What is Django and flask in python | Django vs Flask | Django & Flask: Which Framework to choose- Code Star

FLASK VS DJANGO

While creating & managing Back-end or Server-side of any Website ,a Programmer has a wide range of frameworks to choose to do so. The leading languages in this stream are Php, Node JS, Python etc.

Python gives a option of frameworks where Django & Flask leads the list followed by bottle , Ninja etc.

So lets dive into the insights of Django & Flask and know which one is better for you.

INTRODUCTION

Both Django and Flask are hugely popular among Python programmers. Django is a full-stack web framework for Python, whereas Flask is a lightweight and extensible Python web framework. Django is developed based on batteries-included approach. It enables programmers to accomplish common web development tasks without using third-party tools and libraries. Django lacks some of the robust features provided by Python.

Django and Flask have mature communities, are widely supported and popular, and offer productive approaches to application development, letting you focus your time and energy on the unique parts of your application rather than the core scaffolding. In the end, both frameworks are used to develop web applications. The key difference lies in how they achieve this goal. Think of Django as a car and Flask as a bike. Both can get you from point A to point B, but their approaches are quite different. Each has its own best use cases. The same goes for Django and Flask.

Features

Next, let's compare Flask and Django based on the features that ship with the core framework.

Database

Django includes a simple yet powerful ORM (Object Relational Mapping) that supports a number of relational databases out-of-the-box -- SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Oracle. The ORM provides support for generating and managing database migrations. It's also fairly easy to create forms, views, and templates based on the data models, which is perfect for your typical CRUD web application. While it does have some shortcoming, it's good enough for the majority of web applications.

Flask makes no assumptions about how data is stored, but there are plenty of libraries and extensions available to help with that:

Use	Library	Extension
ORM	SQLAlchemy	Flask-SQLAlchemy
Migration tool for SQLAlchemy	Alembic	Flask-Alembic
ORM, Migrations	Peewee	Flask-Peewee
ORM	PonyORM	Flask-Pony
ODM (Object Document Mapper)	PyMongo	Flask-PyMongo
ODM	MongoEngine	Flask-MongoEngine

In conclusion, if you're using a relational database, Django makes it much easier to get started since it has a built-in ORM and migration management tool. If, however, you're using a non-relational database or would like to use a different ORM like SQLAlchemy, Django will fight you almost every step of the way. Plus, you will most likely not be able to take advantage of the Django admin, model forms, or DRF model serializers.

Flask stays out of your way, giving you the freedom to pick and chose the ORM (or ODM) that works best with your application. Freedom comes at a price, though: There's a higher learning curve and more room for error since you're managing these pieces yourself.

Admin

Django comes with a functional admin panel, which is a web application that provides a user interface for managing data based on your models. This is another area where Django shines. It allows you to quickly perform CRUD operations against your models as you build out an application without writing any extra code. Again, Flask does not ship with anything like this, but the Flask-Admin extension offers  all of the same functionality. 

Django does lots of things automatically.

Flask philosophy is slightly different - explicit is better than implicit. If something should be initialized, it should be initialized by the developer.

Flask-Admin follows this convention. It is up to you, as a developer, to tell Flask-Admin what should be displayed and how.

Sometimes this will require writing a bit of boilerplate code, but it will pay off in the future, especially if you have to implement some custom logic.

Flask-Admin supports a number of database backends, like SQLAlchemy, Peewee, MongoEngine, to name a few. You can add your own backends as well. It can also be used with (or without) the popular Flask auth extensions:

1. Flask-Login and Flask-Principal
2. Flask-Security

Simplicity of development

One of the greatest advantages of Flask is that it’s simpler than Django. While both are well documented, Flask is just easier for developers to get their heads around.

This simplicity is hugely important when it comes to actually using the framework to develop software in it, which leads to faster development of smaller features.

However, the simplicity of Flask may not necessarily be as valuable from the business perspective. It’s an added bonus for your developers, but as a C-level executive, you don’t stand to gain a lot from this.

