I have been doing some work in python, but that was all for stand alone applications. I'm curious to know whether any offshoot of python supports web development?
Would some one also suggest a good tutorial or a website from where I can pick up some of the basics of web development using python?
Now that everyone has said Django, I can add my two cents: I would argue that you might learn more by looking at the different components first, before using Django. For web development with Python, you often want 3 components:
Something that takes care
of the HTTP stuff (e.g.
CherryPy)
A templating language
to create your web pages.
Mako
is very pythonic and works with Cherrpy.
If you get your data from a
database, an ORM comes in handy.
SQLAlchemy
would be an example.
All the links above have good tutorials. For many real-world use-cases, Django will be a better solution than such a stack as it seamlessly integrates this functionality (and more). And if you need a CMS, Django is your best bet short of Zope. Nevertheless, to get a good grasp of what's going on, a stack of loosely coupled programs might be better. Django hides a lot of the details.
Edited 3 years later: Don't use mod_python, use mod_wsgi. Flask and Werkzeug are good frameworks too. Needing to know what's going on is useful, but it isn't a requirement. That would be stupid.
Don't lookup Django until you have a good grasp of what Django is doing on your behalf. for you. Write some basic apps using mod_python and it's request object. I just started learning Python for web-development using mod_python and it has been great.
mod_python also uses a dispatcher in site-packages/mod_python/publisher.py. Have a ganders through this to see how requests can be handled in a simple-ish way.
You may need to add a bit of config to your Apache config file to get mod_python up and running but the mod_python site explains it well.
<Directory /path/to/python/files>
AddHandler mod_python .py
PythonHandler mod_python.publisher
PythonDebug On
</Directory>
And you are away!
use (as a stupidly basic example):
def foo(req):
req.write("Hello World")
in /path/to/python/files/bar.py assuming /path/to is your site root.
And then you can do
http://www.mysite.com/python/files/bar/foo
to see "Hello World". Also, something that tripped me up is the dispatcher uses a lame method to work out the content-type, so to force HTML use:
req.content_type = 'text/html'
Good Luck
After you have a good idea of how Python interacts with mod_python and Apache, then use a framework that does all the boring stuff for you. Up to you though, just my recommendation
If you really don't want to delve into the frameworks - and you should, I heartily recommend Django or Pylons - there's still need to go down the road of CGI. This is a totally out-of-date technology, not to mention slow and inefficient.
There is a standard way of building Python web applications, and it's called WSGI. If you want to roll your own web app from scratch, this is absolutely the way to go.
That said, if you're just starting out, really you should go with one of the frameworks.
Python Wiki: Web Frameworks for Python
If you decide to use Django, the official tutorial is an excellent place to start. The Django Book is also free.
There are a couple of choices for web development. From my experience, your choice will again be dependent on your application. I used django and web.py in production and I am about to deploy an app based on pylons.
Django hides a lot of choices (comes with its ORM and templating). The documentation is extensive and well-written. There are many reusable app available for django, but you will likely to invest a little time in integrating them seamlessly. One thing mentioned on djangocon 08 was the fact, that there is cool stuff in django, which can't be easily
accessed in non-django projects.
web.py impressed me by its raw simplicity. Before I knew it, I wrote a small app (78 lines quasi-wiki) in it.
pylons feels like in the middle of both. I can use sqlalchemy and jinja, all in all a pleasant experience for the start.
Lookup Django.
Python can be used for web development, but there isn't a special language extension or anything in the language that will handle all the HTML generation or that works like PHP.
It's pretty much run through some sort of interpreter on a web server (CGI, mod_python, etc.).
I would recommend looking into Python Web Application Frameworks or how to write Python CGI scripts.
There are quite a few web frameworks for python out there, but the only one I've used is Django, and I really like it.
If you've got a few hours, do the tutorial, I promise you, you'll enjoy it :)
As others have mentioned, one of the more prominent python "offshoots" as you call them would be Django. It is a rather powerful framework that allows you to quickly and securely build web applications. The first place to look would be their overview which gives some insight as to what Django does as a framework.
Going through their tutorial taught me alot about the prominent Model-View-Controler design pattern and how it may be used in a web-development context. I found it a great way to start writing an application that worked and learn by improving it.
Related
I have a couple of Python 2.7 scripts I need to have them run from a webpage. I've never done this before, although I'm comfortable coding in Python and well versed in Linux, Apache, Nginx.
I see many different frameworks like the old CGI, WSGI, Django, etc.
I need some recommendations for a framework that would require not much changes on my Python code for it to run on a webpage.
It seems CGI would be fairly easy for me, but since there are many newer frameworks, I need some advices.
