Looking for a lightweight Python web framework with minimal configuration [closed]

Question

I realise that web application frameworks are well documented, yet having tried 2 Python frameworks and found that are neither are suitable for my task, I hope you'll understand the need for this question.

I'm looking for a lightweight, "micro" framework for Python with the following features:

• Basic HTML layout management
• Features for HTML forms, tables etc.
• Authentication and session management
• Preferably integrable with mod_wsgi
• Seamless importing of packages

That's it. You may ask why I need a framework for this at all - I don't. But it would save a lot of time, and I'm very surprised that I can't find something like this.

I'm reasonably advanced in Python but want to deal with the HTML and authentication as effortlessly as possible. I have a lot of existing code that I would like to be called from within the framework. I don't require an ORM or DAL, I would like my existing classes to continue to use their own MySQLdb driver. Inevitably, for authentication to be handled, an ORM or DAL will be included, but I just won't use it for anything other than authentication.

I have tried web2py and Grok, both supposedly lightweight, configuration-free frameworks, yet both were far too high-level.

Thanks in advance.

Menjivar

As soon as you add "features for HTML forms, tables etc." you lose the "micro" bit. And what does "seamless importing of packages" even mean? – Flattery

Out of the frameworks I have used, the higher level they are, the more caveats they tend to have for importing packages/modules. I simply meant with as few caveats as possible. – Menjivar

Answer 1

You should have a look at flask.

• It comes with jinja as a template language.
• It doesn't contain any ORM.
• There are lots of well supported extensions for sessions, forms, ORM, etc.

Transcendental

And, in addition, it's much lower level than web2py (cannot speak for Grok). +1 – Linneman

Answer 2

You can also try WebPy.

Fireman

Answer 3

The full (?) list of python web frameworks is given here. This slideshow compares 10 micro frameworks and should be of intrest. Not all of them will tick your boxes but at least it should give some hints as to their pros/cons.

Quince

Answer 4

I propose looking into web.py and Tornado.

Web.py is incredibly simple to use with a power of a full web framework. I used it for OData implementation with great success.

Fitzgerald