Functional Style Web Frameworks

Question

All the web frameworks that I have seen mostly follow the OO paradigm. Are there any web frameworks in Python or Ruby which follow the FP style?

Answer 1

Like python itself, you'll probably find web frameworks in python that blend the functional and object oriented paradigms. Django is a great example. Django follows a model-view-controller design, which they label as model-template-view. The interesting thing is that the three layers operate very differently.

• Model is object-oriented. It isn't necessary to make it a stellar example of everything OOP can be. You can be dirt simple with your models: you name it, extend a base model class, and declare a few properties. This, I think, is as it ought to be, and I'll be fascinated to learn of other frameworks that are significantly less object-oriented at the model-layer. Your database needs table declarations, and your site needs to generate rows of data. This is extremely analagous to Classes and Instances no matter how you look at it.
• Template is not python. It's supposed to look as much like html as possible, with some pretty ways to insert data that gets passed to it.
• View is very functional. It can be coerced into an OO paradigm, and it can rely on the models to do the heavy lifting if it wants. But at core there are function declarations that execute some action. These function declarations are passed as arguments to a url config function.

I happen to like this blend of paradigms because I believe it does what works well for each given level. Some might call it inconsistent; others might say that the distinction between between model and presentation logic should be as sharp as possible to emphasize the distinction.

If you don't care much for OOP but can function in python, this framework might work well for you. Unless you're trying to leverage the default admin interface. Then metaclasses and formsets will make your head a'splode.