Compare CherryPy and TurboGears

CherryPy allows developers to build web applications in much the same way they would build any other object-oriented Python program. CherryPy has built-in tools for sessions, static files, cookies, file uploads, caching, encoding, authorization, compression, and many more.

TurboGears was born as a full stack layer on top of Pylons, and many other disparate libraries and middleware. It is now a standalone WSGI web framework designed around MVC architecture inspired by Ruby on Rails and provides all the features developes need for web development. It can also run in minimal mode and act like a microframework such as Flask.

Let's see how CherryPy and TurboGears compare on various factors and features and which to choose when.

CherryPy

TurboGears

Overall

Type

Type

A minimalist, object-oriented and popular web framework for Python.

Type

A full-stack web application framework for Python.

Author

Author

Sylvain Hellegouarch

Author

Kevin Dangoor

Release Date

Release Date

2002

Release Date

2005

License

License

BSD License

License

MIT License

Website

Website

cherrypy.org

Website

turbogears.org

Adoption and Ease of Use

Popularity [?]

Used by 6,600 projects.

Popularity [?]

Used by 500 projects.

Used by

Used by

Used in production services at Netflix and Hulu

Used by

Used at SourceForge, Fedora Community and other smaller companies.

Jobs [?]

Jobs [?]

16 job openings which list CherryPy in the job description.

Jobs [?]

3 job openings which list TurboGears in the job description.

Performance [?]

Performance [?]

Very fast. Extensions could impact performance adversely.

Performance [?]

Not as performant as barebones or even fullstack frameworks. Extensions could impact performance adversely.

Flexibility

Flexibility

Very flexible and simple. Doesn't force anything on developers.

Flexibility

Developers can use TurboGears as a microframework which is very flexible. However, as you start building towards a fullstack solution, it does expect things to be done in a certain way.

Ease of Learning

Ease of Learning

Straightforward and easy to learn. Being around for almost 20 years, it has a good amount of tutorials online.

Ease of Learning

Has a learning but since it uses a lot of exisitng 3rd party libraries it becomes are little easier to onboard. It also has a decent amount of tutorials online.

Database Support

RDBMS Support

RDBMS Support

Through Plugins or Extensions

No built-in ORM framework. Leaves it up to developers to choose their own such as SQLAlchemy.

RDBMS Support

Built-in

Ships with SQLAlchemy with Master Slave load Balancing. Before TurboGears v2, the ORM used as SQLObject.

NoSQL Support

NoSQL Support

No built-in support for NoSQL databases but developers can use libraries to talk to MongoDB, DynamoDB etc.

NoSQL Support

Supports MongoDB out of the box using Ming ORM. Ming ORM was developed to look like SQLAlchemy so it's easier for developers familiar with SQLAlchemy to start using it.

Web & Core Features

Admin Dashboard

Admin Dashboard

Through Plugins or Extensions

No built-in admin panel.

Admin Dashboard

Built-in

Built-in admin panel.

REST Support

REST Support

No built-in support but can be implemented easily. Read this guide to implement.

REST Support

Built-in support using tg.controllers.RestController. Read this guide to implement.

Security

Security

No built-in protection. Must be handled by developers themselves or by using 3rd party extensions.

Security

Little built-in protection. Must be handled by developers themselves or by using 3rd party extensions.

Templating Library

Templating Library

Doesn't come with a built-in templating language or package. Developers can use Jinja2, Mako. See full list here

Templating Library

Ships with internally developed Kajiki templating engine, but supports multiple templating engine including Genshi.

Web Forms

Web Forms

No built-in support. Developers can use formencode or any other solution.

Web Forms

TurboGears relies on ToscaWidgets2 for building and validating forms.

Authentication

Authentication

Built-in implementation of HTTP Basic Access Authentication.

Authentication

Ships with repoze.who which is an authentication and identity framework for WSGI applications. Read more here.

Testing

Testing

Using WebTest and Nose.

Testing

Using Nose. Read more here.

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