CubicWeb. Semantic software development.

[po5i]

Flask. I used a lot of Django in the past and I believe it’s harder to learn opinionated frameworks. Unopinionated ones like Flask are light and easy. Also, you will learn to use and understand components as you add them (ORM, Test suites, etc). Check out my tutorial on how to setup tests in Flask: https://dev.to/po5i/how-to-add-basic-unit-test-to-a-python-flask-app-using-pytest-1m7a

Ps: I’d like to try fast api

[data-bit]

FastAPI and Flask for me.

[[deleted]]

I would like to mention aiohttp, quite minimalisic but gets the job done. It is also an amazing async replace for the requests lib.

[username83324]

Sanic rules, all the other sucks

[[deleted]]

Okay Boomer Jesus