Rethinking Web Frameworks in Python

Listening to @pragdave talk about Exlir’s pipes he was talking about how these two styles, while fundamentally the same, have vastly different readability:

"".join(sorted(list("cat")))

Try to explain that line of code to someone who doesn’t program. You start by telling them to just skip over everything until they hit the center, that’s the starting point. Then, you work you way back out, with each new function adding one more layer of functionality.

As programmers, we’ve taught ourselves how to read that way, but it isn’t natural. Consider this pseudo code:

"cat" | list | sorted | join

This code requires that you simply explain what | does, then it goes naturally from one step to the next to the next and the final result should be the joined sorted string.

Seeing that code example got me thinking about some of the discussions I’ve had with new programmers as I explain how Django works. I start explaining the view, to which I’m almost always asked “ok, how does the request know what view to execute?” I follow this up by moving over to URL route configuration. After that’s explained, I’m asked “ok, so how do requests come in and get passed through that?” And this goes on, until we’re standing on top of 20 turtles looking down at the simple Hello World we wrote.

In that vein, what would a web framework look like that started with the premise that a regular, non-programmer should be able to read it. Here’s an idea:

def application(request):
    request > get("/") > do_response()
    request > get("/msg") > say_hello()

So, you define an application function that takes a request, that request is then run through a get function with a route, and if that matches it would finally pass off to a final function that does something that would generate the response.

To that end, I’ve hacked up this simple script that uses werkzeug to do a simple dispatch. The implementation is a little odd and would need to be cleaned up to actually be useful, but I think I could be on to something. Just imagine this syntax:

request > get("/admin") > require_login > display_admin()

At this point, require_login can return early if you’re not logged, and display_admin could repeat the entire application style and be “mounted” on top of the /admin route and respond to request.path that is slightly different.

request > get("/users/") > display_user_list()
request > get("/user/<id>/") > display_user()
request > post("/user/<id>/") > edit_user()
# or...
request > route("/user/<id>/", methods=["GET", "POST"]) > handle_user()

Any thoughts?