Thanks!
Flask is probably the most straightforward Python web framework to use. It touts itself as a micro framework, and is very, very fast to get up and running with.
If you have a relatively straightforward set of requirements, I'd highly recommend giving it a look over. You can find the "hello" world example on the project's homepage here: http://flask.pocoo.org/
Depending on your project's requirements (does it need to be highly available/resilient?), you may even be able to get by using Flask's built-in development webserver along with a process control system such as supervisord. I wouldn't recommend this for heavy or production workloads, but for something running out of production this set up would work just fine for you.
If you're looking for client side browser frameworks in Python, there are skulpt and brython.
When I was looking for a similar framework, I decided to learn leave python for a javascript framework (particularly AngularJS and Node JS) for a client side language. I personally felt that the size of community and learning resources available in those two areas were more robust, and provided greater opportunity to master the framework.
I don’t want to burden you all with the details, but basically I’m a 2nd year compsci student with no Web dev experience.
Basically I want to create a small “web app” that takes in input from a html form, have a python script perform some calculations, and re-display those results in your browser.
As of right now, I have the form and script built. However, when I try to test the form, instead of running the script, my browser tries to download it. To my understanding, this is a cgi script problem, and that I must create a web server in order to test this script.
And heres were I’m stuck. I know little to nothing about web servers and how to set them up. On top of that I’ve heard that GCI scripting is a thing of the past, and requires major overhead in order to run properly.
This leads to my questions. How do I go about completing my app and testing my cgi script? Do I install apache and mess around with it or should I be looking into something like google app engine? Are there other ways to complete this task without cgi scripts? Where do frameworks like Django fit into this?
Django, while being nice, all-encompassing and well-supported, is sometimes too much for a small web application. Django wants you to play by its rules from the beginning, you'll have to avoid things like the database and admin panels if you don't need them. It's also easier, with Django, to follow its project layout, even when it's too complex for a simple app.
The so-called micro frameworks might suit you better for your small app. They are built upon the opposite principle: use the bare minimum of features now, add more as you need them.
Flask is based on Werkzeug WSGI library and Jinja2 templating (the latter is switchable), is extensively documented (with notes concerning virtualenv and stuff) and well-suited for small and larger apps alike. It comes bundled with an auto-reloading dev server (no need for Apache on your dev machine) and Werkzeug-powered interactive debugger. There are extensions for things like HTML forms and database ORM.
Bottle is as small as a microframework can get, consisting of 1 (one) file, dev server included. Drop it into your project folder and start hacking. The built-in SimpleTemplate templating engine is switchable, but the dev server is flakier in comparison to Flask's. The documentation is less complete, and, in my opinion, the whole thing is less polished and convenient as Flask.
In both cases, you use dev server locally, and then deploy using WSGI, the server interface for Python web apps which both frameworks support. There are many ways to deploy a WSGI app, Apache mod_wsgi being one of the popular ones.
I'd totally go with Flask unless one dependency (Bottle) is better than three (Flask, Jinja2 and Werkzeug).
(There are many other frameworks as well, so wait for their users to come and tell about them. I'd suggest to avoid web.py: it works, but is full of magic, and is inelegant compared to Flask or Bottle.)
One way of getting to working webapp quickly is by first understanding, and then modifying, something like the App Engine "guestbook" example. This has the benefit that much of the otherwise necessary tedium of running a web server and setting up a database server (assuming you need persistence) is done for you. App Engine also provides a fairly flexible development environment. It's certainly not the only way to go, and I'll admit to bias in recommending it, but it's fairly low friction.
GCI scripting is hardly a thing of the past, though it's not what the cool kids are doing. CGI has the benefit, and the curse, of exposing more of the raw plumbing. It forces you to understand a lot about primitive (in the low-level sense) web architecture, but it's also a bit of a large bite to chew on if you have an immediate problem to solve that can solved by simpler means.
It appears most python web development seems to be done by frameworks these days. There are a couple reasons for this:
a plethora of mature tools. Django has built in user auth, built in database management, built in sessions, built in just about everything ORM which lets you seamlessly supports a couple databases.
Built in webservers. The larger python frameworks like django and pylons have built in webservers. Django has a very simple webserver python manage.py startserver (that simple) That makes it extremely easy to create and debug applications. It is single threaded so dropping a debugger into it is painless
Huge communities. If you have a django question it will be answered very quickly the so community is huge.
The django tutorial will introduce you to all the major aspects of development. It is only 4 pages and you will be able to get your app going a lot simpler than having to read, learn and fiddle with an apache setup.
