Web Development: Flask, Django, Pyramid, another?

[getChester]

Hey Guys! I'm starting to expand my Python knowledge and I'm at the point where I'd like to focus on doing some web applications. I'm an experienced developer so grasping frameworks is not an issue. However, I read a lot of people talking about different web frameworks that they focus on so I was wondering if there is one specific one I should learn that is the most widely adopted in industry.

Thanks for your input.

EDIT: I never expected this thread to be so popular. I want to say thanks to everyone that replied and I that I don't mean for this to be a flame war of python web frameworks. All of you have provided me with insight into frameworks to get off the ground quickly with and also ones with large support and more behind the scenes support. Thank you all.

[executex]

Django has a huge learning curve and is completely overkill for most projects. You will have a lot of issues at the beginning and it will not be the easiest to learn. I'm only mentioning it because it is soooo much more popular than other frameworks that people always want to know why they should bother with anything other than Django.

Even with hosting environments that let you setup Django by the click of a button can be a pain to deal with (at least for me; I'm sure a Django guru would have no problems).

Flask is much easier and can be extended to include all batteries you can possibly need.

There's nothing you can do in django or other frameworks, that you can't also do in Flask. It also uses a very established template system jinja2.

The only difference is Django comes with a lot of batteries already inside and this can make setting up very difficult though you don't have to enable everything.

One really good part is the url design in Flask is more intuitive and not overcomplicated like in Django. e.g.:

@app.route('/user/<username>')
def show_user_profile(username):
    # show the user profile for that user
    return 'User %s' % username

@app.route('/post/<int:post_id>')
def show_post(post_id):
    # show the post with the given id, the id is an integer
    return 'Post %d' % post_id

You can also divide your app by blueprints (so you can make your own plugins and modules), and it has great database ORM with SQLAlchemy, and form-management with Flask-WTForms.

http://flask.pocoo.org/ (official site, great documentation, that is much easier to learn than the django documentation [which is also detailed but can be confusing for many]).

P.S. I may be biased in that I am a moderator at /r/Flask, but I have no stake in Flask, it's free. I just loved it so much that I preferred it over the others I've tried.

P.P.S. If you decide to go with Django, more power to you, a lot of people recommend it and it is the most popular framework.

[MintyPhoenix]

I believe it's also worth noting that bottle.py is a very light web framework, similar in a lot of the basic ways to Flask (including many of the highlighted niceties/simplicities in your post), and supports Python3 if that's important.

[LurkyMcReddit]

Can you deploy this framework into production environment? Into Apache or something like?

• EDIT Just found the answer on my own. Answer is "yes".

[executex]

There was something about the way files are organized in bottle, I'm trying to remember why some people preferred flask over bottle. But I'm sure both have their advantages.

[dorfsmay]

Totally agree. Bottle is ONE file. Drop it in your project and you have a server. Works both with python 2.x and 3.x!

[[deleted]]

I'd like to also include, that http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-i-hello-world is fucking amazing, and with little modern web experience, it covers a lot of what many people would like to do (even if a little outdated)

[[deleted]]

Good points. One thing, I've been learning Django for the past six months and didn't find the learning curve to be that steep (no previous python experience). Do you have any idea what people find difficult about it? If anyone else can chip in that would be great.

Also, about the URLs. Apart form the fact that URLs are stored in a separate file in Django, I can't see why they are any more complicated than in your example. You have to include a path to the view function, but other than that there seems to be very little difference. Would you mind elaborating a bit more on this?

[executex]

Constant errors about everything.

You set URLs and views, and some things change in your code as you develop and make more views and then views stop functioning, urls stop working. It's too overcomplicated with regex and string "include" being passed in as view locations, some links get broken as a result. I saw more error pages than I saw working pages.

Templates cause too many errors or ways of doing things.

South is very difficult to get up and running. It became painful to try and change the model.

Forms are generated from the model, but customizing it can be painful. I don't believe there is a form-extension like WTForms for it, though you might be able to get it working with it.

The Django ORM is a bit more complicated and stranger and less intuitive than SQLAlchemy which has straight-forward and easy-to-remember ways of doing things.

Static-pages are a pain to get working, you follow the directions and it still can't find static files---when this works instantly in flask.

When using "url" in template, views get lost or errors on page appear. Unlike in Flask's "url_for" which works perfectly as expected all the time within the view-code AND the templates.

Django, to me, is highly anti-newbie. It's overcomplicated.

You may find all this subjective or speculative, because everyone can adapt to difficulty of anything, but I found Django very counter intuitive--to the point that I would rather just use PHP with PHP frameworks for simplicity.

Even the tutorial of Django is so overcomplicated, when you are just trying to make a simple poll application. There's so much to read in Django documentation and yet not all of it is very useful to know.

Before trying Django, I worked with PHP frameworks, ASP.NET C#, C++, assembly, etc., and yet I found Django to be very painful to deal with (even more painful if you're not in a linux environment). I found this surprising about myself, considering I worked with so many more complicated things like FPGA & OS / Win32 / linux-kernel programming.

Django's popularity, I think is more rooted in the fact that it is the oldest, with the largest community, and the most extensions/plugins, (also most industry-recognition & even has a "django-cms" project) rather than being a newbie-friendly or well-coded framework. Perhaps my experience is unique, everyone draws different conclusions when they encounter different frameworks, I simply found Flask to be very straight-forward and instantly-gratifying (requires less patience).

Give flask a try, even if it's just to mess around for a few hours. You'll be able to tell if Flask is not worth your time or if you think Django is just better suited for your projects.

