Please point to the right webdev tools

Question

Hello,

I'm making a simple web app where I have some simple python scripts that do the text crunchin g I need - but I'm not quite sure how to interface it with a client who'd only want to see some HTML forms.

There's so many different server side frameworks out there - but I don't think I need anything too heavy duty - just a mechanism to accept data from the forms that the user fills in, and feed it to my Python code and back.

Could someone suggest what tools I should look into and what design paradigms I should follow? Simple pointers to different references around the web with a single line about their significance would also help.

Best.

Answer 1

At the moment, the best lightweight and yet very powerful framework for python IMO is Flask. If you want form abstraction there is a WTFlask plugin for it which is WTForms adapted for flask - http://flask.pocoo.org/.

Web2py is also a very good framework for starters because it has helpers and wizards for creating/running an application, and also has something like an admin interface, offering an On-line IDE functionality. - http://www.web2py.com/

I proposed these two frameworks because you can start fast with them, they both have good documentation, both are powerful yet easy and they are pretty friendly for beginners.

Answer 2

Not normally supported with cheap hosting, but mod_python on apache might be right up your alley.

You could also have html talk to python through cgi (Which has been the way of doing it for years before php came along).

The standard Design pattern commonly seen in web apps is Model-View-Controller, so google around.

Answer 3

I've used Django (heavy and something of a non-trivial initial learning curve), and web.py (very small & simple), and over the past year, I've been pretty happy using tornado.

People can argue about the async details, but that's not even why I use it. It's pretty fast, it's super quick to get started with, it comes with examples that get you doing things quickly, and -- most important to me -- It's a web server and framework in one, which means you don't have to muck with mod_python vs mod_wsgi vs cgi vs fcgi vs whatever. Deployment is really easy.