Suggest a standalone python web framework?

Question

I have a python program that I would like to present as a simple web application. The program currently uses sqlite for storage. I also need to distribute the whole thing to colleagues so having something standalone and easy to start would be ideal ( no install if possible). This web app is meant to be used locally , not by multiple users over a network.

Is there a suitable python framework that might fit my needs? I looked at Django so far but it seems a bit heavy handed for what I need.

Answer 1

I have never tried it myself, but you could try Bottle:

Bottle is a fast, simple and lightweight WSGI micro web-framework for Python. It is distributed as a single file module and has no dependencies other than the Python Standard Library.

• D.C.: This looks awesome. Shame it doesn't work natively with python 3 but I can work around that
• Jonny: @D.C. Obviously things have changed in the five years since you posted the comment, but for anyone else reading this the latest stable (v0.12) and dev (v0.13) versions of Bottle support Python 3.
• D.C.: Nice. I've waited 5 years to deploy this app, now it's finally time!

Answer 2

try http://docs.python.org/library/simplehttpserver.html

• D.C.: This would just serve up static HTML resources no? I need cgi like support where form input or Ajax could query the server for something dynamic / useful

Answer 3

As web frameworks are not part of the standard lib, you will have to install something in every case. I would propse to look at http://flask.pocoo.org/. It has a build in WSGI server.

• D.C.: I am hoping that instead of installing something I can just include the framework source files with the app
• Achim: That's a completely different question. Packaging will be a bit boring and tedious, but you should be able to manage it. There are documentations about how to package Flask apps for Google App Engine. There you cannot install anything too, so it's a similar problem. Just ask Google for "Flask and App Engine".

Answer 4

Lots of choices for Python web frameworks! Another is web2py which is designed to work out of the box and allows, but doesn't require, through-the-web development. It is mature and has a strong community and is well-documented.

• Michael Dillon: This is the only answer so far that addresses the "standalone" part of the question.

Answer 5

Tornado as a framework may be a lot more than what you're looking for. However it will meet the requirement of being a completely python based web server. http://tornadoweb.org

I generally just download the source, drop it in /tornado/ of my project and do includes there from the app.

Answer 6

I don't think that any web framework is specifically oriented for the use case you're talking about; They all assume they are running on a server and there's a browser on a remote machine that is accessing them.

A better approach is to think about the HTTP server you'll be using. It's probably preferable to use a server that's as easy to pack and ship as the rest of the python code you'll be using. Now most frameworks provide a 'development' server that's easy to invoke from the command line, but most of them are intended to be "easy for the developer" which often means they are restricted to a single thread. This is bad for deployment because single threaded servers will always feel a bit sluggish.

CherryPy stands out in contrast, by providing a full featured, embedded server that's easy to configure for many use cases, and is available by default with the rest of the framework. There are probably others, but I haven't used 'em.

• D.C.: Cool, I've heard of cherrypy before. I'll take a closer look