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Flask vs PHP: What are the differences?
Key Differences Between Flask and PHP
Flask and PHP are both popular web development frameworks, but they have key differences that set them apart. Here are the main differences between Flask and PHP:
1. Server-side Scripting Language vs. Micro web framework: While PHP is a server-side scripting language, Flask is a micro web framework. This means that PHP can be used for both web development and general-purpose programming, while Flask is primarily designed for web development and offers a smaller, more lightweight framework.
2. Syntax and Language Features: PHP uses a syntax that is similar to C and Java, with a focus on server-side scripting and dynamic web page generation. Flask, on the other hand, is based on Python and offers a more concise and elegant syntax, making it easier to learn and write code.
3. Database Integration: PHP has built-in support for a wide range of databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite. It provides extensive functions and libraries for working with databases. Flask, on the other hand, does not offer built-in database support. However, it can easily integrate with any database through SQLAlchemy, a Python SQL toolkit and Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) library.
4. Community and Ecosystem: PHP has been around for a long time and has a large and active community of developers. It has a massive ecosystem of libraries, frameworks, and tools that make it easy to build web applications. Flask, although not as established as PHP, also has a growing community and ecosystem with a wide range of extensions and packages available.
5. Scalability and Performance: PHP is known for its scalability and performance, especially when used with the right caching and optimization techniques. It is widely used in high-traffic websites and applications. Flask, being a micro web framework, is designed to be lightweight and efficient. While it may not have the same level of performance as PHP in certain scenarios, it offers excellent performance for smaller projects and applications.
6. Learning Curve and Flexibility: PHP is relatively easy to learn and has a low entry barrier, making it accessible to beginners. It provides a lot of flexibility in terms of coding style and approach. Flask, being based on Python, has a steeper learning curve for beginners. However, Python is known for its readability and clarity, which makes the codebase more maintainable and easier to understand in the long run.
In summary, Flask and PHP differ in terms of their purpose, syntax, database integration, community, scalability, performance, learning curve, and flexibility. Both frameworks have their strengths and weaknesses, and the choice between them depends on the specific requirements and preferences of the project at hand.
Hi
I want to build a tool to check asset availability (video, images, etc.) from third-party vendors. These vendors have APIs. However, this process should run daily basis and update the database with the status. This is a kind of separate process. I need to know what will be the good approach and technology for this?
hi - I think this depends on how you want to provide the information to the user. If you want to build a Wordpress-plugin: PHP If you want to build your own website: Python+Django / PHP / JavaScript+Node.js As Desktop application?
for what technologies you should use, this is depend on what technology do you prefer? your should think best structuing for your code because each API vendor has different to a nother one so it's better no merege code vendores together. your code must be using SOLID principle pattern and some design pattern such as Factory Pattern
The major advantage of Go is that you can run queries in parallel. Fire off a Go thread for each vendor and each thread can check the availability of assets from a specific vendor and update the database. Go supports hundreds of threads with ease.
your decision depend on what language do you know. if you know php you can use laravel framework
Hi, I would recommend Go because of strongly-typed nature which makes a developer more productive as it is less error prone compared to the other dynamic-typed language. Go also has cron-job library(powered by goroutines) that can help with your automated tasks.
Hey! So I am planning to make an e-commerce website with React Native as my frontend technology stack and MongoDB as my database. I was wondering what will be the best REST framework to use for my backend that will simply serve the frontend. Is Django rest framework a good option or should I go with Flask? I am currently leaning towards flask as the development team is well versed in it. Please help!
If the application is simple such as less endpoint or simple logic, I'd suggest Flask. But what you're building is quite a large system that contains many logics and a lot of models. So I'd suggest you with Django and Django REST framework. Django ORM is also one of the best ORM in the world as well.
FastAPI is modern microframework. If you haven't used any of them, I'd suggest FastAPI. Django REST is also good if you have previous experience with it.
Hello,
I want to generate dynamic CSS for each user with an expiry link.
I've created a cloud-based tool (Example - https://www.tablesgenerator.com/) where people can create tables and use them on their website by pasting the HTML generated by the tool.
