By CherryPy Team
Why CherryPy?
CherryPy is among the oldest web framework available for Python, yet many people aren’t aware of its existence. One of the reason for this is that CherryPy is not a complete stack with built-in support for a multi-tier architecture. It doesn’t provide frontend utilities nor will it tell you how to speak with your storage. Instead, CherryPy’s take is to let the developer make those decisions. This is a contrasting position compared to other well-known frameworks.
CherryPy has a clean interface and does its best to stay out of your way whilst providing a reliable scaffolding for you to build from.
Typical use-cases for CherryPy go from regular web application with user frontends (think blogging, CMS, portals, ecommerce) to web-services only.
Here are some reasons you would want to choose CherryPy:
- Simplicity
Developing with CherryPy is a simple task. “Hello, world” is only a few lines long, and does not require the developer to learn the entire (albeit very manageable) framework all at once. The framework is very pythonic; that is, it follows Python’s conventions very nicely (code is sparse and clean).
Contrast this with J2EE and Python’s most popular and visible web frameworks: Django, Zope, Pylons, and Turbogears. In all of them, the learning curve is massive. In these frameworks, “Hello, world” requires the programmer to set up a large scaffold which spans multiple files and to type a lot of boilerplate code. CherryPy succeeds because it does not include the bloat of other frameworks, allowing the programmer to write their web application quickly while still maintaining a high level of organization and scalability.
CherryPy is also very modular. The core is fast and clean, and extension features are easy to write and plug in using code or the elegant config system. The primary components (server, engine, request, response, etc.) are all extendable (even replaceable) and well-managed.
In short, CherryPy empowers the developer to work with the framework, not against or around it.
- Power
CherryPy leverages all of the power of Python. Python is a dynamic language which allows for rapid development of applications. Python also has an extensive built-in API which simplifies web app development. Even more extensive, however, are the third-party libraries available for Python. These range from object-relational mappers to form libraries, to an automatic Python optimizer, a Windows exe generator, imaging libraries, email support, HTML templating engines, etc. CherryPy applications are just like regular Python applications. CherryPy does not stand in your way if you want to use these brilliant tools.
CherryPy also provides tools and plugins, which are powerful extension points needed to develop world-class web applications.
3. Maturity
Maturity is extremely important when developing a real-world application. Unlike many other web frameworks, CherryPy has had many final, stable releases. It is fully bugtested, optimized, and proven reliable for real-world use. The API will not suddenly change and break backwards compatibility, so your applications are assured to continue working even through subsequent updates in the current version series.
CherryPy is also a “3.0” project: the first edition of CherryPy set the tone, the second edition made it work, and the third edition makes it beautiful. Each version built on lessons learned from the previous, bringing the developer a superior tool for the job.
4. Community
CherryPy has an devoted community that develops deployed CherryPy applications and are willing and ready to assist you on the CherryPy mailing list or Gitter. The developers also frequent the list and often answer questions and implement features requested by the end-users.
5. Deployability
Unlike many other Python web frameworks, there are cost-effective ways to deploy your CherryPy application.
Out of the box, CherryPy includes its own production-ready HTTP server to host your application. CherryPy can also be deployed on any WSGI-compliant gateway (a technology for interfacing numerous types of web servers): mod_wsgi, FastCGI, SCGI, IIS, uwsgi, tornado, etc. Reverse proxying is also a common and easy way to set it up.
In addition, CherryPy is pure-python and is compatible with Python 2.3. This means that CherryPy will run on all major platforms that Python will run on (Windows, MacOSX, Linux, BSD, etc).
webfaction.com, run by the inventor of CherryPy, is a commercial web host that offers CherryPy hosting packages (in addition to several others).
6. It’s free!
All of CherryPy is licensed under the open-source BSD license, which means CherryPy can be used commercially for ZERO cost.
