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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=447166

by skanev • 18 years ago

43 141 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

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

noodle• 18 years ago

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.

rickharrison• 18 years ago

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• 18 years ago

Code Igniter is solid.

abdulhaq2• 18 years ago

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.

andrewljohnson• 18 years ago

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.

BinaryPie• 18 years ago

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.

tdavis4• 18 years ago

The Dojo examples page always froze my browser. Even after switching computers and operating systems, it would hang for a while. I never did figure out if it was just me or nobody else seemed to notice.

abdulhaq2• 18 years ago

What do you recommend, in terms of widgets?

knieveltech2• 18 years ago

Drupal.

blender• 18 years ago

yogione• 18 years ago

Drupal all the way or combine with Cake or CI

knieveltech2• 17 years ago

I'm not conversant with Cake or CI so I couldn't comment intelligently here.

ezmobius• 18 years ago

rack, merb, sinatra and rails

igorgue• 18 years ago

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

siong1987• 18 years ago

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

cesqui• 18 years ago

http://www.djangopony.com/

bmelton• 18 years ago

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.

hbien2• 18 years ago

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

xenophanes• 18 years ago

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• 18 years ago

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

fauigerzigerk4• 18 years ago

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.

scotth2• 18 years ago

Grails?

dylanz• 18 years ago

merb/rails

tptacek2• 18 years ago

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

tocomment• 18 years ago

I'm in Python. I'm happiest just doing import cgi ...

I always feel guilty though.

randallsquared• 18 years ago

If import cgi works for you, it's great. I love simplicity.

pwoods2• 18 years ago

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!

edb• 18 years ago

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".

xtimesninety• 18 years ago

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.

KrisJordan• 18 years ago

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

pwoods2• 18 years ago

Write your own!

tdavis4• 18 years ago

Sure, maybe if you've never done it before because it's a learning experience, but it's a patently horrible idea otherwise.

zepolen• 18 years ago

It isn't a horrible idea. Using a ready made framework all the time without regard if it's right for the job is a horrible idea.

For some apps which have a certain level of complexity and require some extra flexibility, you end up wasting more time fighting the framework than getting the job done.

It helps if you have a well defined standard in place, for python, that means WSGI. Coupled with good libraries, it's hard to beat.

fauigerzigerk4• 18 years ago

So that means frameworks shouldn't exist at all in your opinion?

lallysingh• 18 years ago

socket & sprintf FTW!!!

tptacek2• 18 years ago

Don't forget strcspn!

sachinag• 18 years ago

http://www.qcodo.com, which now has been forked to http://qcu.be

SpencerDavis• 18 years ago

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/

marbletiles• 18 years ago

WebObjects. I don't like Java, or Eclipse, which makes it an odd choice, but it was Rails before Rails, and still has a lot of advantages over it. The ORM works hand-in-hand with the framework to do proper persistence, and while I rage against the tools sometimes, they're still better than being dumped back at a texteditor.

If only Apple would give it some more love, it'd be killer.

coolestuk• 18 years ago

WebObjects for me too :-) And I also don't like Java or Eclipse. But at least with DirectToWeb one can keep the Java code to a minimum.

sjs382• 18 years ago

I write my own mostly-modular parts. It isn't as flexible as I'd like it to be, but it does what I need it to do.

st3fan• 18 years ago

Java, so I prefer Wicket and like Stripes.

rs• 18 years ago

+1 for wicket.

Used wicket for a while on xp-dev.com, but moved to a home grown one as wicket was a tad bit too bloated.

But I really like how wicket is component based, and have used it successfully for other project (all intranet based ones though - so don't really have many publicly accessible examples)

bdittmer4• 18 years ago

+1 for Stripes. It's like WebWork/Struts 2 without the XML configuration headaches.

klon• 18 years ago

When using Java, I prefer Stripes. For a new project I would definately use Python and Django.

cstejerean• 18 years ago

compojure - best option in Clojure so far.

robertdempsey• 18 years ago

I like Rails with my Ruby.

shutter• 18 years ago

Pylons. http://pylonshq.com/

shadytrees• 18 years ago

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

cnu2• 18 years ago

Me too. Was previously using Turbogears.

amix• 18 years ago

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" :)

whiskeyjack• 18 years ago

CGI::Application in Perl. Just to be contrary. Well, not really. I still love Perl. Nothing wrong with the alternatives... it's just what I like.

dmpayton2• 18 years ago

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

vegashacker• 18 years ago

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

antiismist• 18 years ago

LP here also. But you probably already knew that.

leftnode• 18 years ago

(shamless plug)

My own (PHP5 framework) - Artisan System

http://artisansystem.com/

zacharydanger• 18 years ago

More like "Fartisan"! Just kidding, I've been meaning to give Artisan a try. Where are the docs? Give me at least a nice tutorial on setting up a stupid blogging CMS.

drhowarddrfine• 18 years ago

Never used a framework and never will. I know how to code. I do my own sites and don't use others or have others do my work for me.

ryanwaggoner• 18 years ago

Haha...I assume you're kidding, right? Are you coding in binary? Because if not, someone else has "done your work for you" :)

andreyf• 18 years ago

Coding in binary on what? Unless you mined your own raw materials to build your machine, someone else has "done your work" for you. Not to mention where you'd get electricity...

hs• 18 years ago

i dunno why u got downvoted for just being different shrug

kenver• 18 years ago

Probably because he implied that using a framework means that you're lazy and dont know how to code.