Now, there are a few styling options needed, which can be done using CSS. As of now, I'm asking the users to copy the CSS and paste it in the "Custom CSS" section, which is a bit hectic work as they need to change the CSS every time if I make any changes to the styling.
So, I'm just wondering if there's a way to generate dynamic CSS for each user with an expiry link.
Currently, I have around 200 users, and what's the best way to do it?
Instead of having the user copy and paste the CSS directly, have them copy and paste the HTML that will include an external CSS file generated and hosted by your application. This will allow you to control when the stylesheet is updated as well as control privileges on who can request the file. Additionally, using a CDN service (e.g. Cloudflare) will allow you to cache the static assets being requested reducing overall server load.
When your server (and optionally CDN) no longer are serving the file, consider the link expired. Unique URLs can be generated using a multitude of methods but maybe consider if there is any benefit to the users if it follows the scheme: yourdomain.com/USERNAME/CUSTOM_NAME.css rather than something like: yourdomain.com/style/SOME-UNIQUE-HASH-1234.css
The best way, as usual, is a "it depends".
Still I would go to something as simple as storing the expire date+the generated css and other metadata in a table. If a user tries to access something that is expired than he's redirected to a specific page. Periodically (like once a day), a janitor process deletes the old data.
Hi, I have a project on my mind, and I need some help. First of all, I know it is all about personal preference, but I am a beginner in the back-end part. So, I am trying to figure out which language is better, for example, for user authentication and interaction between the users. Also, I don't know which framework is better for this work. My first thought was to use PHP, but after some research on the internet, I'm leaning towards Laravel. I will be grateful if you have some advice for me.
#newbie
First thoughts: * As a beginner you need to understand concepts first, all languages out there are great, each has it's own philosophy, each is better suited for a specific situation. Learn concepts first, do something, then you will understand the differences between them and why one should be chose over another for a task * As a project manager you want your project to come to an end. You will get lost in all the different solutions out there (and it's good), but don't get lost too far. Very often I see people getting lost in those debates and never achieving things, like someone writing a book that would still be choosing the font 6 months after (we've all done that it's ok, but we have to realise it)
Chances are your project can be equally good on any different stacks. I heard an interview of someone from Uber who said something like they started with python, went to node, went back to python and went to go, and with micro-services now they can have all of them all-together.
Last remark: from what I know Laravel is a framework for PHP, so it IS PHP. Just like Symphony for PHP, Express for Node.js, Koa for Node.js, Flask for Python ...
Now to answer your question :
- PHP has a big community, it is great and easy to start with, and you will definitely will learn real object oriented structure
- Node.js has a big community too, don't worry finding help will be as easy. It is less easy to start with but in my point of view it is a lot easier to keep on going with it on a long run. Why ? Because it's very easy to run a new project, and it executes javascript. How is it good ? Because chances are that your front will also be using javascript (React.js / View.js are crazy good). Thanks to that you will be able to master the language better because you will use it all day (and at first mastering one language is more valuable than barely knowing two) and you won't have to switch languages in your head when you code. And communication between front and back will be in json ... Which is crazy close to javascript.
Alexander is right, if you go with PHP take your time first to do things by yourself like building your own MVC, the benefit is huge and the risk is to never really be able to understand what's happening on a deeper level. (at some point you can switch to a framework though). He's also right on choosing a strongly typed language, problem is javascript is not. This is why, if you choose node, when you start being confident, add typesccript.
Hope it helps, good luck
Short answer, if it's a web project (and I guess it is) go with PHP and you can integrate NodeJs services later.
@adzaria (Ezra Fayet) gave a great answer and I'd like to emphasize the first part: As a beginner you need to understand concepts first
. For me that means to understand the web, how servers and requests work, APIs and few others.
Now, I'd like to add few things so, this is the long answer:
Why PHP?
- Everyone knows about the community - PHP is way older so you will find lots of resources and I am not only talking about learning - also lots of helpful tools and packages
- PHP is great for OOP - not perfect, but with PHP7 got great - and if you are a beginner you want to know good OOP for your future. Let's say JavaScript's OOP is a bit strange; I will not get into details but, let's say "it's not by the book". You can still learn JavaScript for your front-end
Why not Python? Python got popular because of AI - don't use PHP for AI and don't use Python for web applications. I can elaborate a lot here but I guess you get the point.