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/intro/tutorial01/
Although django for right now might be overkill if your app is just going to be 1 form and a script to process it. Because of its seamless testing framework it is quite easy to grow any project. I have never used flask or bottle or the other microframeworks, but I would keep in mind where your project will be in the future.
As for where django fits into this, it is a full stack framework encompassing presentation (templates), data management (server orm), authentication, middleware, forms ... everything necessary to create a completely inclusive web application. Django and almost all other python frameworks implement the wsgi standard. It is an interface that allows for interoperation between webservers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Server_Gateway_Interface it is pretty dry and you will never have to interface it directly. That is what these frameworks do under the hood.
Why setup and maintain your own webserver if you can use app engine. It has an excellent SDK for testing your code. Here is an example https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/python/gettingstarted/handlingforms
And Django you will find here : https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/python/gettingstarted/templates
I prefer to use Jinja for templating.
Django comes with its own server, but in your case i would recommend apache and mod_python since it seems to be a rather simple site you're building.
Setting up Apache is a breeze and a simple search on the web should give you all you need.
You can find more information on mod_python here read up a little bit on it and then google after a tutorial that fits your needs.
I am wondering how to go about implementing a web application with Python.
For example, the html pages would link to python code that would give it increased functionality and allow it to write to a database.
Kind of like how Reddit does it.
If you're looking for server side programming with databases and html templates etc, I think Django is great, along with Pyramid. However, I use Flask ( http://flask.pocoo.org/ ) for this since it is easy to use, learn and deploy even though it may not have as much support as the before mentioned 2 framework since it's just a microframework, using the Jinja2 templating engine, including a development test server with it's own debugger.
On the other hand, if you're going for client-side programming (i.e. in browser implementation ) You can look up .NET Ironpython or even Brython which uses python like javascript.
You might want to check out mod_wsgi or mod_python.
What Is mod_wsgi?
The aim of mod_wsgi is to implement a simple to use
Apache module which can host any Python application which supports the
Python WSGI interface. The module would be suitable for use in hosting
high performance production web sites, as well as your average self
managed personal sites running on web hosting services.
-
Current State of Mod_Python
Currently mod_python is not under active development. This does not
mean that it is "dead" as some people have claimed. It smiply means
that the code and the project are mature enough when very little is
required to maintain it.
This is a good article from the Python website:
http://docs.python.org/howto/webservers.html
Plain CGI is a good starting point to learn about server side scripting, but it is an outdated technology and gets difficult to maintain after certain level of complexity. I would think it is no longer used in industrial-grade web server anymore. Plus you have to setup a web server and then install some module to interpret python script (like Apache with mod_python) just to get started.
I had some experience with Django (https://www.djangoproject.com/) and found it fairly easy to get started with since they come with development test server. All you need to have is a Python interpreter + Django and you can get up-and-running quickly and worry about the deployment setup later. They have pretty good documentation for beginner as well.
We have never used Python for a web site without a framework. In our case that is Django. In other words, we do not use Python for our web sites the way Perl can be used, just having Apache run a Perl script.
The recommendations you have received about Django are sound. If you go the Django route, Graham Dumpleton and the modwsgi Google group were very helpful to me. I could
not have gotten mod_wsgi deployed on Red Hat Enterprise 5 64-bit without Graham's help.
Whether you choose Django or "straight" Python, you will need to become familiar with mod_wsgi.
Good luck in quantum time, which means by now, I hope this all worked out for you.
I need to write a basic website on Dreamhost. It needs to be done in Python.
I discovered Dreamhost permits me to write .py files, and read them.
Example:
#!/usr/bin/python
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n"
print "hello world"
So now I am looking for a basic framework, or a set of files that has already programmed the whole registration to be able to kick-off the project in a simple way.
By registration I mean the files to register a new account, log in, check the email (sending a mail), and edit the user information. All this possibly using MySQL.
Let me share my own experience with django. My prerequisits:
average knowledge of python
very weak idea of how web works (no js skills, just a bit of css)
my day job is filled with coding in C and I just wanted to try something different,
so there certainly was a passion to learn (I think this is the most important one)
Why I've chosen django:
I've already knew bits and pieces of python
django has excelent documentation, including tutorial, which explained everything
in very clear and simple manner
It is worth to read complete manual first (it took me two or three weekends. I remember I could not remember/understand everything at first pass, but it helped me to learn where
the information can be found when needed. There is also another source of documentaion
called djangobook. Djangobook contains same information as manual, but things are explained more in detail. It's worth to read it also, it helps to catch up with MVC concept, if you have not tried that before.
