Compare Django and Tornado
Django is Python web framework that encourages rapid development. It is based model-template-view (MTV) design pattern. It follows a "batteries included" philosophy and ships with many tools that are needed by application developers such as ORM framework, admin panel, directory structure and more.
Tornado is a Python web framework and asynchronous networking library developed at FriendFeed. By using non-blocking network I/O, Tornado can scale to tens of thousands of open connections, making it ideal for long polling, WebSockets, and other applications that require a long-lived connection to each user. It is great for use cases that are I/O intensive (e.g., proxies) but not ideal for compute-intensive use cases.
Let's see how Django and Tornado compare on various factors and features and which to choose when.
Type
Python all-inclusive, megaframework for building web application.
Type
Python web framework and asynchronous networking library, which does non-blocking I/O.
Used by 367,000 projects.
Used by 145,000 projects.
Used by
Instagram, Pinterest, Coursera, Udemy.
Used by
FriendFeed, Turntable.fm, Fantamaster.it
2074 job openings which list Django as a requirement.
300 job openings which list Tornado as a requirement.
Not as fast as compared to bare-bones Flask or other microframeworks, but for many real-world use cases, the difference is negligible.
Flexibility
Django expects things to be done in a certain way unlike microframeworks (e.g. Flask) which have no opinion on how developers structure things. However, It does this without compromising on flexibility. Django has been used to build a variety of things from content management systems to social networks to scientific computing platforms.
Flexibility
Tornado is simple and flexible.
Ease of Learning
Has a learning curve especially for those who are not familiar with other web frameworks. But there are some great online resources, courses tutorials and YouTube videos.
Ease of Learning
Tornado is not difficult to learn if the user is familiar with asynchronous and non-blocking I/O. The online resources, courses, and tutorials are not as plentiful compared to Flask or Django.
RDBMS Support
Django ships with a built-in
ORM framework for developers to start using out of the box.
Verdict ORM is one of the best features of Django, loved by developers.
RDBMS Support
Through Plugins or Extensions
NoSQL Support
NoSQL databases are not officially supported by Django. There are open source projects like
PynamoDB or
Django MongoDB Engine,
Django non-rel to support NoSQL. Some of these extensions support specific Django versions and don't
interplay well with Django ORM.
Verdict Using NoSQL database with Django is not recommended.
NoSQL Support
No built-in support for NoSQL databases, but 3rd party libraries support asynchronous, non-blocking access.
Motor is one such library from the makers of MongoDB. However, a lot of client libraries like
DynamoDB appear to have been deprecated or not actively maintained.
Admin Dashboard
Django ships with a web-based admin site that has a friendly UI. It allows you to quickly perform CRUD operations against your models from your browser to test things out.
Admin Dashboard
No built-in admin panel. No well-known 3rd party tools either.
REST Support
While not built-in, REST development is supported via the popular and active
Django REST Framework project. It provides support for API versioning,
Browsable API for interacting with APIs through web browser, authentication (OAuth1 and OAuth2) and serialization support for both ORM and non-ORM sources.
REST Support
No built-in support for REST API, but users can implement REST APIs manually.
Security
Built-in protection against several common attack vectors like CSRF, XSS, and SQL injection. When vulnerabilities are discovered, the Django team has an excellent
security policy and
fixes are released quickly.
Security
Built-in
security mechanisms such as secure cookies, XSRF, DNS Rebinding and etc. Has been used in production for many years so security is generally decent.
Templating Library
Tornado uses
custom templating library out of the box.
Web Forms
Ships with built-in
ModelForms which provides complete support for web forms including input validation, CSRF, XSS, and SQL injection.
Web Forms
No built-in support.
Authentication
Built-in
authentication, authorization, account management and support for sessions.
Authentication
Provides user authentication and also supports 3rd party authentication and authorization systems like Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Testing
Built-in support using Python's
unittest framework.
Testing
Built-in support using Python's
unittest framework.
How is performance rating determined?
Performance rating is determined using reputable online benchmarks listed below.
Where is job data coming from?
Job data is collected from Indeed, Google Jobs and Stack Overflow jobs.
How is popularity calculated?
Popularity is calculated using a formula which looks at weighted score on the following publicly available data points:
- Popularity per Google Trends
- Number of GitHub Users
- Number of GitHub Stars
How is this calculated?
Ease of learning is calculated using the following data:
- Number of features and depth of tool.
- Number of online resources: articles, blogs, tutorials and YouTube videos.
- Number of courses
- Freshness of online material
For example, a microframework may not have a lot of online resources but still get a high-rating because it's minamalistic and easy to learn just by following official documentation.
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