Choosing a Better Framework

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The world of Python web frameworks provides lots of choices. Some of the prominent frameworks to consider are Django, Flask, Bottle, Diesel, Web2py, Pyramid, Falcon, Pecan, etc., that compete for the developer mindshare. Frameworks like Pyramid, Django, Web2py and Flask are ideal with their list of pros and cons; choosing just one for your project is a difficult choice to make.

Dash is entirely designed for different set of needs. So, as a developer you want to cut the legions of options down to the one that will help you finish your project on time and with perfection.

If we compare Flask, Pyramid and Django frameworks, Flask is a micro-framework primarily aimed at small applications with simpler requirements whereas Pyramid and Django are both aimed at larger applications. Pyramid is built with flexibility and freedom in mind, so the developer has right tools for the project. In case of pyramid, the developer is free to choose the database, URL structure, templating style and more. However, Django includes all the batteries a web application needs, so we just need to install Django and start working.

Django comes with an ORM, whereas Pyramid and Flask leave it to the developer to choose how (or if) they want their data to be stored. Generally, the most common ORM for non-Django web applications is SQLAlchemy by far, however, other options can be DjangoDB, MongoDB, LevelDB and SQLite.

Being a developer, if I have to choose between Django and Web2py for my project. I need to have some idea of both the frameworks’ benefits and limitations. So let us compare Django and Web2py −

Django

The community of Django is a big plus. This actually means to a developer is the wealth of resources will be greater. Specifically, this comes down to −

  • Documentation
  • Open source resources
  • Third-party apps support
  • Deployment support
  • IRC channels with helpful developers

Django has a very big community of development team and documentation. It is the right framework when we are dealing with writing a complex backend as it provides a lot of third party apps that lets you automate things like user’s logic (signup, authentication), asynchronous tasks, API creation, blogs, etc.

Web2py

Web2py is a good fit to fast development of simple web apps or http servers. Below are some of the benefits and limitations of web2py.

Benefits of Web2py

The following are some of the benefits of Web2py framework −

  • Web2py is a potential framework when compared to Django and Flask in terms of speed and simplicity of the development. As Web2py uses python-based template language, this allows python developers to start writing code immediately after understanding the basics of writing template as views.

  • Web2py can run python compiled code as an optimization to lower the running time and to allow you to distribute your code in a compiled fashion.

Limitations of Web2py

The following are some of the limitations of the framework:

  • Web2py supports doctests, however it does not support unit testing. Now doctests are not the optimal choice because of their limited scope.

  • There is no differentiation between production and development mode. In case an exception occurred, ticket is generated all the times and you will have to navigate to the ticket to check the error. This might be helpful in case of production server but will be difficult in development environment as developers really need to see the error instantly rather than checking the ticket number.

  • Web2py has a good database abstraction layer (DAL) that allows you to abstract many types of database engines but it lacks powerful ORM. In case you are dealing with relatively large model, your code will get scattered by all nested definitions and attributes which makes things complicated.

  • We cannot use standard python development tools without modifications as web2py has really poor IDE support.

The Django and Web2py framework are full stack frameworks. This means they provide all the code needed − from form generators to templating layouts and forms validation, and leave you to write things according to your specific needs.

However, with the non-stack frameworks like Flask and Pyramid, if you want to create a full-featured website, you will need to add a lot of code and extra bits yourself. This takes lot of skill and time.

Dash

Dash is entirely designed for specific task of building a reactive framework for dashboards. Dash by Plotly is a great way for the python developer to create interactive web apps without having to learn Javascript and front end web development. Dash is built on top of Flask, Plotly.js, React and React Js.

There is no comparison between Dash and other frameworks (mentioned above) as they belong to different category of frameworks. Below are some of the reasons to prefer dash over other interactive dashboard frameworks (Jupiter Dashboards, matplotlib and other) −

  • With just 50 lines of code, you can write a simple “hello world” Dash app, as Dash requires very little boilerplater.

  • Entire Dash apps are written in python language, the most preferred language globally.

  • In your own python code, you can bind dash interactive components like dropdown, text inputs, sliders, and graphs with reactive Dash “callbacks”.

  • Complicated UIs in Dash apps can have multiple inputs, multiple outputs and inputs that depends on other inputs.

  • Simultaneously, multiple users can work on Dash apps.

  • For creating your own Dash components with React, dash uses React.js to render components and includes a plugin system.

  • Developers or writers can write dash apps that respond to clicking, hovering or selecting points on the graph as Dash’s Graph components are interactive.

Conclusion

We can conclude that choosing the right framework out of many available python frameworks solely depends on the type of project, complexity, small or enterprise level project, kind of community support available or online resource available, scalability, security, etc.

The above mentioned python frameworks are best in their class but have their own benefits and drawbacks (depending on the project requirement). So, one type of framework is not suitable for all kinds of projects.

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