Python Web Frameworks PEP8 Consistency

The code is read much more often than it is written. The PEP8 guidelines are intended to improve the readability of code. Readability counts, no doubt, but readability consistency is important, it is equally important to know when to be inconsistent. The report below makes excuse for the following:

E501 line too long (> 79 characters)
E231 missing whitespace after ',:'
W291 trailing whitespace
W293 blank line contains whitespace

In this post we will take a look at web frameworks source code readability. The ratio between a web framework total python source lines to PEP8 errors found represents PEP8 error rate in respectful framework:

1. bottle
2. cherrypy
3. circuits
4. django
5. falcon
6. flask
7. pyramid
8. pysi
9. tornado
10. turbogears
11. web.py
12. web2py
13. webapp2
14. wheezy.web

The source code is hosted on bitbucket, let clone it into some directory and setup virtual environment (this will download source code per framework listed above).

hg clone https://bitbucket.org/akorn/helloworld
cd helloworld/04-pep8 && make env up

The make file has a target for each metric, so in order to gather pep8 count issue make pep8, or make count to count total lines.

Python Web Reverse URLs Benchmark

How fast python web frameworks reverse urls? While routing is a mapping of incoming request to a handler, url reverse function is designed to build urls for those handlers. A web page may have a number of urls from few dozen to hundreds... all related to your web site (e.g. links between related pages, tag cloud, most viewed posts, etc). A typical web application usually has deal with the following reverse url use cases:

• Static: the URL path is fixed and never changes, e.g. https://bitbucket.org/explore.
• Merge: the URL path is constructed dynamically, some information is taken from URL. A `user page` shows repositories. In this case a list of user repositories will be constructed as merge of information that came from URL (user name) and repository name.
• Route: the URL path is constructed dynamically, all information can be taken from URL. A `repository page` displays a number of features: downloads, source, etc. Those links include current route information (user name and repository name).

We will examine all reverse url use cases mentioned above with... a trivial 'Hello World!' application that builds 20 urls for each case. The benchmark is executed in isolated environment using CPython 2.7. Latest available versions (November 17, 2013):

1. django 1.6
2. flask 0.10.1
3. pylons 1.0.1
4. pyramid 1.5a2
5. tornado 3.1.1
6. wheezy.web 0.1.373

Let setup few prerequisites to be able run this in a clean debian testing installation.

apt-get install make python-dev python-virtualenv \
    mercurial unzip

The source code is hosted on bitbucket, let clone it into some directory and setup virtual environment (this will download all necessary package dependencies per framework listed above).

hg clone https://bitbucket.org/akorn/helloworld
cd helloworld/03-urls && make env

Once environment is ready we can run benchmarks:

env/bin/python benchmarks.py

Python Web Routing Benchmark

How fast python web framework process routing (some calls this URL dispatch)? A typical web application usually has the following routes:

• Static: the URL path is fixed and never changes, e.g. https://bitbucket.org/explore.
• Dynamic: the URL path is constructed dynamically and can include semantic information, e.g. https://bitbucket.org/jsmith/dotfiles/downloads, in this case jsmith is user, dotfiles a name of source repository, downloads - feature.
• SEO: localization and internationalization is sort of must have for modern web applications, can combine two above.
• Missing: that always happen, url changed and resource is not available anymore. What is impact of handing a non-existing path?

We will examine all mentioned routes above with... a trivial 'Hello World!' application. Routing is written for various Python web frameworks, each entry in route table points to a simple `Hello World` handler. Test is executed in isolated environment using CPython 2.7. Latest available versions (November 17, 2013):

1. bottle 0.11.6
2. django 1.6
3. falcon 0.1.7
4. flask 0.10.1
5. pylons 1.0.1
6. pyramid 1.5a2
7. tornado 3.1.1
8. web2py 2.2.1
9. wheezy.web 0.1.373

Let setup few prerequisites to be able run this in clean debian testing installation.

apt-get install make python-dev python-virtualenv \
    mercurial unzip

The source code is hosted on bitbucket, let clone it into some directory and setup virtual environment (this will download all necessary package dependencies per framework listed above).

hg clone https://bitbucket.org/akorn/helloworld
cd helloworld/02-routing && make env

Once environment is ready we can run benchmarks:

env/bin/python benchmarks.py

apt-get: update only required translations

apt Acquire::Languages can be set to declare which translations you want downloading. The variable "environment" specifies that apt should check $LC_MESSAGES. Here we go:

# eliminate any lists you might have
rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/
# set languages you need
echo 'Acquire::Languages { "environment"; "en"; };' > \
  /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99lang
# update lists
apt-get update

If you need just English, it is okay just remove apt lists.

Python Fastest Web Framework

What is the fastest web framework for Python? In this post we will examine a trivial 'Hello World!'. See also:

1. Performance Benchmarks
   • Routing
   • Reverse URLs
   • Caching
2. Code Quality
   • PEP8 Consistency
   • Excessive Complexity
3. Template Engines
   • Big Table
   • Includes, extends and widgets

The application (see source) is written for various Python web frameworks and deployed to uWSGI application container (version 1.9.6 on CPython 2.7.4/3.3.1) and gunicorn (version 0.15.0 on PyPy 1.9). Latest available versions as of this writing (March 15, 2013):

1. bobo 1.0.0
2. bottle 0.11.6
3. cherrypy 3.2.4
4. circuits 2.1.0
5. django 1.5.1
6. flask 0.9
7. pyramid 1.4
8. tornado 3.0.1
9. turbogears 2.2.0
10. web.py 0.37
11. web2py 2.1.1
12. wheezy.web 0.1.365

Let setup few prerequisites to be able run this in clean debian testing installation.

apt-get install make python-dev python-virtualenv \
    mercurial unzip

# Up TCP connection limits
sysctl net.core.somaxconn=2048
sysctl net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog=2048

The source code is hosted on bitbucket, let clone it into some directory and setup virtual environment (this will download all necessary package dependencies per framework listed above).

hg clone https://bitbucket.org/akorn/helloworld
cd helloworld/01-welcome && make env

The make file has a target for each framework and runs particular example in uWSGI, e.g. in order to run django application just issue make django.