Compare Pyramid and web2py

Pyramid is a web framework that is written in Python and is based on WSGI. It is minimalistic and inspired by Zope, Pylons, and Django. Before 2010, Pyramid was known as repoze.bfg.

web2py was originally designed as a teaching tool, but it gained adoption outside of the academic world. It is a full-stack framework containing all the components needed to build fully functional web applications using the Model View Controller (MVC) pattern. Inspired by the Ruby on Rails and Django. It is not very popular right now but was ranked amongst top Python web frameworks in 2011.

Let's see how Pyramid and web2py compare on various factors and features and which to choose when.

Pyramid

web2py

Overall

Type

Type

Python "microframework" for building web applications.

Type

Python full-stack for building web applications.

Author

Author

Chris McDonough

Author

Massimo Di Pierro

Release Date

Release Date

2008

Release Date

2007

License

License

BSD license

License

GNU Lesser General Public License version 3 (LGPLv3)

Website

Website

trypyramid.com

Website

www.web2py.com

Adoption and Ease of Use

Popularity [?]

Used by 8,000 projects.

Popularity [?]

Used by 36 projects.

Used by

Used by

Reddit, Yelp, Mozilla, SurveyMoney, NewCars.com.

Used by

Not in use at any large company.

Jobs [?]

Jobs [?]

80 job openings which list Pyramid as a requirement.

Jobs [?]

8 job openings which list web2py as a requirement.

Performance [?]

Performance [?]

Claims to have top-notch performance but virtue of being a microframework but benchmarks prove it to be slower than even Django beyond simple use cases.

Performance [?]

Web2py takes a unique approach where models and controllers are executed in a single global environment, which is initialized at each HTTP request. While there are pros to this approach, such as developers never having to worry about cleaning up or avoid conflict between requests, the major disadvantage is that the code is models is executed with every request which carries a performance penalty.

Flexibility

Flexibility

Pyramid is flexible.

Flexibility

Not as flexible as microframeworks, but doesn't always get in the way.

Ease of Learning

Ease of Learning

Being a microframework, the learning curve isn't very steep. However, it doesn't have the same amount of tutorials, courses, and resources available for leaning compared to Django and Flask

Ease of Learning

Limited online tutorials and resources, and many are several years old. The best resource for learning is web2py author's own "web2py Complete Reference Manual", which seems to be written in 2013.

Database Support

RDBMS Support

RDBMS Support

Through Plugins or Extensions

No built-in ORM framework. Leaves it up to developers to choose a library like SQLAlchemy

RDBMS Support

Built-in

Ships with a Database Abstraction Layer (DAL) which supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, and many other relational databases.

NoSQL Support

NoSQL Support

Doesn't get in the way of using NoSQL, and they are supported just as well as a relational database. Read more here.

NoSQL Support

No built-in support. Very limited support for NoSQL databases. Currently, it only supports Google Datastore on the Google App Engine.

Web & Core Features

Admin Dashboard

Admin Dashboard

Through Plugins or Extensions

Doesn't ship with one but 3rd party tools are available.

Admin Dashboard

Built-in

Yes ships with a built-in admin panel.

REST Support

REST Support

Because it is a minimal framework, users can build a REST API themselves easily, or use a 3rd party library like Cornice.

REST Support

Has some support.

Security

Security

Built-in protection against CSRF, but XSS vulnerabilities have been discovered in older versions.

Security

Built-in protection against input injections, XSS, and common vulnerabilities. Read more here. It has known security vulnerabilities. Please see list here.

Templating Library

Templating Library

Doesn't ship with a default templating language and leaves it up to developers to add one. Jinja2 can be added to Pyramid. Another engine popular amongst Pyramid users is Chameleon .

Templating Library

Uses custom web2py templating language out of the box.

Web Forms

Web Forms

No built-in support. Prefers 3rd party Deform library.

Web Forms

Built-in support. Read more here.

Authentication

Authentication

Built-in support for authentication, authorization and session.

Authentication

Includes a Role Based Access Control mechanism (RBAC), which is sufficient for many use cases.

Testing

Testing

Uses pytest for unit testing.

Testing

Can be done using Python's unittest framework or using the doctest.

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