Program web applications in python without a framework?

Question

I am just starting Python and I was wondering how I would go about programming web applications without the need of a framework. I am an experiance PHP developer but I have an urge to try out Python and I usually like to write from scratch without the restriction of a framework.

Answer 1

WSGI is the Python standard for web server interfaces. If you want to create your own framework or operate without a framework, you should look into that. Specifically I have found Ian Bicking's DIY Framework article helpful.

As an aside, I tend to think frameworks are useful and personally use Django, like the way Pylons works, and have used Bottle in the past for prototyping--you may want to look at Bottle if you want a stay-out-of-your-way microframework.

Answer 2

You will have to look into something like CGI or FastCGI, which provides an API to communicate to the webserver.

Google App Engine enables you to write simple apps, and even provides a local webserver where you can try things out.

Answer 3

One of the lightest-weight frameworks is mod_wsgi. Anything less is going to be a huge amount of work parsing HTTP requests to find headers and URI's and methods and parsing the GET or POST query/data association, handling file uploads, cookies, etc.

As it is, mod_wsgi will only handle the basics of request parsing and framing up results.

Sessions, cookies, using a template generator for your response pages will be a surprising amount of work.

Once you've started down that road, you may find that a little framework support goes a long way.

Answer 4

For a PHP programmer, I think mod_python is a good way to get started without any framework. It can be used directly as Apache 2 module. You can have code tags (like <? ?> in PHP) and even conditional HTML output (HTML inside if statement):

<%
if x == y:
   # begin
%>

  ... some html ...

<%
# end
%>

(simplified example taken from onlamp.com's Python Server Pages tutorial)

Answer 5

You should try web.py, it provides a bare minimum of features that does not get in your way.

http://webpy.org/

Answer 6

The answer is "don't". Using a framework makes your code more maintainable, scalable, readable, testable, and modular.

Answer 7

People here love frameworks. One shortcoming I have noted is that Python lacks a handy-dandy module for Sessions as a library built-in, despite it being available in PHP and as CGI::Session in Perl.

You will end up doing:

import cgi  # if you want to work with forms and such
import cgitb; cgitb.enable()  # to barf up errors to the web
print 'Content-type: text/html\n\n'  # to start off any HTML.

You will have to write session stuff on your own.