Next-Generation Web Frameworks in Python

Pylons

Philosophy: Component Reuse and Native WSGI Support

Of the three frameworks profiled here, Pylons (http://pylonshq.com) is the most lightweight. It is not a complete bundle like Django nor does it officially support any particular template or database layer like TurboGears. There is clean, up-to-date documentation and an active user community, but the project is the youngest of the three and also the most philosophically "hackeresque." A new Pylons user will spend very little time reading documentation on the Pylons site, and instead will dive into the components almost right away. For this reason it tends to appeal to developers with unusual project technology stacks, whereas creators of traditional CRUD-heavy content-driven sites may be more comfortable with Django. It can also be appealing to framework-haters, who may appreciate having some components ready-to-use but can easily dispose of others that are unnecessary or insufficient.

Startup and Deployment: It's Okay to Eat Paste

Like Django and TurboGears (and Rails), Pylons comes with an installation script to bootstrap a new project:

paster create --template=pylons winedb

Paste is a Pylons-related component that acts as a kind of meta-framework creator (http://pythonpaste.org). It provides methods to start projects (see above), deploy using WSGI (see below), and even build simple web frameworks, acting as the "glue" (get it?) between various components. For Pylons developers interested in simply getting started with Pylons, ...