Ask HN: What web framework(s) do you guys use?

[skanev]

What web framework(s) do you guys (and girls) use? And why not their competitors?

[amix]

In the recent years I have built my own, mostly basing it on other libraries and reusing as many things as possible.

In Python there's something called WSGI (Web Server Gateway Interface) which makes it trivial to implement your own framework. Around 2 years ago I wrote a blog post about WSGI and how to quickly build a Python framework http://amix.dk/blog/viewEntry/105 In the recent years WSGI has grown a lot. Check out wsgi.org for more info.

One can learn a lot of things by making and using own stuff, but it can also be very frustrating (because of bugs and lack of resources). But generally, I like to use own my stuff and my own conventions - I know at least who to blame when some stuff does not work or something is "ugly" :)

[igorgue]

Django, because it has magical powers, who can beat that?

[xenophanes]

A design goal of Rails 3 is to have less magic than Rails 2. I think that's a good change. Less magic please.

[truebosko]

Django, because it doesn't have so much of that special magic. That's why I like it, it works and you know why and how it works. I have no idea if that makes sense. shrug

[siong1987]

Rails. Anyway, I am not saying that Rails is better. I am just wondering how magical Django is?

[fauigerzigerk]

I like Python and I like the way Django does controllers (not so much the template engine though). But I cannot use Django or any Python, Ruby or PHP setup in my current project because I'm keeping a lot of data in memory and that doesn't work with multi-process architectures.

So I'm using a very small dispatcher Servlet to pass JSON messages on to POJOS and do all the templating in the browser using jquery.

I'm bored to death (and rather annoyed) by Java so I'm always looking for alternatives that support my architecture.

[hbien]

Django works for me, too. Doesn't generate a whole bunch of folders and files. Feels lightweight but works for big projects too.

[bmelton]

I used to be pretty big into Zend. I didn't like ActiveRecord in Ruby, or it always felt too confining, and liked the additional control over my models that Zend gave me.

I've recently become a Django convert (not for the pony, that was new to me just now) because the framework just works. I haven't quite worked out the magic required to stand up a Django/MySQL/Apache/Mod_Python server on Windows yet, but it's working perfectly in my VM, so I haven't pursued it very far yet.

[tptacek]

Rails, because I lost the Python vs. Ruby argument, and now we're all converts.

[shutter]

Pylons. http://pylonshq.com/

[shadytrees]

Seconding. The ability to use SQLAlchemy and Jinja2 is fantastic; I personally think they're better than Django's ORM and templating system.

[cnu]

Me too. Was previously using Turbogears.

[vegashacker]

I use LeftParen (http://leftparen.com), a PLT Scheme web framework (that I happen to maintain).

[antiismist]

LP here also. But you probably already knew that.

[abdulhaq]

If you do it yourself, does it count as a framework?

Server: python, postgresql, cherrypy, simplejson

Client: Javascript, HTML, CSS, Dojo, AJAX.

All the HTML is loaded up front and then AJAX for all the rest. Dojo insulates me from browser quirks. TDD Python is what I use at work (and love) and is good for complex algorithms (language morphology, in arabic).

I don't use an all-encompassing framework because I need total UTF-8 support and I feel more comfortable with the general tailorability of the lower-level libraries over the likes of Django, Rails.

[BinaryPie]

I'll never understand why people use DoJo.

Its greatest strength are all the "widgets" i guess you'd call them. However they are all not created equal. Some are well polished and deliver acceptable performance levels and other times they are just demos and hacks.

[andrewljohnson]

I use Django, but only for template inheritance and models - I pretty much leave the template language alone. 99% of the data from the server gets passed out as json.

[edb]

I'm a cakePHP user. It has gotten and keeps getting a lot better as of recent, and I really like the community. I looked into codeigniter after using cakephp for a while and it just seemed to have a lot less to offer. I tried symfony too and it seemed alot more complex, unnecessarily so.

I'm currently dabbling in Rails and Django, but am going to put them down until I finish my current project, since there's nothing in either that I can't do in cake, as far as my project's requirements go.

These are also a lot less portable than the PHP frameworks, which I find is a big deal if ever you want to lengthen your runway with client work. It's MUCH harder to get a quick 2-5k on a small webpage when the client hears "change hosting".

