Web Development with TurboGears and Python

rdelon writes "TurboGears was previously mentioned here as "Python on Rails". It has since made tremendous progress and is now a popular Python web MVC framework (along with Django). IBM developerWorks just published a great article about TurboGears and a book is on the way. Unlike Rails and Django, TurboGears is made up of several pre-existing subprojects. One of the great features of TurboGears is the 'toolbox,' which allows you to configure and check various aspects of your application and database in a browser."

Comments

It's a two-part series

[aymanh]

Excellent! For those who (like me) can't decide which Python web framework to pick and learn, this is a two-part series on both Django and TurboGears from IBM, one can learn the basics of each one and decide.

TurboGears is great, and so is Django

[Ursus Maximus]

Both TurboGears and Django are excellent. Furthermore, each has strengths for different kinds of projects, with TurboGears at its best for web applications and Django for big, industrial strength web content sites. Twisted and Zope are great too, but for most developers, Django or TurboGears is going to suit them best. Both are under rapid, well coordinated development and are proven solutions that will scale well over time. TurboGears' best of breed component approach is, in my opinion, a winning strategy, especially in the Python community since Python is blessed with so many great projects (some people think too many projects), giving a plethora of high quality, well maintained and best of breed components for TurboGears to choose amongst. There are multiple good tutorials on both frameworks here, http://www.awaretek.com/plf.html , as well as related podcast material about TurboGears and related Python material.

Community Oriented

[amcnabb]

The article was interesting, but I disagree with their claim that, "TurboGears is more community-driven than Django because it was built with pre-existing, open source components." From everything I've seen, Django has a strong community behind it. I don't think I've ever seen an open-source project whose maintainer is as helpful to users and contributors than Adrian Holovaty is. He's extremely respectful and responds quickly to bug reports and suggestions. In addition to its clean, unified feel, the community is one of the main reasons I was attracted to Django.

slashdot meets the real world

[Anonymous Coward]

Just the other day in the Ruby for Rails review thread, someone was saying:

Soon to be obsoleted by Airways for Python

Guido Van Rossum heard exclaiming that he was developing with SNAKES on a PLANE

Guido prefers Django

[YA_Python_dev]

FYI Guido van Rossum prefers Django (from his blog).

And people that use web frameworks in Python will probably be interested in WSGI 1.0 (the Python Web Server Gateway Interface) that will be added to the standard library in Python 2.5: it will probably be supported by all the major Python web frameworks.

Re:Guido prefers Django

[masklinn]

Well, that can be understood, Turbogears for example is mostly "just another python framework" and a Rails ported to Python. If you want Rails, just use Rails (Ruby isn't hard to graps if you know Python... hell, it's even easy, just as switching from Ruby to Python is easy, once you overcome the minor differences)

Django on the other hand offers a slightly different approach of the notion of web frameworks, and has the killer "Hey let's just give you complete administrator interfaces in like 2 lines" which is a true life saver (and the "default" admin interfaces look quite nice too, much nicer than anything i'd be able to code without a designer anyway)

Podcast with Django's Adrian Holovaty

[muchawi]

In an attempt to combine all the best of web frameworks into one event, I interviewed Adrian Holovaty of Django on the Ruby on Rails podcast: Adrian Holovaty on the Rails Podcast He's a smart programmer and it helps to see the different philosophies behind the way popular web frameworks were constructed.

Guido says he doesn't endorse any web framework.

[SimHacker]

Guide van Rossum writes :

Re: Which was chosen?
Posted: Apr 21, 2006 6:46 AM

I'm using Django templates and am very happy with them. I've not had time to compare and contrast it to other frameworks, or even to try out other parts of Django. I do have to say that I am very happy with the way the Django project is being managed; they seem to really "get" open source community projects. I also like WSGI and Phillip Eby's wsgiref implementation, which has been made a part of Python 2.5.

I've decided not to officially endorse a particular web framework; it would be way too big a responsibility. I do recommend that web developers (I'm still not much of one) get together, share experiences, and ask the web framework developers to standardize low-level APIs in additionn to WSGI (PEP 333). Also, I recommend setting up a wiki page where web frameworks are compared and contrasted, as a service to prospective users.

So no, he doesn't prefer Django. It's official: he makes no endorsement whatsoever, except for the low level WSGI standard. He's using Django for at least one application, but he encourages people to compare and contrast all web frameworks.

-Don