Development of modern applications usually requires a determined team of over 20 different individuals, specializing anywhere from software architecture to UI/UX design. Developers who can handle and navigate these various functions single handedly are highly valuable and sought after even in leading enterprise tech industries. Often termed as “Full-Stack Developers” (Full-Stack referring to the complete set of solutions and technologies applied to build the application), these highly versatile engineers are capable of transitioning seamlessly from one development environment to another.
Full stack development, being highly versatile, requires programming knowledge of both the front end and back-end development of a product. While each has its own set of advanced tools and applications, Python is an amazing general-purpose language that fits well into each cycle of development. Being easy to learn with a rich ecosystem and tons of helpful libraries makes it a great choice for web development. In this article, we’ll go over how python can be used for full stack development, going in depth on front end and back-end development as well as looking at how full stack web development with python is carried out.
Back-end Development with Python
Back-end technologies are the backbone of an entire application and are what powers the client side. It’s built to handle application logic, algorithms, database interaction, and the processing of user requests. While it is worth noting that back-end development not only refers to programming, but also the functioning of the supporting libraries, frameworks, and other technologies to build a successful application. While there are other options for effective back-end development, Python remains one of the most common due to its adaptability and is also the one that can easily meet most of the criteria.
Backend development with Python is made efficient using several libraries. We’ll take a detailed look at a few of them:
1. Django and Flask
Django and Flask are two of the most widely known Python web development frameworks that smoothen out and add efficiency to the development process.
Django is a web framework that is built for small scale projects. Django makes it easier for Python developers to start web development rapidly without the need to plan an app’s framework ahead of time, essentially constructing superior web apps with less code. Django is set up, has great documentation, and has a huge online community.
Flask on the other hand was made as an alternative to Django. It extends its features by being more Pythonic. Flask gives straightforwardness, adaptability, and fine-grained control compared to Django.
2. Robot Framework
For test automation tasks, Robot Framework is a common choice. It is often used for Acceptance Testing, Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATTD), and Robotic Process Automation (RPA). The framework has a rich ecosystem around it consisting of various generic libraries and tools and is application independent.
3. Pyramid
Pyramid is an open-source web framework based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern. Similar to Django, it offers ease and flexibility in building your own web applications.
Front-end Development with Python
Front-end development refers to building parts of the application that the user interacts with, mainly the web interfaces. Because of the visual nature of designing web interfaces, front-end engineers’ roles are often confused with web design. While many similarities do exist, the role of front-end developers is far more complex utilizing powerful JavaScript libraries like React or Angular, to build asynchronous code that runs on the browser side in order to make complex and dynamic front-end features.
Until recently, Python didn't have much support on the front-end side compared to other programming languages like JavaScript. But the recent development of front-end frameworks like Brython, Anvil, and Skulpt has made Python just as versatile as JavaScript. Let’s take a quick comprehensive look at some of them:
1. Brython
Brython stands for ‘Browser Python’ and is Python’s implementation of JavaScript. Brython supports most of the syntax of Python3, including comprehensions, generators, metaclasses, imports, etc. making it an excellent alternative to JavaScript. A major advantage in using Brython as opposed to JavaScript is to unify everything under a single umbrella instead of relying on different technologies to carry out the frontend and backend processes.
2. Anvil
Anvil is another python full stack web app builder with a simple drag and drop UI. Its focus is ease of use while still being extremely versatile for full stack development purposes. It allows easy development and deployment of data-driven web applications with just Python.
The Python programming language has a vast and active global community present both online and offline. Tons of developers contribute to the community by creating comprehensive learning resources which make Python extremely easy to learn and get into. Local, regional, and global events are also held in several countries which support and facilitate the growth of a diverse and international community. Numerous online courses also exist which can help you kickstart your development journey; if you’re wondering about full stack developer course fees, you can find out more about it by following the link.
The Python Software Foundation (PSF)
Most of the developers in the Python community are members of the Python Software Foundation (PSF) which is a nonprofit organization with a mission to promote, protect, and advance the Python programming language. The PSF supports the community by providing grants for special projects, maintaining tons of services the Python Community relies on, and conducts the PyCon US Conference, the largest annual gathering for the Python community.
A) Python Conferences
Two of the most active annual conferences for the Python community are PyCon in the United States and EuroPython in Europe. A list of Python conferences can be found at pycon.org.
B) Python User Groups
User Groups are short meetings or presentations for Python developers to talk and present about the latest trends in the community. You’ll find an updated list of the local user groups here: The Python Software Foundation Wiki.
C) Online Communities
Several active online communities are present, where software development enthusiasts help each other with a broad range of programming questions, career advice, and other topics.
Text Editor and IDEs
In order to be able to program with Python, users require either a text editor or integrated development environments (IDEs). These are applications for writing code and are the primary user interface for developers. For Python, a variety of text editors and IDEs are available:
Text Editors
A text editor is simply an interface for developers to write and run code. They are simple and straightforward, while some are optimized for programming languages. Text Editors are made to work with whatever framework or programming language you choose. Some popular text editors include Vim, Emacs, Mu, Atom, and Visual Studio Code.
Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)
Integrated Development Environments or IDEs are a set of tools that all work together: text editor, compiler, build or make integration, debugging, etc. IDEs are programming language or framework specific. Some popular IDEs for Python include PyCharm, Thonny, Wing IDE, PyDev, etc.
Python for Data Tasks
Python has an incredibly vast open-source code library for carrying out data science tasks. Several Python Libraries like Pandas, Matplotlib, StatsModels, NumPy, etc are used for data preprocessing, data visualization, statistics, making machine learning models, and much more. Python is getting better equipped to address the challenges of data science – the libraries are growing and maturing, which makes it an excellent choice for back end data tasks.
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How Python Fits into Web Development
Web development using Python is getting more popular in recent years. Developers have found Python extremely effective in building server-side web applications. While building web apps doesn’t require a web framework in place, using one speeds up the process immensely and gets the application running in as little time as possible.
While JavaScript remains as the primary language that is executed in web browsers, Projects such as pyjs can compile from Python to JavaScript. However, most Python developers use a combination of Python and JavaScript to write their web applications. While JavaScript is run by the client’s web browser, Python is executed on the server side. To learn more about how to use java for full stack development, be sure to follow our full stack java course.
Python for Web Apps
Web applications driven with Python use Python code to run logical tasks. The web server executes the code, which means that users don’t need to install anything except for a web browser. Getting Python to run on a website can be complicated, but there are several different web frameworks that automatically take care of the details. Flask is one of the frameworks that makes developing and deploying full stack web app development with python incredibly easy.
Flask for Developing Web Apps
Flask is a Python web framework that consists of a set of useful tools and features for creating web applications in Python. It provides incredible flexibility and accessibility by being simple to use and requiring only a single Python code file to build an entire web app. It’s also extensible and does not require a particular directory structure or complicated boilerplate code to start.
Conclusion
Whether you are new to the journey of web development or not, it is worth noting that Python has become very suitable for full stack development owing to its development time and the frameworks that it provides. Regardless of these reasons, many developers enjoy the use of python due to its versatility with handling a variety of tasks, and a wide array of resources to learn from.
For beginners, learning the syntax and libraries in Python is necessary to build a web application or web API. Even intermediate and advanced Python software developers need to constantly program and learn to keep up with the ever-evolving ecosystem. But when used productively, Python provides an easy, flexible and smooth way for full-stack web development. To learn more, you can check out our web development course syllabus.
