Which python web framework has hassle-free development and deployment?

Question

I have written a web API in BaseHTTPServer. It is meant to be used only on localhost. It returns JSON objects on GET/POST operations.

http://localhost:8888/operation?param

and code is like

def do_GET(self):
   if self.path=="operation":
       self.wfile.write("output")

But I am worried about keep-alive mechanisms (read: a webserver that can respawn workers), lack of multi-threading, and PITA-ful maintenance.

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And like I said, I am looking at the development and deployment issues for choosing this web framework.

Development

The web interface is currently 250 lines and has very simple features. I am looking for something that lends itself well to clean maintenance and deployment. I dont want the framework's MVC, ORM, templating and other features messing my learning curve. UrL patterns that redirect to appropriate module is nice.

Deployment

It should deploy on a mature server with a WSGI module with minimum fuss. And such a setup has hot-deploy (for want of a better word), installing a new application or updating the code means copying the files to the www-root in the filesystem.

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CherryPy and Flask seem interesting. Django and Web2Py seem too comprehensive.

Answer 1

The recommended way of deploying wsgi is as a long-running-process , either embedded or daeomonized, and not as a cgi script. Either way, its going to be a little different than just uploading files like in php, restarting the server/process by touching the config file is normally the closest you get to "hot-deployment" using wsgi.

Needless to say, the framework itself does not impose any kind of deployment restraints if it is wsgi compliant. Take your pick depending on your needs: apache+modwsgi, gunicorn, cherry.py, paste. None of them offer "hot-deployment" (afaik), you will still need to create a wsgi script and reload the processes. The filesystem layout is normally of no concern and that's good. You don't usually get autoreload either. I know werkzeug and cherry.py do, and werkzeug offers some really cool debugging tools too. Please note that tornado/werkzeug* itself offers an autoreload option, but is actually considered for development and not deployment, and not compatible with the wsgi module.

But no matter how painful or painless the deployment is, it is recommended to use something like fabric to automate your deployments, and setting up a wsgi web server isnt that that hard.

Choice of the framework itself is kind of tricky, and depends on what level you want to work in. Tornado, werkzeug are popular low level frameworks, (but also include higher level tools, and many are frameworks+webserver), but you could also work with webob directly and just plugin whatever else you need.

You have the microframeworks like flask or bottle, then the lightweight frameworks, like web2.py, or maybe pyramid (the lines on how heavy a framework are kind of blurry).

Then you have the "full-stack" django, grok, turbogears, etc... And then you have zope, which has been on a diet but still very heavy.

Note that you can pretty much do anything with all of them (just depends how much you want to bend them), and in many cases you can swap components rather easily. I'd start try out a microframework like bottle or maybe flask (you don't have to use ORM's or templating, but are easily available once you do), but also take a look at webob .

*comment: added werkzeug to the not really autoreload camp.

Answer 2

For what you describe, id go with: Tornado Web Server

This is the hello world:

import tornado.ioloop
import tornado.web

class MainHandler(tornado.web.RequestHandler):
    def get(self):
        self.write("Hello, world")

application = tornado.web.Application([
    (r"/", MainHandler),
])

if __name__ == "__main__":
    application.listen(8888)
    tornado.ioloop.IOLoop.instance().start()

It's highly scalable, and I think it may take you 10 minutes to set it up with your code.

Answer 3

I personally like and use web.py all the time. It's very lightweight and customizable and WSGI compliant.

http://webpy.org