What's the best online tutorial for starting with Spring Python

Question

Spring Python seems to be the gold-standard for how to define good quality APIs in Python - it's based on Spring which also seems to be the gold-standard for Java APIs.

My manager has complained (with good reason) that our APIs are in a mess - we need to impose some order on them. Since we will be re-factoring it makes sense to take advantage of what is considered best practice - so we would like to consider Spring.

Could somebody point me to the best learning resources for getting started with Spring? I've googled for a while and not found anything which seems to start from first principles. I'm looking for something which assumes good knowledge of Python but zero knowledge of Spring on other platforms or it's principles.

Thanks

Answer 1

How did you come to decide on Spring Python as your API of choice? Spring works well on Java where there's a tradition of declarative programming; defining your application primarily using XML to control a core engine is a standard pattern in Java.

In Python, while the underlying patterns like Inversion of Control are still apposite (depending on your use case), the implementation chosen by Spring looks like a classic case of something produced by a Java programmer who doesn't want to learn Python. See the oft-referenced article Python is Not Java.

I applaud your decision to introduce order and thoughtfulness to your codebase, but you may wish to evaluate a number of options before making your decision. In particular, you may find that using Spring Python will make it difficult to hire good Python programmers, many of whom will run the other way when faced with 1000-line XML files describing object interactions.

Perhaps start by re-examining what you really want to accomplish. The problem cannot simply be that "you need a framework". There are lots of frameworks out there, and it's hard to evaluate a) if you truly need one and b) which one will work if you haven't identified what underlying software problems you need to solve.

If the real problem is that your code is an unmaintainable mess, introducing a framework probably won't fix the issue. Instead of just messy code, you'll have code that is messy in someone else's style :-) Perhaps rigour in the dev team is where you should recommend starting first: good planning, code reviews, stringent hiring practices, a "cleanup" release, etc...

Good luck with the research.

Answer 2

I won't go so far as to suggest that Spring Python is bad (because I don't know enough about it). But, to call Spring Python the "gold standard for Python APIs" is a stretch. To me, it seems that Spring Python is more of a way to allow Python apps to interact with Java Apps using Spring.

At any rate, after taking a precursory glance at the official documentation, it seems fairly easy to understand for me having decent knowledge of Python but no knowledge of spring. Aside from the fact that it almost looks like Java code where the author forgot the typenames, semicolons, and curly braces. :-)