Python, Python, Python

Uncategorised • 20th Jul, 15

Are you new to the world of coding and are currently sitting there wondering what a web framework is?  The answer is pretty simple really: it’s a code library which makes a developer’s life that much easier thanks to its ability to build scalable, reliable, and let’s not forget maintainable web applications.  There’s no doubt that they’re more than necessary, with them encapsulating what developers have learnt over the past two decades while they were programming sites and applications for the world of the web.  Making it easier to recycle code for common HTTP operations, it is used to structure projects so that other developers who have knowledge of the framework are able to build the application quickly as well as maintain it. 

Providing functionality in their code, frameworks make it possible for developers to perform common operations which are required to run web applications.  These include:

• URL routing
• HTML, XML, JSON, along with various other output format templating
• Database manipulation
• Security against CSRF as well as other attacks
• Session retrieval and storage

Once you get into the swing of things and have secured your place in the world of coding, it will be clear that not all frameworks include code for all of the functionalities which have been listed above.  There are some frameworks which take the ‘batteries included’ approach, which is where everything that’s possible come bundled along with the framework which is the opposite of those which come with a minimal core package which is amenable to extensions which are provided by other packages.  

Once you’ve made up your mind about what you want to learn about web frameworks and which will work for the project at hand, there’s a checklist which you could go through to make sure that you’re not missing out on anything:

1. Make your choice of which Python web framework you want to try, whether it be Django or any other.  Once you’ve chosen one, stick to it.  if you’re just starting out it’s best to keep to one framework rather than bouncing around in an attempt to understand every framework you can find 
2. Work your way through a detailed tutorial which you can find online and which doesn’t seem too confusing to you
3. By studying open source examples with the framework which you’ve chosen you’ll be able to take parts of those projects and then reuse that code in your very own application
4. Once you’ve built your first simple iteration of your specific web application, head over to the deployment section in order to make it accessible to the web 

Back to Blog