[BangPypers] Regarding web framework in Python

[Noufal Ibrahim]

On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 1:15 PM, Jins Thomas <jinsthomas at gmail.com> wrote:[..]
> Would some body please advice when free on
>
> 1.  Whether web.py itself is the good option for building this kind of
> framework.

web.py is nice an it has it's own niche.
You should really spend a while evaluating the options before you start.

web.py is very small and understandable. The amount of magic is
minimal. It's a "library" rather than a framework. Those are the plus
points. The downsides are that it doesn't give you things like the
automatic admin interface etc. which Django does. The amount of work
you'll have to do is a little more (but you're compensated by
increased control).

> 2 . How easy would it be to  build such an application in python (Currently
> i should rate my python skills to be almost beginner level)

You should learn Python to atleast an intermediate level if you're
doing such a project professionally. Otherwise, you'll end up hurting
yourself.
OTOH, if this is a project you can afford to make mistakes on and
which can take a little time, it's a decent learning endeavour.

> 3.  I was looking for some frameworks like vaadin in a python, does anybody
> knows about such a framework.
>
> 4. For all this frameworks, we need apache like webserver right. I found
> web.py's independent sample webserver, Is it advisable to use such a
> webserver to avoid other third party installations.

You'll need a *real* webserver to deploy. The inbuilt ones (like the
cherryPy like thing with web.py, paste with pylons, cherryPy with TG
etc.) can't really scale all that well. They might work for a small
app with a few users but anything *real* and you're best moving to a
real webserver (apache, lighttpd, nginx etc.)


> 5. What's your opinion on Web client vs Thick client for such an
> application. If it's thick client, architects here  are forcing to use
> TCL/Tk to build. But my feel is it's lacking look and feel.

With thick clients, you can probably avoid Javascript/CSS work neither
of which I'm personally very fond of (but that's just my opinion).
However, you have to write clients for every supported platform,
people have to install them etc.

Look and feel are not necessarily a problem. It needs to get the job
done and should do it well. A fancy web based app with bells and
whistles that's not fast and responsive is much worse than a simple
command line program that gets the job done. A more genuine problem
with Tk (when I last used it) is that has an almost PHP like way of
getting out of control but maybe that's a GUI thing in general.

One thing that occurs to me is to build your app as a web service and
then write a thick/thin client that interacts with it. Basically,
decouple the front and back ends. Then you can try out different
approaches and see what works.

Good luck.





-- 
~noufal
http://nibrahim.net.in