Why not NodeJs?
- NodeJs got popular because of sockets - and it works great, but as a service
- Try to find a good and affordable hosting for NodeJs. How about for Python?
- I would not ignore the security issues that it had and could appear. PHP is older and, therefore, wiser :)
Now, about a framework... is this a learning project or something that you need to do fast? My advice is to start a small project and not use any framework. However, you can use packages and inspire from a framework's architecture - Laravel is a good role model.
Why not start a big project? You will get distracted, get into details and product design stuff and get scared or border and abandon it. For your project you need an MVP - list of minimum required features that you put on paper - that you will complete. After that you can improve.
Good luck!
you can choose Node.js Here are my points
Node.js is build over chrome’s v8 and its works on non blocking io. Node.js have huge community and great packages (npm) to help you out in most cases and makes development faster Node.js has been adopted by many multi dollar company Hope this helps😊
The reason why i chose PHP is the amount of content you can find on the internet easily. As you quoted being a beginner, i think a more mature language would be better. And that's also another reason for following with PHP.
Python is simple and "mature", but it can be a bit hard to understand if you are a beginner. Python relies on heavy abstraction, and that's the reason behind it's simplicity. Python is an "easy to play, hard to master" language, i never recommend it to beginners. Also, one [maybe personal] reason why i don't like to use Python as back-end is: Python is very data-focused. So if your app has focus on business logic, Python wouldn't fit very well. And with that becomes an advantage, if your app has statistical focus, being data-focused or something like that, Python has huge advantage among all other languages due to many great tools the community has built.
About Node, it's like PHP, but less mature. It's as easy as PHP to find tools that can help you, for example, to abstract the database-connection's logic. But to find architectural-focused content, more advanced concepts, it's a lot harder. While that, Laravel's community, for example, has a lot of materials that involves those concepts.
Still, if you are really a beginner, i don't recommend using Laravel with PHP. Do things on plain PHP first, understand the reason behind using frameworks and Laravel's motivation.
Also, consider a strong-typed language first, those are considered more didatic, but less flexible.
You cannot choose between Python | PHP | NodeJS Since they are entirely for Different purpose.
In Bird view
Python - Large Scale Projects and if you want a job in big IT company.
Node.JS - Huge computing projects and if you want job in Silicon valley startup.
PHP - Cost Effective and If you want start a business in near future.
Python, PHP and Node.js all are capable of being used to create good complex software. There are many examples of similar applications built on all of them. If I have to pick one, I would say consider Python and Django. It is fairly easy to develop web applications on top of this stack. Scaling and maintaining the application should also not be a problem given a lot of resources are available online.
I have used Laravel, but with Django you can develop faster, as authentication and admin panel are configured out of the box. It users SQLite by default and you won't have to worry about the database in the begginning
My journey to developing REST APIs started with Flask Restful, and I've found it to be enough for the needs of my project back then. Now that I've started investing more time on personal projects, I've yet to decide if I should move to use Django for writing REST APIs. I often see job posts looking for Python+Django developers, but it's usually for full-stack developers. I'm primarily interested in Data Engineering, so most of my web projects are back end.
Should I continue with what I know (Flask) or move on to Django?
If you want to be a Web developer with knowledge in another frontend and NoSql technology, maybe continue with Flask. However, if you want to create very fast solutions to grow up with a new business and merge these with data analysis and other tools, Django is the answer. Basically read more about the service architecture where you feel more comfortable, Microservice or Monolithic, but please will not married with any because they solve issues to different contexts.
I have just started LEARNING BACKEND so which framework do you think is best to learn first(among flask, node.js and PHP) and use, and which backend programming language should I earn or is important? I have some prior knowledge in python and javascript.it would be nice if someone could point out the advantages of using one framework over the other.
Rule out PHP since you aren't familiar with it, and learning it would take much time since PHP has turned out to be complex lately.