The main reason people use frameworks, is not because they're lazy or bad, it's because it lets them get more done, faster, and with less tedium.

staunch• 18 years ago

Catalyst with DBIx::Class (ORM)

olegp2• 18 years ago

Helma NG: http://helma.org

bdittmer4• 18 years ago

I'd like to hear some of your experiences using helma!

olegp2• 18 years ago

I decided to give Helma a go because I like the idea of being able to re-use server side code within the browser and also because it should make it easier for others to extend the web application with plugins without having to learn a new scripting language.

I've been using Helma NG, rather than the stable Helma 1, so my comments are specific to that.

The dynamic nature of the language makes a huge difference. Both Helma and Grails (which you mentioned) feel like a breath of fresh air after working in Java with frameworks such as JSF. It's much faster to get things done, but I do miss the debugger and IDE integration.

Helma NG takes a new approach to managing scopes and I've found it easy to organize code into modules like in Python.

Helma NG is still work in progress, so parts of it keep changing, which I've found to be a bit of a problem. However, since most of it is in JavaScript and the framework is very lightweight, it is easy to wrap around the parts of a module you want to remain fixed.

I prefer Grails' GSP tag syntax to Helma macros, so might try to add support for that at some stage.

I'm using CouchDB for persistence and have been writing my own abstraction layer on top of that, so can't really comment on the SQL/Hibernate module.

Performance seems good, but I haven't run any benchmarks.

The community is relatively small, but very responsive. The documentation is there, but there are few examples. However, most of the code is self-explanatory.

So, to summarize: Helma NG is perfect for what I'm doing, but isn't yet stable enough to be used in place of Grails for a more traditional webapp. Helma 1 might be more appropriate for that.

What have your experiences with Grails been like?

tlrobinson• 18 years ago

Cappuccino. Because we created it. ;)

boucher3• 18 years ago

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

http://github.com/tlrobinson/jack

durbin• 18 years ago

http://symfony-project.org/

adatta02• 18 years ago

symfony here also

dreur2• 18 years ago

Symfony also !!

and am going to try Grails soon

maxwell• 18 years ago

AppJet. Jaxer was a bit buggy when I used it over the summer.

apu• 18 years ago

http://webpy.org/

moder2• 18 years ago

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

wmorein• 18 years ago

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

russell• 18 years ago

I just inherited a massive enterprise application; you know run a brick and mortar company on it. It's not a one-off; a number of companies use it. The stack is

Jboss; Spring; Hibernate; Struts; XML gluing it together; Javascript: prototype, JQuery and others; Flex and granite; Vestiges of every Java framework fad of the last 10 years. Maybe I exaggerate, maybe not.

It is way over-engineered. Several times as much code as a Django, Pylons, or Ruby solution. I dont recommend going this path at all, even if you are an enterprise.

dw0rm• 18 years ago

webpy (http://webpy.org/) is very lightweight and hackable

omouse• 18 years ago

I've tried Django and now I'm trying Seaside.

cstef• 18 years ago

Anyone using yii? It looks interesting to me, but I have not had a chance to give it a whirl beyond the basic application tutorial.

http://www.yiiframework.com/

vyrotek• 18 years ago

Asp.net MVC - Because C# is the best language

dazzawazza• 18 years ago

turbogears

rob• 18 years ago

Kohana.

Ferdi• 18 years ago

Drupal and Rails

marram• 18 years ago

Django with Google App Engine

lsb2• 18 years ago

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 }

boucher3• 18 years ago

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.

lsb2• 18 years ago

That looks really cool; how's that been working out? Is that in production? If Ruby had Gambit Scheme's serializable continuations, that would be pretty interesting times.

jonknee• 18 years ago

Django when I get to and CodeIgniter when I have to.

breily2• 18 years ago

I used to use Django, tried cherrypy and web.py, and have ended up starting to write my own (http://github.com/breily/juno).

joshsharp• 18 years ago

Juno looks pretty nice.

breily2• 18 years ago

Thanks, that's always good to hear.

auston• 18 years ago

I mess with Rails, dabble in Django & work in CodeIgniter.