And finally to answer your question best: there are already also OpenId modules ready for you. I'm considering to use django-authopenid for my new project. It supports OpenId, while providing fallback to locally managed users.
There is certain learning curve if you are going learn django. The more you know about the web and python the steeper the curve is. I had to also learn bits and pieces of javascript and it took me also some time. If you are able to spend full time learning django, then
you can expect you'll be able to deliver first results within 4-6 weeks. It took me 6 months, since I was doing my django studies in free time.
There are several blog entries &c pointing out some problems with Python on Dreamhost and how to work around them to run several web frameworks that could suit you. (Most of the posts are over a year old so it may be that dreamhost has fixed some of the issues since then, of course, but the only way to really find out is to try!-).
Start with this page, dreamhost's own wikipage about Python -- at least you know it's quite current (was last updated earlier today!-). It gives instructions on using virtual env, building a custom Python &c if you absolutely need that, and running WSGI apps -- WSGI is the common underpinning of all modern Python web frameworks, including Django which everybody's recommending but also Pylons &c.
Some notes on running Pylons on Dreamhost are here (but it does look like Dreamhost has since fixed some issues, e.g. flup is now the dreamhost-recommended FCGI layer for WSGI as you'll see at the previously mentioned URL) and links therefrom. If you do go with Pylons, here is the best place to start considering how best to do auth (authentication and authorization) with it. I'm trying to play devil's advocate since everybody else's recommending django, but for a beginner django may in fact be better than pylons (still, spending a day or so lightly researching each main alternative, before you commit to one, is a good investment of your time!-).
For Django, again there's an official dreamhost wiki page and it's pretty thorough -- be sure to read through it and briefly to the other URLs it points to. The contributed auth module is no doubt the best way to do authentication and authorization if you do decide to go with Django.
And, whichever way you do choose -- best of luck!
django framework
You can try starting with django-registration.
EDIT: You can probably hack something up on your own faster than learning Django. However, learning a framework will serve you better. You'll be able to easily ask a large community when you have problems, and build on work that's already been done. And of course, if you're doing something new in the future, your knowledge of the framework can be more easily reapplied.
Django is the way to go. You can try it locally on your PC and see do you like it. It is very nice framework and allows you to quickly build your applications.
If you want to give Django quick go to see how it feels you can download Portable Python where everything is preinstalled and ready to use.
You can also do what you are trying to do with apache module mod_python (which is also used to run Django) but it would require more coding. Your code snippet would work with mod_python (http://www.modpython.org/) right away. I think mod_python comes pre-installed on Dreamhost so you can try it.
For a more complete basic setup (with lots of preprogrammed features) I would point you at Pinax which is a web site on top of Django (which I praise of course, see the dedicated page on dreamhost Wiki at http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Django)
The introduction on the project's web site (pinaxproject.com) :
Pinax is an open-source platform built on the Django Web Framework.
By integrating numerous reusable
Django apps to take care of the things
that many sites have in common, it
lets you focus on what makes your site
different.
There you will have a complete web site to customize and add features to.
I've noticed that a lot of people recommend Django. If you're running on a shared host on Dreamhost, the performance will not be satisfactory.
This is a known issue with Dreamhost shared hosting. I have installed web2py on my Dreamhost shared account and it seems to work okay; search the google groups for an install FAQ.
Later edit: google Dreamhost Django performance for an idea of what I mean.
Another voice to the choir.
Go for django. It's very good and easy to use.
I'm wondering if there's such a thing as Django-like ease of web app development combined with good deployment, debugging and other tools?
Django is a very productive framework for building content-heavy sites; the best I've tried and a breath of fresh air compared to some of the Java monstrosities out there. However it's written in Python which means there's little real support in the way of deployment/packaging, debugging, profilers and other tools that make building and maintaining applications much easier.
Ruby has similar issues and although I do like Ruby much better than I like Python, I get the impression that Rails is roughly in the same boat at Django when it comes to managing/supporting the app.
Has anyone here tried both Django and Grails (or other web frameworks) for non-trivial projects? How did they compare?
You asked for someone who used both Grails and Django. I've done work on both for big projects. Here's my Thoughts:
IDE's:
Django works really well in Eclipse, Grails works really well in IntelliJ Idea.
Debugging:
Practically the same (assuming you use IntelliJ for Grails, and Eclipse for Python). Step debugging, inspecting variables, etc... never need a print statement for either. Sometimes django error messages can be useless but Grails error messages are usually pretty lengthy and hard to parse through.
Time to run a unit test:
django: 2 seconds.