Node.js vs. Flask
Node.js is your go-to solution for developing speed-intensive websites and applications (eCommerce stores, chatbots, etc.). Flask isn't the ideal solution. Django (another Python-based web framework) is better than Flask.
Hi Adithya! Actually, the honest thing is that we all try to follow the hot fashion of the day but that's kind of where people get confused because there are a lot of hot fashions around at the same time as well. If you ask a php expert, he would suggest just go for the php and if you ask someone from ruby language, they would say ruby is fantastic. And same is for python as well. Now Let's have a look at your first question about learning among flask, node and php and thing is php is not framework it is language. Flask is python based and Node is Javascript based runtime environment on server and is not a complete framework. So what I would say in this context is that one should not just jump into a framework directly. Rather playing with a language for couple of months is best thing. Second Question :"which backend programming language should I earn or is important". Answer is No Programming Language is Perfect.Some programming languages are good at one thing but they can be bad at doing something other. Like Speed, Performance, Integration with other tools, Security are the features some Programming languages handle out of the box but each has its trade offs. My advice would be Just pick any of these languages and you should be good with it until unless you stick with good programming style and keep improving yourself. And never switch too much between languages as you learn them, programming needs consistency. Some people try to learn everything at once and that makes people "Jack Of All Trade but Experienced in None". PHP has huge Internet Market Shares, Python is growing and fast, Node is more dynamic but its not framework (Node is JS runtime environment) so all these are good and bad at one or other thing.
Third Advice: " I have some prior knowledge in python and javascript." That's great then. If you already know Python and JS you can learn Any of between Flask and Node but what I have seen is that Learning curve of Node seemed bit steeper to me and it should not be case for you if it seemed to me. But for python I would rather say go with Django rather than flask.
Final Thoughts: Node isn't Framework so if you learn it, you will still have some further framework tools to learn to make a good rapid backend running Like Express or KOA or ADONIS etc. If you go with Flask or Django, they are sort of sufficient to make backend. If you got with PHP, You must go for Laravel because its huge and rapidly growing community now. And yes another options is Rails that is a culture and very mature framework. But kinda slow just my opinion. Moreover you can also look around a bit for what framework can give you more or rapid job if you are looking for a job in your area.
Node.js is the most popular of the three among modern tech stacks, and for good reason: it's simple, lightweight, and fast. Plus, being popular has its advantages: better documentation, libraries, and support when you get stuck (which you undoubtedly will as a beginner).
Pair it with ExpressJS for the best experience.
Learn JavaScript and master the programming concepts. Once you are familiar with the programming concepts such loops, variables, functions, OOP, etc.. you can easily pickup any programming language just by looking at their respective syntax. You can learn a new programming lanuage in just a few minutes. Getting to know the frameworks and libraries though is another story. Although, if you know what you want to build and its functional part, it helps speed things up developing PoC.
NodeJS with Typescript and Express/fastify is best to go for. Flask is really good framework and very easy to learn. But python has peroformance issues. For starters it should be fine but once you have to scale it will be difficult. NodeJS has really good performance and package ecosystem is really good. With typescript you can do static checking which will help reduce errors.
On language, such that both the frontend and backend developers in sync. Node is a performant,easy to learn and good community support.
Which is the best Python framework for microservices?
We are using Nameko for building microservices in Python. The things we really like are dependency injection and the ease with which one can expose endpoints via RPC over RabbitMQ. We are planning to try a tool that helps us write polyglot microservices and nameko is not super compatible with it. Also, we are a bit worried about the not so good community support from nameko and looking for a python alternate to write microservices.
Bottle is much less bloated and fast. Its built-in templating system is one of the fastest as it compiles the templates in bytecode. Also Bottle has no depenencies, preventing dependency bloat.
Hi everyone, I have just started to study web development, so I'm very new in this field. I would like to ask you which tools are most updated and good to use for getting a job in medium-big company. Front-end is basically not changing by time so much (as I understood by researching some info), so my question is about back-end tools. Which backend tools are most updated and requested by medium-big companies (I am searching for immediate job possibly)?