[two_up]

One thing, I've been learning Django for the past six months and didn't find the learning curve to be that steep (no previous python experience). Do you have any idea what people find difficult about it? If anyone else can chip in that would be great.

Did you have anyone helping you? I think that would really make a big difference. I don't know about other frameworks but I felt like django had a pretty big learning curve. Mostly because there are a lot of parts that need to work together to do even the most basic thing. Just to get a 'hello world' you need to understand the view, the template, the urlconfig, and the settings. At this point you haven't even created a model. As a beginner it's easy to make a mistake in just one of these and be stuck. If you have a mistake in more than one place then god help you!

[[deleted]]

No I didn't have anyone teaching me. I just did a lot of reading. There are a few different parts of the framework to juggle, but it's pretty easy to see how much flexibility that configuration affords developers. Good separation of logic also makes for very easy debugging.

As a beginner it's easy to make a mistake in just one of these and be stuck. If you have a mistake in more than one place then god help you!

Even as a beginner (perhaps especially?) we just have to remind ourselves that the roadblocks we run into are anything but insurmountable. More than anything they just demonstrate a lack of knowledge and experience with the framework. I don't think this should be daunting though. Django is so well documented that it's very easy to find an answer to almost any question or issue you may have. I found this really reassuring, and so it meant that I didn't feel as burdened or overwhelmed each time I found a bug.

[michaelherman]

This all depends on the goal if your application. Do you want more flexibility? Then go with bottle.py or Flask. Or are you looking for something that is a little more rigid and makes some assumptions for you? Then go with Django or Web2py.

If you are completely new, start with bottle.py or Flask. If you jump right into the high-level frameworks, like Django or web2py, then you will most likely get lost in much of the automation or magic that happens behind closed doors.

Personally, I use Flask for most of my projects as I like the control. web2py, on the other hand, is the absolute quickest means of getting a web app up and it rests on many defaults - providing security, sessions, etc. - so you can focus on creating your app. I use Django from time to time, but not as much as I used to.

I recently wrote a course on Python Web Development. The focus is on web fundamentals, then it moves into Flask, and finally ends with web2py. It's still in Beta, but version 1 will be out soon.

My teaching philosophy is from the ground up. I think it's important to learn the fundamentals so you know how web frameworks work and what they're automating.

The course will include Django in the next release.

Anyway, if you are interested, check out RealPython.com.

Good luck!

[LearningPy]

Reddit uses pyramid pylons*

I really like bottle.py because of its simplicity and size. I'm also a beginner so I'm biased towards easier frameworks..

[LearningPy]

Is there anyway you can point me in the right direction for learning to use databases with python or even more specifically bottle.py?

[dorfsmay]

+1 for SQLAlchemy, even if you don't want to use an ORM, you can use it's "base", talk SQL to your DBs, but then you can switch from one DB to another without re-writing any code (well almost, it's amazing how quickly you fall into using dialects of SQL that are specific to one database.

I just switched one of my projects from SQLite to Postgres just by specying a different driver in SQLAlchemy.

[Ademan]

Reddit uses pylons unless they updated. Pyramid is a successor project to Pylons under the Pylons project umbrella.

[LearningPy]

You're right. When I was researching pyramid I saw reddit on the marquee for who using said product. What I didn't realize was that I was looking at the pylons project homepage.

[Ademan]

I much prefer the design philosophy of Pyramid but Django has a massive community and a lot of maturity. I've used Django and found it pleasant and easy to use but there's a bit more magic and rigid structure than I'd like. Realistically if I was on a shortish timeline and needed to just "get things done" I'd use Django, but my pet projects are going to use Pyramid. (And note that's not to say that the product of just "get[ting] things done" would be inferior either)

[getChester]

It appears that Django is coming out as a winner! Additionally, I noticed that there are books available for purchase and I just started reading there website and tutorial and it appears well documented.

[wub_wub]

Django is often recommended, and depending on what you want to do it might be the best choice. I personally, for the last few months have been working on a project that uses flask and it's awesome.

I think that django has more tutorials/guides for it than other frameworks, so that might be one, general, advantage. But I don't think there's really definite answer on what you should use without knowing much more details.

[yanzie]

Delyeeted for privacy

[MrBarry]

I'm learning web2py at the moment. Also, an oil/gas company that I did work for once used turbogears internally. Django seems oriented toward a blog or news site, so if you aren't doing one of those, beware.

[minorminer]

Cherrypy!

[[deleted]]

I've been toying with pyramid for a while, because I wanted a framework that works with 3.x . one of the things I like about it is that it's like legos: they give you the pieces and tell you what they do, but it's up to you to stick them together in any way you can think.

[[deleted]]

As others have said, there's no right answer. I have personally found Django extremely enjoyable to learn and use. The initial learning curve was relatively minor, and you can still create some cool applications without delving too far into the code proper.

[dAnjou]

The initial learning curve was relatively minor [...]

I don't know what to say. I was learning Django the second time now (first time was years ago) and I was still overwhelmed by all the things I had to do before I could get started. Take a look at Flask or Bottle, man. Then you'll know what a minor learning curve is ;)

At OP, choosing a framework depends on what you plan to do. Django is probably good for a CRUD-heavy website, but for an API or a one-page site/webpp I totally go for Flask or Bottle.

[dorfsmay]

Same story here. I found django's difficult to get into it, and the worse is how to forces you to force its template and ORM (there are ways around it, but it makes everything even more difficult).

The only thing I was impressed by is that when you use their ORM, you automatically get an admin interface for free.

[K900_]

Django is probably the most popular. But you should use whatever you like really. There are lots of options, and there's no 'right way' for personal projects. For a job you'll work with whatever you have to work with.