Grails: 20 seconds (the tests themselves both run in a fraction of a second, it's the part about loading the framework to run them that takes the rest... as you can see, Grails is frustratingly slow to load).
Deployment:
Django: copy & paste one file into an apache config, and to redeploy, just change the code and reload apache.
Grails: create a .war file, deploy it on tomcat, rinse and repeat to redeploy.
Programming languages:
Groovy is TOTALLY awesome. I love it, more so than Python. But I certainly have no complaints.
Plugins:
Grails: lots of broken plugins (and can use every java lib ever).
Django: a few stable plugins, but enough to do most of what you need.
Database:
Django: schema migrations using South, and generally intuitive relations.
Grails: no schema migrations, and by default it deletes the database on startup... WTF
Usage:
Django: startups (especially in the Gov 2.0 space), independent web dev shops.
Grails: enterprise
Hope that helps!
However it's written in Python which
means there's little real support in
the way of deployment/packaging,
debugging, profilers and other tools
that make building and maintaining
applications much easier.
Python has:
a great interactive debugger, which makes very good use of Python REPL.
easy_install anv virtualenv for dependency management, packaging and deployment.
profiling features comparable to other languages
So IMHO you shouldn't worry about this things, use Python and Django and live happily :-)
Lucky for you, newest version of Django runs on Jython, so you don't need to leave your whole Java ecosystem behind.
Speaking of frameworks, I evaluated this year:
Pylons (Python)
webpy (Python)
Symfony (PHP)
CakePHP (PHP)
None of this frameworks comes close to the power of Django or Ruby on Rails. Based on my collegue opinion I could recommend you kohana framework. The downside is, it's written in PHP and, as far as I know, PHP doesn't have superb tools for debugging, profiling and packaging of apps.
Edit: Here is a very good article about packaging and deployment of Python apps (specifically Django apps). It's a hot topic in Django community now.
The statement that grails deletes the database on start-up is completely wrong. It's behavior on start-up is completely configurable and easy to configure. I generally use create-drop when running an app in dev mode. I use update when I run in test and production.
I also love the bootstrap processing that lets me pre-configure test users, data, etc by environment in Grails.
I'd love to see someone who has really built and deployed some commercial projects comment on the pros / cons. Be a really interesting read.
Grails.
Grails just looks like Rails (Ruby),but it uses groovy which is simpler than java. It uses java technology and you can use any java lib without any trouble.
I also choose Grails over simplicity and there are lots of java lib (such as jasper report, jawr etc) and I am glad that now they join with SpringSource which makes their base solid.
I have two friends who originally started writing an application using Ruby on Rails, but ran into a number of issues and limitations. After about 8 weeks of working on it, they decided to investigate other alternatives.
They settled on the Catalyst Framework, and Perl. That was about 4 months ago now, and they've repeatedly talked about how much better the application is going, and how much more flexibility they have.
With Perl, you have all of CPAN available to you, along with the large quantity of tools included. I'd suggest taking a look at it, at least.
The "good deployment" issue -- for Python -- doesn't have the Deep Significance that it has for Java.
Python deployment for Django is basically "move the files". You can run straight out of the subversion trunk directory if you want to.
You can, without breaking much of a sweat, using the Python distutils and build yourself a distribution kit that puts your Django apps into Python's site-packages. I'm not a big fan of it, but it's really easy to do.
Since my stuff runs in Linux, I have simple "install.py" scripts that move stuff out of the Subversion directories into /opt/this and /opt/that directories. I use an explicit path settings in my Apache configuration to name those directories where the applications live.
Patching can be done by editing the files in place. (A bad policy.) I prefer to edit in the SVN location and rerun my little install to be sure I actually have all the files under control.
cakephp.org
Cakephp is really good, really close to ruby on rails (1.2). It is in php, works very well on shared hosts and is easy to implement.
The only downside is that the documentation is somewhat lacking, but you quickly get it and quickly start doing cool stuff.
I totally recommend cakephp.
Personally I made some rather big projects with Django, but I can compare only with said "montrosities" (Spring, EJB) and really low-level stuff like Twisted.
Web frameworks using interpreted languages are mostly in its infancy and all of them (actively maintained, that is) are getting better with every day.
By "good deployment" are you comparing it with Java's EAR files, which allow you to deploy web applications by uploading a single file to a J2EE server? (And, to a lesser extent, WAR files; EAR files can have WAR files for dependent projects)
I don't think Django or Rails have gotten quite to that point yet, but I could be wrong... zuber pointed out an article with more details on the Python side.
Capistrano may help out on the Ruby side.
Unfortunately, I haven't really worked with either Python or Ruby that much, so I can't help out on profilers or debuggers.