Thank you in advance Davit
Go with Python definetly. It's used everywhere by web developers for backend developments : API, website backend, workers... but also by data scientists (lot lot of resources, models and libraries in Python it's language #1). For the web parts, best web framework are in Python : https://stackshare.io/microframeworks (Flask #2 and Django #3). Java is good but trend is not great in terms of popularity amongs developers and tech leaders.
As per my experience java is most wanted for web development as of now. micro service is evolving . with frameworks like spring boot supports rapid development. Spring boot + Docker + kubernetes great combination.
I would recommend learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (most important). JavaScript forms the backbone of web development. And, there are many popular and widely used frameworks like Angular and React that heavily rely on the knowledge of JavaScript. The number of job opportunities are much more when it comes to javascript.
I would recommend Python as the programming language and as you are a new developer, Flask to start with. It gives you a solid understanding on the web patterns such as REST and will get you up and running in no time. However, I suggest you to read and study on front-end technologies like (React or Vue) and databases (SQL and NoSQL) and probably some NodeJS as well. First grasp the concepts (which Python is ideal for) then it does not really matter the language as such.
I have just started learning Python 3 weeks ago. I want to create a REST API using python. The API will be used to save form data in an Oracle database. The front end is using AngularJS 8 with Angular Material. In python, there are so many frameworks to develop REST APIs.
I am looking for some suggestions which REST framework to choose?
Here are some features I am looking for:
Easy integration and unit testing, like in Angular. We just want to run a command.
Code packaging, like in java maven project we can build and package. I am looking for something which I can push in as an artifact and deploy whole code as a package.
Support for swagger/ OpenAPI
Support for JSON Web Token
Support for test case coverage report
Framework can have features included or can be available by extension. Also, you can suggest a framework other than the ones I have mentioned.
For starters flask provides a beautiful and easy way to create REST APIs. Also its supported by excellent beginner docs as well as a very active community. Another good thing with Flask is its widely available list of plugins which allow you to build as you go. Its also good in performance and can scale to a quite decent level. However, if you are sure your project is going to be fairly big, it would be better to start with Django as it provides a lot of features out of the box and is extremely stable in performance. Both these frameworks have support for Swagger, JWT, Coverage Report although you have to install plugins for them. Deploying both of these are fairly simple and there is huge documentation available. Django has one of the best documentations I have come across. I hope I was able to answer your queries.
Go is a way faster than both Python and PHP, which is pretty understandable, but we were amazed at how good we adapted to use it. Go was a blessing for a team , since strict typing is making it very easy to develop and control everything inside team, so the quality was really good. We made huge leap forward in dev speed because of it.
We decided to expose our small machine learning (ML) pipeline as a REST API. This allows us to nicely separate concerns from the rest of the codebase. There are two very popular choices in Python for building APIs: Flask and FastAPI. We have experience with both, but find that FastAPIs use of static type hints and validation with Pydantic allow us to build better APIs faster.
We have a lot of experience in JavaScript, writing our services in NodeJS allows developers to transition to the back end without any friction, without having to learn a new language. There is also the option to write services in TypeScript, which adds an expressive type layer. The semi-shared ecosystem between front and back end is nice as well, though specifically NodeJS libraries sometimes suffer in quality, compared to other major languages.
As for why we didn't pick the other languages, most of it comes down to "personal preference" and historically grown code bases, but let's do some post-hoc deduction:
Go is a practical choice, reasonably easy to learn, but until we find performance issues with our NodeJS stack, there is simply no reason to switch. The benefits of using NodeJS so far outweigh those of picking Go. This might change in the future.
PHP is a language we're still using in big parts of our system, and are still sometimes writing new code in. Modern PHP has fixed some of its issues, and probably has the fastest development cycle time, but it suffers around modelling complex asynchronous tasks, and (on a personal note) lack of support for writing in a functional style.
We don't use Python, Elixir or Ruby, mostly because of personal preference and for historic reasons.
Rust, though I personally love and use it in my projects, would require us to specifically hire for that, as the learning curve is quite steep. Its web ecosystem is OK by now (see https://www.arewewebyet.org/), but in my opinion, it is still no where near that of the other web languages. In other words, we are not willing to pay the price for playing this innovation card.
Haskell, as with Rust, I personally adore, but is simply too esoteric for us. There are problem domains where it shines, ours is not one of them.