Also fun - merb, cakephp, symfony, web2py

jcady• 18 years ago

I can't believe the number of web frameworks out there. If anything the amount of comments just illustrates how easy it is to roll your own.

aschobel• 18 years ago

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.

moder2• 18 years ago

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?

skanev• 18 years ago

The Apache Project and Maven. Although though do not map exactly to CPAN/RubyGems.

lux• 18 years ago

I wrote my own CMS/framework which I started about 8-9 years ago, so I use that. In my main business I sell a "pro" version of it as well as customization/hosting/etc, and naturally it's also the framework I use for my startup too. For those that are interested:

http://www.sitellite.org/

It's in PHP 4/5, GPL licensed, decently clean code (in 8 years there's obviously some cruft at this point :), but also has a few nice things built-in like a full CMS on top of it, multilingual support, a couple dozen modules that save some time, ORM library, and the ability to setup A/B tests just by editing a page, which is starting to come in handy these days.

Some challenges of rolling your own are that you have to write the documentation, and provide support/training/whatever else since developers aren't likely to be familiar with it (unless it's open and gains popularity). Some things to consider when weighing your options... :)

debt• 18 years ago

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

moe• 18 years ago

cherrypy and sqlalchemy. and closely looking at werkzeug for future projects.

mpc• 18 years ago

jQuery. Rails.

schtog• 18 years ago

webpy because it is minimalistic and very clean and easy to use.

I have aslo played around a little b it with compojure+clojure.

jamongkad• 18 years ago

Python - Web.py no magic you know what's happening. PHP - CodeIgniter same thing.

modoc• 18 years ago

Seam because I'm a Java guy at heart and Seam is a pleasure to work with.

lo_fye• 18 years ago

Zend Framework + Propel, yo.

gommm• 18 years ago

rack, merb and rails...

jamesbritt• 18 years ago

Ramaze. Feels most Ruby-ish for me.

mindaugas• 18 years ago

ramaze ! and that means rack -> ruby

rociiu• 18 years ago

Rails, Django

cottsak• 18 years ago

aspnet mvc. current project - http://ksischool.com

booboo• 18 years ago

It would be nice if someone would define exactly what a framework is. I mean, we're not all brilliant.

twotimestwo• 18 years ago

Good question. What _does_ constitute a framework?

zby• 18 years ago

Catalyst

oscardelben• 18 years ago

Ruby on Rails is my primary framework. I've played a lot with Merb, but I'm happy that it will be merged with rails. In the future I want to explore web frameworks written in lisps (cl, scheme or closure)

joshdavey• 18 years ago

My own php framework: http://github.com/joshdavey/madeam/tree/master

invitro• 18 years ago

django, rails, codeigniter so far

cookiecaper• 18 years ago

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.

robedw• 18 years ago

If using PHP Kohana, Really, really good php framework. Release cycles are a bit crazy and some of the lead devs are uppity but all in all it's good.

whalliburton• 18 years ago

Weblocks

http://common-lisp.net/project/cl-weblocks/

bdittmer4• 18 years ago

Grails (http://www.grails.org). A rails inspired Groovy framework that uses big boy frameworks (Hibernate, Spring, etc.) under the hood.

apinstein• 18 years ago

I wrote my own for php, http://phocoa.com.

After I learned to write Cocoa apps for the mac, I realized I needed a similar framework for web development, so I wrote phocoa.

PHP as a language is kinda bumming me out since I've learned about new techniques like functional programming, closures, etc from Javascript and playing with Ruby.

If PHP 5.3 doesn't seem like it's on the right path, I may switch to another language...

jaxn• 18 years ago

I use Rails for my bigger project, but I kinda like Google's webapp (the default on AppEngine). It is enough, and I assume it works the best of any framework on AppEngine.

One of my projects is a location-based role-playing game for mobile phones that we will be launching soon. The entire game engine is hosted on AppEngine and uses the webapp framework.

sidonei• 18 years ago

I use cherrypy + SQL objects + Cheetah, cause that way i choose what components i want to handle all the general components of a webb app(http reqest/respose, ORM and templating) Also i know exactly how things happen so that makes me feel comfortable ... ie as you guys call it less magic :)

jpcx01• 18 years ago

Merb. For me it has all the benefits of both Django and Rails, and is ultra clean and hackable.

webmaven• 18 years ago

Zope: http://zope.org

Although I am also currently experimenting with App Engine: http://www.webappwednesday.com

rodrigo• 18 years ago

JSPs, Servlets and POJOs. Im a complete beginner so im trying to learn the basics first. Im very aware of some Java shortcomings but I like the fact that I can get responses from thousands of books, tutorials, and the web. A bunch of Python frameworks looks very nice though, and the languaje also, but Im required to use Java for now : (

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

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