Help choosing between Django, Zope3 and Web2Py for WebService Server

Question

I need to build a simple administrative webapp using python that will connect to MySQL.

Web Application will need to expose some APIs via Web Services for other Web App and Android/iPhone clients to consume. I need help making technology selections.

I would appreciate suggestions and past experience comment comparisons between Django, Zope3 and Web2Py. I am mainly looking at smallest learning curve and out of the box WebService Server support.

Suggestions on SOAP versus JSON or REST. What will be most cross platform compatible considering smart phone clients. I do not see SOAP support on Django website.

Answer 1

Don't even consider using SOAP. Design a RESTful API, support JSON and XML. You could accomplish this with pretty much any Python web framework. If you use Django there are numerous apps out there for accomplishing this, I like Tastypie.

Answer 2

http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/pillars-python-six-python-web-frameworks-compared-169442

Answer 3

Zope is tremendously powerful, but it definitely has the highest learning curve of the three choices you're discussing.

Answer 4

web2py provides easy web services support out of the box. There's also some relatively new functionality (not in the book yet) for generating RESTful APIs (video tutorial).

Ask on the mailing list if you need any help.

Answer 5

Django has a lot of modules, low learning curve, but most of all the fantastic command

manage.py inspectdb

which will automagically create the whole model layer for any existing database schema (you are then allowed to modify it, but anyway...), and also the admin interface, which will probably avoid you a lot of boring views just to manage your data at a low level.

For RESTful services, there is Piston, Tastypie and now (django 1.3) I'm sure someone will create a REST framework based on the new Class-based generic view system.

Answer 6

I'd go with Django - smallest learning curve, JSON out-of-the-box, AJAX via Dajax, lots of other plugins.

Answer 7

django + django-piston - makes creating good REST APIs ridicously easy