The Python world certainly doesn't need more web frameworks. But, it does need more creativity, so I thought I'd spread some Hacktoberfest spirit around, bring some of my ideas to the table, and see what I could come up with.
import responder
api = responder.API()
@api.route("/{greeting}")
def greet_world(req, resp, *, greeting):
resp.text = f"{greeting}, world!"
if __name__ == '__main__':
api.run()
This gets you a WSGI app, with WhiteNoise pre-installed, jinja2 templating (without additional imports), and a production webserver (ready for slowloris attacks), serving up requests with gzip compression automatically.
Class-based views (and setting some headers and stuff):
@api.route("/{greeting}")
class GreetingResource:
def on_request(req, resp, *, greeting): # or on_get...
resp.text = f"{greeting}, world!"
resp.headers.update({'X-Life': '42'})
resp.status_code = api.status_codes.HTTP_416
Render a template, with arguments:
@api.route("/{greeting}")
def greet_world(req, resp, *, greeting):
resp.content = api.template("index.html", greeting=greeting)
The api
instance is available as an object during template rendering.
Serve a GraphQL API:
import graphene
class Query(graphene.ObjectType):
hello = graphene.String(name=graphene.String(default_value="stranger"))
def resolve_hello(self, info, name):
return "Hello " + name
api.add_route("/graph", graphene.Schema(query=Query))
We can then send a query to our service:
>>> requests = api.session()
>>> r = requests.get("http://;/graph", params={"query": "{ hello }"})
>>> r.json()
{'data': {'hello': 'Hello stranger'}}
Or, request YAML back:
>>> r = requests.get("http://;/graph", params={"query": "{ hello(name:\"john\") }"}, headers={"Accept": "application/x-yaml"})
>>> print(r.text)
data: {hello: Hello john}
Want HSTS?
api = responder.API(enable_hsts=True)
Boom. ✨🍰✨
The primary concept here is to bring the nicities that are brought forth from both Flask and Falcon and unify them into a single framework, along with some new ideas I have. I also wanted to take some of the API primitives that are instilled in the Requests library and put them into a web framework. So, you'll find a lot of parallels here with Requests.
- Setting
resp.text
sends back unicode, while settingresp.content
sends back bytes. - Setting
resp.media
sends back JSON/YAML (.text
/.content
override this). - Case-insensitive
req.headers
dict (from Requests directly). resp.status_code
,req.method
,req.url
, and other familar friends.
- Flask-style route expression, with new capabilities -- primarily, the ability to cast a parameter to integers as well as other types that are missing from Flask, all while using Python 3.6+'s new f-string syntax.
- I love Falcon's "every request and response is passed into to each view and mutated" methodology, especially
response.media
, and have used it here. In addition to supporting JSON, I have decided to support YAML as well, as Kubernetes is slowly taking over the world, and it uses YAML for all the things. Content-negotiation and all that. - A built in testing client that uses the actual Requests you know and love.
- The ability to mount other WSGI apps easily.
- Automatic gzipped-responses.
- In addition to Falcon's
on_get
,on_post
, etc methods, Responder features anon_request
method, which gets called on every type of request, much like Requests. - WhiteNoise is built-in, for serving static files.
- Waitress built-in as a production web server. I would have chosen Gunicorn, but it doesn't run on Windows. Plus, Waitress serves well to protect against slowloris attacks, making nginx unnecessary in production.
- GraphQL support, via Graphene. The goal here is to have any GraphQL query exposable at any route, magically.
- Cooke-based sessions are currently an afterthought, as this is an API framework, but websites are APIs too.
- Potentially support ASGI instead of WSGI. Will the tradeoffs be worth it? This is a question to ask. Procedural code works well for 90% use cases.
- If frontend websites are supported, provide an official way to run webpack.
The primary goal here is to learn, not to get adoption. Though, who knows how these things will pan out.
$ pipenv install responder
✨🍰✨
Only Python 3.6+ is supported.