Python / web

[Robert]

Hi,
I know general Python pretty well and interested in using Python for a
web project. It will have the standard display, user input, fields,
look-ups, reports, database routines, etc..... Been looking though the
Python web docs. and seeing stuff like mod_python, CGI, PSP, CherryPy,
etc..., Also a fair amount of googling. I'll say there's a large
amount of technology to pick from. Rather than spend time going down
the wrong road, can I get some feedback as directions from you folks
that's "been there, done that."

thanks a bunch.
Robert

 

[Jagged]

Check out Django:
http://www.djangoproject.com/

 

[Larry Bates]

IMHO it all depends on the complexity required by the final product that
you are attempting to create. For complex projects, it is hard to beat
Zope/Plone. They have lots of built in things that you don't have to
write and are nearly infinitely extensible. We recently chose Zope for
a project and have been very happy with the outcome. With Zope it was
easy to design an AJAX API (connect via XMLRPC) and provide a WebDAV
interface to our applications which would have been extremely hard with
a lighter weight application engine. The learning curve has been steep,
but no more steep than it would be to do in WebLogic or WebSphere. With
flexibility comes complexity. For less complex needs there are other
more lightweight things like CherryPy.

Hope info helps.
Larry Bates

 

[Mike Meyer]

Hi,
I know general Python pretty well and interested in using Python for a
web project. It will have the standard display, user input, fields,
look-ups, reports, database routines, etc..... Been looking though the
Python web docs. and seeing stuff like mod_python, CGI, PSP, CherryPy,
etc..., Also a fair amount of googling. I'll say there's a large
amount of technology to pick from. Rather than spend time going down
the wrong road, can I get some feedback as directions from you folks
that's "been there, done that."

Well, as usual when answering such questions, the answer is "It
depends." If you're interested in getting a web site up with a
Python-like tool, then you want a framework. Others have already
suggested Zope/Plone, which seems to be the most popular such
system. I only have limit experience with Zope, but I found that it
tended to own the resulting code, such that reusing it in another
framework would be a PITA.

If you're more interested in working in Python, with a cleaner
representation of the HTML than as Python strings with %()'s scattered
through them, then you want a templating systems. I recently evaluated
a number of templating systems for a client, and we settled on
Cheetah. The reasons for this were:

1) Cheetah is not just a web templating language; it can be
used for anything. My first Cheetah template generated XML
to feed to an XMLHttpRequest.

2) Cheetah templates compile to Python classes, so anything I
can use to hook Python up to my web server I can use with Cheetah
templates.

3) Cheetah constructs don't try and look like HTML. This
means less typing to use them, and they won't cause problems
with whatever HTML/XML-aware editor you may want to use.

In refernce to the "owning" affect above, all the real work on our
pages is done in pure Python classes that the Cheetah templates
inherit from. So we can remove the dependency on Cheetah by changing
one fixed line in each file to a different line - which change can be
made mechanically.

<mike

 

[garabik-news-2005-05]

Hi,
I know general Python pretty well and interested in using Python for a
web project. It will have the standard display, user input, fields,
look-ups, reports, database routines, etc..... Been looking though the
Python web docs. and seeing stuff like mod_python, CGI, PSP, CherryPy,
etc..., Also a fair amount of googling. I'll say there's a large
amount of technology to pick from. Rather than spend time going down
the wrong road, can I get some feedback as directions from you folks
that's "been there, done that."

I am now writing a moderately complex application using karrigell.
It has a very shallow learning curve, if you know python and html, you
can start writing an application right away, but yet it is rather
versatile, and the author is responding.

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| Radovan Garabík http://kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk/~garabik/ |
| __..--^^^--..__ garabik @ kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk |
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[Luis M. Gonzalez]

Karrigell is a very good option. Easy to learn and easy to use.
In words of his author:

"Karrigell is a simple web programming solution, written in Python. It
has been designed to be really simple to use : integrated web server
and data base ( gadfly), easy access to environement data and form
fields, yet full-featured and powerful : Python script execution in the
same process as the server (no CGI), server pages including html and
Python code (similar to PHP, JSP, ASP), easy handling of
authentication, session management, localization features, etc

Karrigell can also work with external web servers : Apache and Xitami
are currently supported. All current databases (sqlite, MySql,
PostGresQL, etc) can be used with the corresponding Python API's. A
convenient way of using databases with a dictionary-like syntax is
provided for gadfly and sqlite "

 

[Benji York]

Others have already suggested Zope/Plone, which seems to be the most
popular such system. I only have limit experience with Zope, but I
found that it tended to own the resulting code, such that reusing it
in another framework would be a PITA.

This is much less the case for Zope 3, the separation between domain and
presentation code is much easier to maintain.