[KrisJordan]

I've been working on a PHP framework that is similar in the 'full-stack' approach of Cake but has performance characteristics of CodeIgniter. It's called Recess and can be found over at http://www.RecessFramework.org

[xtimesninety]

CakePHP for me too. I also use Zend Framework. I like both. CakePHP is great for it's simplicity, but if their conventions don't work for you try out Zend Framework.

[noodle]

codeigniter and rails.

rails because, well, its rails. building something out is typically quick and easy.

codeigniter for those cases when i need to get my hands dirty on a lower level and do some non-standard things. its a minimalist framework that doesn't add much bloat, overhead or other things in your way.

i kind of mentally compare it to java and c.

[SpencerDavis]

Django. It was a toss up for me between Django and Rails but at the time, the updated Rails book was not out yet and the Django book was.

And Django has a magic pony. http://djangopony.com/

[lsb]

Ruby + Sinatra for now. It's great for tiny services that work together.

A full web service to implement '/add/1/2' is just

require 'sinatra'; get('/add/:a/:b') { params[:a].to_i + params[:b].to_i }

[boucher]

Sinatra is definitely an interesting project. We recently "ported" it to JavaScript:

http://github.com/tlrobinson/jack/blob/030685ef3de4c29c38b4e...

The same webservice would be:

    roundabout.route({ path:"/add/{a}/{b}", get: function(){this.body = this.wildcards["a"] + this.wildcards["b"];} })

or, alternatively:

    roundabout.get("/add/{a}/{b}", function(){ this.body = this.wildcards.a + this.wildcards.b; });

The first syntax is a tad longer, but its much more useful; you can define any method with the name of an HTTP verb for that path, and you can also define a filter parameter that will be queried before the path is matched. The filter lets you do whatever pre-processing you want, so you could filter out requests from a specific user-agent for example, or all URLs that use mixed case, or anything else you can think of.

[rickharrison]

codeigniter and more recently kohana.

I like codeigniter a lot because you have more control over things. Frameworks that get things done extremely fast are nice, but I like to have more control over things. And Kohana was modeled after codeigniter, but in completely PHP5, which is why I like it the most.

[thorax]

Code Igniter is solid.

[robertdempsey]

I like Rails with my Ruby.

[aschobel]

Struts2. Very lightweight and its gets out of your way.

Since it is Java we get to leverage some of the incredible Java libraries out there like Guice.

We've tried a few other frameworks. We build our prototype in web.py. Very simple, but I couldn't get used to not living in IntelliJ.

We tried a previous project in Rails, but it did too much 'magic' for us and the scaffolding seemed a bit too brittle.

To be fair the last time I used Rails in production was in the 1.1 days, so it's been a while.

[moder]

Where are all these Java libraries? Do you mean Java's standard library?

I ask because, Perl has the CPAN, Python has PyPI, Ruby has RubyGems, etc., but what does Java have?

[cookiecaper]

Pylons when I use Python - magic sucks, very easy to customize, fast turnaround and not so gargantuan that it takes forever to wrap your head around.

CakePHP for PHP. Definitely the best PHP framework out there, in my opinion; fast, good installed base made out of all-star clients (Mozilla, Yale, others), not restrictive or cumbersome. Honestly, though, I try not to use PHP.

[debt]

Django on AppEngine. Really fast turnaround and scaling is all taken care of(or will be).

[tlrobinson]

Cappuccino. Because we created it. ;)

[boucher]

Plus jack and roundabout (ports of rack and sinatra to javascript), because we created those too :)

http://github.com/tlrobinson/jack

[dmpayton]

I use Django when I need full-stack and CherryPy when I need something lighter. I've also used web.py.

[pwoods]

Top Down Programming BABY!

Seriously, just install smarty and do it yourself. Then somebody can always do a basic edit to the templates and you don't have to weight the merits of the 10000X different frameworks against eachother and get back to Making Money!

[apu]

http://webpy.org/

[moder]

Is webpy the Python equivalent of Perl's CGI::Application? Because I've used C::A in the past and liked its simplicity.

[wmorein]

This is what I use as well. I'm surprised there aren't more users here.

[ezmobius]

rack, merb, sinatra and rails