Library support

Supporting many libraries can be a major disadvantage of Flask. When you have multiple libraries integrated into a large product, some of them don’t stay on the market and lose support over time. This means that their maintenance becomes progressively more expensive.

Conversely, a big benefit of Django is that it supports underlying technologies (like templating or the ORM) and offers you supporting materials and tools to make migrations to newer versions easier. With a complete set of information at your disposal, you can smoothly transition from one version to the next. As a result, the risk of manual maintenance is much lower.

Community support

The community around Django is larger than Flask’s, which has a direct influence on problem solving, bug fixing, and maintenance costs.

Since Django is more widespread and has a stronger market presence, a lot of potential issues you may encounter during development have already been solved and extensively documented by other developers.

Having so many answers to your questions within arm’s reach means you save time and money you’d otherwise waste on coming up with them yourself.

Pros and Cons

For us to fully understand the comparison of the two, let’s compare these two frameworks by identifying their pros and cons.

Django

The pre-built files provided by Django makes the framework easy for the developers to dive into web applications since it is almost ready. You can build quickly, with less coding time. Furthermore, below are the pros of Django Framework:

• • • Mature software with outstanding support from the community of expert developers and users.
    • Free and open source
    • ORM support
    • MVC design
    • Numerously available plugins that can be integrated easily into the application
    • Rapid development and highly customizable
    • Easy to learn
    • Has an admin panel
    • Simple database management

Meanwhile, Django also has cons as any framework does. The following are:

• • • Too bloated for small projects
    • Underpowered templating and ORM
    • Templates failed silently by default
    • Auto reload restarts the entire server
    • High learning curve
    • Documentations does not cover real-world scenarios
    • Can only handle single request per time.
    • Routing requires some knowledge of regular expressions
    • Internal sub components coupling

Flask

Flask was launched and started to use since 2010, hence, it is relatively young compared to Django. Some developers tell that Flask inherits more Python standards than Django because it is more explicit. It is commonly the choice for the beginners because of the simple app running. Below are the pros of Flask Framework:

• • • Lightweight
    • Simple and minimal
    • Easy to build a quick prototype
    • Easy to develop and maintain applications
    • Very flexible
    • Routing URL is easy
    • Database integration is easy
    • Small core and easily extensible
    • Minimal yet powerful
    • Lots of resources available online, especially on GitHub
    • Considering it a young framework, the official documentation of Flask is complete and thorough

On the other hand, the following are the cons of Flask’s Framework:

• • • Async may be a little problem
    • Lack of Database and ORM
    • Thread locals and global variables used everywhere
    • Setting up large project requires some previous knowledge of the framework
    • Limited features
    • Limited support and smaller community compared to Django

Recommendations

Since the complexity of our application is one thing to consider upon choosing between Flask vs Django, we will determine which framework properly fits each type of application.

Django is recommended for online store since it has modules for e-commerce. Blogs and online media also suits well with Django because it has documented examples created in journalistic realities. Also, if you are a beginner in web development who wanted to use the application as soon as possible, Django comes with pre-built functions making it easier to start your applications with lesser configurations. You can also use Django for RESTful APIs.

On the other hand, Flask framework fits those developers who wanted to understand well on how the application project is arranged. Integration of third-party plugins is also a plus when using Flask. And if you wanted to create a complex application but using SQL queries, then you can use Flask.

Should you choose Django or Flask for your software project as a 'Beginner'?

This is the core Question of this Article. If you prefer minimal and simplicity, then Flask is for you. Flask will let you have the wheel of building your app and customize it the way your project requires you to. You will be able to understand each item you will be using on your application since you will add them by your own. Flask also is much convenient for getting started, making it much easier for users to run and develop their application. Although flexible, it is also complex because of the manual addition of plugins and third-party packages.

Beginners are also recommended to use Flask because it is a great learning tool to manually learn the modules and libraries. Flask can edge their skills and best when testing for solutions since you will only work on less-structured objects. It would be much easier to learn from scratch then improve your knowledge if you are already familiar with the framework. An application can be improved using Django, especially when it is a product for release.

We think that now all your issues and questions have been solved and now you can confidently chose between Django & Flask.