Node continues to be dominant force in the world of web apps, with it's signature async first non-blocking IO, and frankly mind bending speeds. PHP and Python are formable tools, I chose Node for the simplicity of Express as a good and performant server side API gateway platform, that works well with Angular.
Both PHP and Python are free but when it comes to web development PHP wins for sure. There is no doubt that Python is a powerful language but it is not optimal for web. PHP has issues... of course; but so does any other language.
Another reason I chose PHP is for community - it has one of the most resourceful communities from the internet and for a good reason: it evolved with the language itself.
The fact that OOP evolved so much in PHP makes me keep it for good :)
I chose Golang as a language to write Tango because it's super easy to get started with. I also considered Rust, but learning curve of it is much higher than in Golang. I felt like I would need to spend an endless amount of time to even get the hello world app working in Rust. While easy to learn, Golang still shows good performance, multithreading out of the box and fun to implement.
I also could choose PHP and create a phar-based tool, but I was not sure that it would be a good choice as I want to scale to be able to process Gbs of access log data
PHP is easy to learn and you can get up and running in no time, available on almost all hosting providers and you can find developers easily. It has some great frameworks for building your backend like Symfony and Laravel. However, it can be challenging when running an enterprise and needs some adjustments, very recommended for starting a new project or startup.
Websocket is trending this year, but there is another technology similar with Websocket (WS) is Server Sent Event (SSE). Those method have used similar Content-type, SSE is used to text/event-stream and WS is used to binary or text/octet-stream.
The different both of those method is sent. WS is an undirectional sending data both of client and server and SSE is whatever data on server will be push to client.
Pros of Flask
- For it flexibility10
- Flexibilty and easy to use9
- Flask8
- User friendly7
- Secured6
- Unopinionated5
- Secure2
- Customizable1
- Simple to use1
- Powerful1
- Rapid development1
- Beautiful code1
- Easy to develop and maintain applications1
- Easy to setup and get it going1
- Easy to use1
- Documentation1
- Python1
- Minimal1
- Lightweight1
- Easy to get started1
- Orm1
- Not JS1
- Perfect for small to large projects with superb docs.1
- Easy to integrate1
- Speed1
- Get started quickly1
- Open source0
- Well designed0
- Flexibilty0
- Productive0
- Awesome0
- Expressive0
- Love it0
Pros of PHP
- Large community953
- Open source819
- Easy deployment767
- Great frameworks487
- The best glue on the web387
- Continual improvements235
- Good old web185
- Web foundation145
- Community packages135
- Tool support125
- Used by wordpress35
- Excellent documentation34
- Used by Facebook29
- Because of Symfony23
- Dynamic Language21
- Easy to learn17
- Cheap hosting17
- Very powerful web language15
- Awesome Language and easy to implement14
- Fast development14
- Because of Laravel14
- Composer13
- Flexibility, syntax, extensibility12
- Easiest deployment9
- Readable Code8
- Fast8
- Short development lead times7
- Most of the web uses it7
- Worst popularity quality ratio7
- Fastestest Time to Version 1.0 Deployments7
- Simple, flexible yet Scalable6
- Faster then ever6
- Open source and large community5
- Cheap to own4
- Has the best ecommerce(Magento,Prestashop,Opencart,etc)4
- Is like one zip of air4
- Open source and great framework4
- Large community, easy setup, easy deployment, framework4
- Easy to use and learn4
- Easy to learn, a big community, lot of frameworks4
- Great developer experience4
- I have no choice :(4
- Hard not to use2
- Walk away2
- Interpreted at the run time2
- FFI2
- Safe the planet2
- Used by STOMT2
- Fault tolerance2
- Great flexibility. From fast prototyping to large apps2
- Simplesaml1
- Bando1
- Secure1
- It can get you a lamborghini1
- Secure0
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Cons of Flask
- Not JS10
- Context7
- Not fast5
- Don't has many module as in spring1
Cons of PHP
- So easy to learn, good practices are hard to find21
- Inconsistent API16
- Fragmented community8
- Not secure6
- No routing system3
- Hard to debug3
- Old2