Cambridge Python Meetup Group - January January 16, 2008

Event Description:

An Overview of Pylons:
A rapid-development framework for web applications, embracing WSGI

Pylons is a highly flexible, extensible MVC-style web framework that builds heavily on established, best-of-breed libraries for optimal code reuse and strength of individual stack components. It is also very forward-thinking in design, tightly integrating technologies like WSGI and setup tools that many consider to be the future of Python web development. Pylons has also been selected as the basis of Turbogears 2.0, promising increased adoption and even more active development.

Perhaps the biggest challenge that Pylons presents to the new developer is diving in: the flexibility afforded by using existing libraries makes it difficult to know where to begin, and which components are responsible for different aspects of your applications. This presentation will offer a broad overview of the components that make up Pylons, how they interoperate, and how you might swap out some -- such as object-relational mapper or templating engine -- for ones of your choosing. We'll also briefly discuss WSGI, the concept of middleware, and practical concerns such as deployment. Finally, we'll look at a small sample application, and propose additional topics if time allows, such as facilities Pylons provides for conveniently building REST and XML-RPC web services.

Often considered a "hackers' framework," you'll see that Pylons provides nearly all of the conveniences of other "full stack" frameworks, including sessions management, caching and form validation. We'll explore some of the luxuries and challenges you'll face in Pylons development today, as well as forthcoming features and clean-up as the framework moves toward 1.0. Hopefully you'll leave equipped to jump into experimenting with Pylons, without first spending days getting acquainted.

As usual, drinks and pizza will be served -- thanks for the donations they go to the cost of food and the use of Meetup.

Official Website: http://python.meetup.com/181/