New Werkzeug and Flask Releases

http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2013/6/13/werkzeug-and-flask-releases/

by ch0wn • 13 years ago

251 57 13 years ago

lucumr.pocoo.org

Python 3 support! Now I can make the switch. Congratulations to Armin and all contributors, and a big thank you!

landypro• 13 years ago

The Flask docs have a small write-up on the things to look out for before jumping ship to Python 3. http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/python3/

fyolnish• 13 years ago

I clicked this expecting a new release from Farbrausch : /

dualogy• 13 years ago

Unlikely, right? Also their stuff uses double-k, so it's werkkzeug IIRC..

corford3• 13 years ago

Congrats & well done guys :) Flask was the last major block preventing me from seriously moving over to Python3 so I guess that means it's time to begin porting! (there goes my weekend...)

bjourne2• 13 years ago

Flask is about the most beautiful Python code you can write. Check out any other Python framework and they may have a decent api, but on the inside it is messy and confusing. Reading Flask source code on the other hand is a joy. There's no crazy stuff and few convoluted pieces + lots of comments so it is really easy to hack something if you must. Any Python coder who wants to improve their game definitely should study Flask because it is such a great piece of software engineering.

calpaterson• 13 years ago

For what it's worth, the internals of Bottle are very clean (and extremely simple - the entire library/framework is just one file).

the_mitsuhiko3• 13 years ago

I know I'm biased on that, but if the internals of Bottle are clean it's doing something wrong :) WSGI/HTTP are incredible complex and in fact, too complex to fit into a single Python file.

There is a good reason for why Werkzeug (which Flask is based on) is 15000 lines of code.

ishbits• 13 years ago

I've also found Tornado to be quite readable. But my norm is corporate closed source code which is pretty unreadable.

coleifer• 13 years ago

Not only is the code great, but so is the documentation, the release notes, and the community.

obviouslygreen2• 13 years ago

Check out any other Python framework and they may have a decent api, but on the inside it is messy and confusing.

This is a really disingenuous generalization. If it's not Flask, it's messy and confusing? Telling every framework developer who's not the author of this one library that their code is crap not only isn't a great way to be taken seriously, it's wrong and just kind of mean.

bjourne2• 13 years ago

The natural state of any large codebase maintained by multiple persons over multiple years is to be messy and confusing. Therefore it isn't a slight to anyone to state that the Flask devs have been able to keep their source code much cleaner than the average.

reinhardt• 13 years ago

There's no crazy stuff and few convoluted pieces

I dunno, I've recently started getting into it and "convoluted" is one word that has occurred to me more than once. Handlers vs signals, application and request context, context locals, local proxies, etc.. Probably there's a good reason for all these and the docs make a decent attempt to lay them out but overall my unscientific first impression is that it's not exactly a pinnacle of simplicity.

the_mitsuhiko3• 13 years ago

application and request context, context locals, local proxies

Those are just different names for the same thing. Maybe the docs are a bit too in-your-face with the contexts but I rather expose people to it early to avoid issues down the line.

Django for instance does not have equivalents for application and request contexts and the end result is that people often write thread unsafe code and you can only have one application per Python interpreter. Flask does not have those restrictions. You can have as many Flask applications living side by side. And that is possible because of the contexts.

clicks• 13 years ago

Terrific news! Many thanks to all who made it possible.

https://python3wos.appspot.com/ needs an update. :)

jdboyd• 13 years ago

That will update once the author of flask updates its pypi entry.

galaktor• 13 years ago

Here I was thinking this was about "werkkzeug" by Farbrausch

voltagex_2• 13 years ago

The popular demo!

leeoniya• 13 years ago

pretty sure werkkzeug was the tool, not the demo

sigzero• 13 years ago

This is awesome. Been waiting to use it!

taude• 13 years ago

Time to update some extensions!

drawkbox• 13 years ago

Flask is a very solid python microframework and a joy to work with. So nice it is on Python 3 (3.3+) now. boto is the only thing needed for full on Python 3 here.

kryten• 13 years ago

I picked up flask for a one off helpdesk request frontend for someone a few months ago.

Compared to asp.net, its an absolute joy to work with. It makes me not want to grind my face off with a blunt spoon :)

Glad to see some awesome progress with it.

danibx• 13 years ago

I read somewhere that Flask was born as an Aprils first joke.

So I ask. How safe is it to use in a real project? Is it a serious project today? Would you recommend Flask to someone who has never done any server side programming?

alexk• 13 years ago

Yes, it's pretty reliable.

We (mailgun.com) use it in production, our deployment handles thousands of requests/sec, we have not seen any flask-related issues so far in 2+ years.

