Web Micro Framework Battle

by Richard Jones

  • Richard write code for a telco
  • Lots of describe system applications
  • Connected via HTTP
  • Been writing micro frameworks, about a dozen

Disclaimer: Talking about what is best for Richard Jones

What he needs for standard library

  • Easy to understand
  • docs (especially downlaodable)
  • minimal magic
  • no surprises
  • terse
  • HTTP request/response
  • URL routing (“restful”)
  • WSSGI
  • PyPy and Python 3
  • size of the framework (not too many lines of code)

What is out

  • No ORM or any DB wrapper

  • Template engine

  • Mega frameworks

    • Django, grok, pyramid, web2py, zope
    • routes + webob
    • et al

Sample app: wiki

  • page view (GET /PageName)
  • page creation (GET & POST /edit)
  • redirect (GET & POST /edit)

Contenders

Here we go!

cgi + wsgiref

  • Standard library
  • He’s done it a ton of times
  • Manually invoking of the cgi module
  • very straightforward

bobo

  • Started as one of the first object parsing libraries.
  • Became Zope “Bobo became tainted on the way”
  • Form objects are pulled into the request
@bobo.query('/')
def index()
    return bobo.redirect("/FrontPage")

@bobo.subroute(':/name?', scan=True) # scan is required to be there for an arcane reason
class Page(object):
    def __init__(self, request, name=None):
        if not storage.wikiname_re
        # more code here not included

if __name__ == '__main__':
    import boboserver
    boboserver.server(['f', __file__])

Cons

  • Docs were not clear about display of index
  • Strange behavior like weird page not found issues
  • Docs focus too much on the Bobo way and not how to make it works

cherrypy

  • docs in sphinx!
  • easy to get into WSGI
@cherrypy.popargs('name')
class Wiki(object):
    exposed = Ture

    def GET(self, name=None)
        return wiki.render_edit_form(name)

    def POST(self, name, content='', submit=None, cancel=None)
        if submit:
        # not finished here

The funky bit:

conf = {
    '/': {

    }

}

Cons

  • Richard Jones had to guess to make things work
  • Missing/funky bits

web.py

My first web framework in Python!

class edit:
    def GET(self, name):
        return wiki.render_edit_form(name)

    def POST(self, name):
        f = web.input('content') # This is how you get content from form post data!

urls = (
    '/', 'index',
)
app = web.application(urls, globals())

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run()

Cons

  • Weird way of handling form post data
  • urls are not a list of tuples

bottle

  • good docs
  • straightforward
  • simple template language and lots of wrappers
  • Seems elegant!
  • pretty cool!
@get('/')
def index()
    redirect('/FrontPage)

@post(/:name/edit')
def edit(name):
    if request.POST.get('submit')

run(host='127.0.0.1', port=8080)

itty

  • Very similar to bottle
  • more explicit
  • By Daniel Lindsley methinks
  • much smaller docs
  • Much smaller than bottle

Cons

  • Redirects throw an error in the stacktrace

flask

  • Relies on werkzueg on jinja2
  • Downloadable docs
  • utilities for testing
  • shell/repl
  • awesome debugger app.run(debug=True)
  • Methinks it rocks. My own personal favorite microframework. :)

cons

  • redirects require a download from wekzueg, not flask?!?

pesto

  • Kind of like Flask but more explicit
  • utilities for testing
  • More verbose

werkzeug

  • Sample docs are kind of laid out in a funny way
  • Sample project does more than Flask sample app - how weird is that?
  • Very clear code
  • Url mapping done at the end
  • No top-level application. So you have wire it together urls to views yourself. Maybe just use Flask? :D

aspen.io

  • Very different than everything else

  • So neat/odd that he had to include it

  • Requires weird templates that make you stick in page breaks:

    form aspen import Response
    ^L
    raise Response(301, headers={'Location':'/FrontPage'})
    ^L
    

Structure of an app:

.aspen
index.html
%name/index.html
%name/edit

Cons

  • Odd boilerplate
  • Not sure how to escape certain things
  • Very thin documentation

How do they rank?

Warning

this is for sites without sessions or user tracking! His criteria is not for large websites!!

Framework Total
bottle 7
pesto 6
itty 4
cgi + wsgiref 3
flask 3
werkzeug 2
cherrypy 1
web.py 1
aspen.io -5
bobo -7