You can use pool of flask + twisted powered services behind nginxes:

Nginx ---upstream pool--> twisted.wsgi + thread pool + flask app

Something like that:

https://gist.github.com/klizhentas/5775158

dkh• 13 years ago

Regardless of Flask's humble beginnings, it is indeed a serious project, very stable, and quite awesome. And yes, I would recommend it for your use, assuming you want to learn Python as a whole. Flask is easy enough that you can start building an app right away, but at the same time, it leaves out all the extra 'magic' that ship with things like Django, so you'll be learning a lot more Python as you add onto your app. It's a great mix of simplicity and power, and is great for learning. Go for it.

huxley• 13 years ago

I'm curious about what you think is "magic" in Django? It does have a lot more included than Flask/Werkzeug/Jinja2 but it did start in the era before Pip/VirtualEnv existed so a lot more had to be included.

After numerous purges (the magic-removal-branch being the biggest) and deprecations over the years since 1.0, Django is IMO pretty magic-free. If you have suggestions of what isn't Pythonic enough, I think the core team would appreciate a ticket on Trac:

  https://code.djangoproject.com/newticket

corford3• 13 years ago

Disqus were using it: https://ep2013.europython.eu/conference/talks/making-disqus-...

Though I think they may have recently replaced this bit of their architecture with Go?

FWIW, I've chosen Flask to power my startup and have no regrets at all. It's a joy to work with and rock solid :)

xenator• 13 years ago

Please check out PyPI result page https://pypi.python.org/pypi?%3Aaction=search&term=flask&sub... it shows more than 400 related modules. Think it looks pretty serious.

philfreo• 13 years ago

It's definitely production ready. We are using it everywhere in Close.io (http://close.io/)

If you're building a complex web app with it, just be sure to checkout all the Flask extensions so you don't have to reinvent the wheel too much.

Timothee2• 13 years ago

Twilio uses it to run their API. So, that must be very reliable.

"Flask-RESTful was initially developed as an internal project at Twilio, built to power their public and internal APIs" http://flask-restful.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

obviouslygreen2• 13 years ago

While I'm not disagreeing on the quality of Flask, "x uses y, so y must be stable" is the same kind of argument as "Facebook runs on PHP, so PHP must be blazing fast." Yeah, there are large web companies using all sorts of tech, but what else they're using alongside it and how they've adapted it to their needs make this sort of commentary questionable at best.

It's definitely nice to see other responses here that are from people who are, first hand, using Flask in high-traffic live deployments. I'd just be careful about drawing conclusions based on who has it somewhere in their stack without any context.

kevinburke• 13 years ago

We use a bunch of tools up and down our stack, but the nginx+uwsgi+Flask part of our stack has been very reliable.

Every request to new-ish parts of the Twilio API touches Flask, and it's performed like a champ.

liranz• 13 years ago

We use flask at fusic.com and find it very reliable and easy to work with. Our peaks have over 1m rpm, and it has never fails us. We did a huge project migrating from Django, and now we don't have to jump through hoops so much.

I think flask has a front page that discourages newcomers, as it does not look as serious as Django, and gives the feeling that is it not mature enough, or documented. I tried convincing a new startup to use it and failed for those reasons.

chris_mahan2• 13 years ago

http://werkzeug.pocoo.org/download 404

joeyespo• 13 years ago

This was changed to https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Werkzeug

See https://github.com/mitsuhiko/werkzeug/commit/6e74b5be39d2409...

chris_mahan2• 13 years ago

The "Download page" link in http://werkzeug.pocoo.org/docs/installation/ needs to be fixed then!

(From the tarball release Download the most recent tarball from the download page.)

cstuder• 13 years ago

So we're a PHP shop thinking about moving to Python. With this release, can we immediately start using version 3?

The Flask page still recommends holding back... (http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/python3/)

irahul2• 13 years ago

With this release, can we immediately start using version 3?

You should stick with 2.7 As mentioned in your linked blog post, porting Flask to Python 3 wasn't the issue. The issue is the other libraries which you will use to build your web application which aren't on Python 3 yet. You can try to build a unified code base(runs on both 2.7 and 3) http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2013/5/21/porting-to-python-3-redux/

corford3• 13 years ago

Like irahul has said, the issue is the Flask extension ecosystem and documentation lag rather than Flask itself. Which basically means YMMV depending on what you need to get done :)

If you are writing most of your own code and not using Flask extensions then you could well be fine (unless, like the linked post says, you discover a few months down the line you _do_ need a couple of extensions and they haven't been ported yet!).

Also worth pointing out that lots of other great python libraries now fully support python3 so you can get a lot done with just Flask on its own and those e.g. requests, redis-py, psycopg2, pytz.

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