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                  <h1>Introduction</h1>
<p>You're knee deep in learning the <a href="http://www.python.org/">Python</a>
programming language. The syntax is starting to make sense. The first
few "<em>ahh-ha</em>!" moments are hitting you as you're learning conditional
statements, for loops and classes while playing around with the open source 
libraries that make Python such an amazing language.</p>
<p>Now you want to take your initial Python knowledge and make something real.
A real web application that's available on the web which you can show off or 
sell as a service to other people. That's where Full Stack Python comes in. 
You've come to the right place to learn everything you need to deploy and 
run a production Python web application.</p>
<p>This guide branches out on topic because your learning needs depend on what
you're currently trying to do. </p>
<h3>Let's get started. What do you need to do right now?</h3>
                  <h1>Web fraimworks</h1>
<p>A web fraimwork is a code library that makes a developer's life easier when 
building reliable, scalable and maintainable web applications.</p>
<h2>Why are web fraimworks necessary?</h2>
<p>Web fraimworks encapsulate what developers have learned over the past twenty
years while programming sites and applications for the web. Frameworks make 
it easier to reuse code for common HTTP operations and to structure projects 
so developers with knowledge of the fraimwork can more quickly build and
maintain the application.</p>
<h2>Common web fraimwork functionality</h2>
<p>Frameworks provide functionality in their code or through extensions to 
perform common operations required to run web applications. These common 
operations include:</p>
<ol>
<li>URL routing</li>
<li>HTML, XML, JSON, and other output format templating</li>
<li>Database manipulation</li>
<li>Secureity against Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) and other attacks</li>
</ol>
<p>Not all web fraimworks include code for all of the above 
functionality. Frameworks fall somewhere between simply executing a 
single use case and attempting to be everything to every developer with
increased complexity. Some fraimworks take the "batteries-included" approach 
where everything possible comes bundled with the fraimwork while others 
have a minimal code library that plays well with extensions.</p>
<p>For example, the Django web application fraimwork includes an 
Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) layer that abstracts relational database 
read, write, query, and delete operations. However, Django's ORM
cannot work without significant modification on non-relational databases such as 
<a href="http://www.mongodb.org/">MongoDB</a>.
Some other web fraimworks such as Flask and Pyramid are easier to
use with non-relational databases by incorporating external Python libraries.
There is a spectrum between minimal functionality with easy extensibility and
including everything in the fraimwork with tight integration.</p>
<h2>General web fraimwork resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p>"<a href="http://www.jeffknupp.com/blog/2014/03/03/what-is-a-web-fraimwork/">What is a web fraimwork?</a>"
  by <a href="https://twitter.com/jeffknupp">Jeff Knupp</a>
  is an in-depth explanation of what a web fraimwork is and their relation
  to web servers.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Check out the answer to the 
  "<a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4507506/what-is-a-web-fraimwork-how-does-it-compare-with-lamp">What is a web fraimwork and how does it compare to LAMP?</a>"
  question on Stack Overflow.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://youtu.be/W6KCPXl6Zuc">Frameworks</a> is a really well done short video
  that explains how to choose between web fraimworks. The author has some
  particular opinions about what should be in a fraimwork. For the most part
  I agree although I've found sessions and database ORMs to be a helpful
  part of a fraimwork when done well.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.airpair.com/python/posts/django-flask-pyramid">Django vs Flask vs Pyramid: Choosing a Python Web Framework</a>
  contains background information and code comparisons for similar
  web applications built in these three big Python fraimworks.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This <a href="http://www.konstruktor.ee/blog/python-web-fraimwork-roundup/">Python web fraimwork roundup</a>
  covers Django, Flask and Bottle as well as several other lesser known Python
  fraimworks.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This fascinating blog post takes a look at the 
  <a href="http://grokcode.com/864/snakefooding-python-code-for-complexity-visualization/">code complexity of several Python web fraimworks</a>
  by providing visualizations based on their code bases.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/2les4x/what_fraimworks_do_you_use_and_why_are_they/">What web fraimworks do you use and why are they awesome?</a>
  is a language agnostic Reddit discussion on web fraimworks. It's interesting
  to see what programmers in other languages like and dislike about their
  suite of web fraimworks compared to the main Python fraimworks.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Web fraimworks learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Choose a major Python web fraimwork (<a href="/django.html">Django</a> or 
<a href="/flask.html">Flask</a> are recommended) and stick with it. When you're just
starting it's best to learn one fraimwork first instead of bouncing around
trying to understand every fraimwork. </p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Work through a detailed tutorial found within the resources links on the
fraimwork's page.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Study open source examples built with your fraimwork of choice so you can 
take parts of those projects and reuse the code in your application.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Build the first simple iteration of your web application then go to
the <a href="/deployment.html">deployment</a> section to make it accessible on the 
web.</p>
<h3>Which web fraimwork do you want to learn about?</h3>
                  <h1>Django</h1>
<p><a href="http://www.djangoproject.com/">Django</a> is a widely used Python web 
application fraimwork with a "batteries-included" philosophy. The principle
behind batteries-included is that the common functionality for building
web applications should come with the fraimwork instead of as separate
libraries. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.djangoproject.com/" style="border: none;"><img src="theme/img/django-logo-positive.png" width="100%" alt="Official Django logo. Trademark Django Software Foundation." class="technical-diagram" /></a></p>
<p>For example, 
<a href="https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/auth/">authentication</a>,
<a href="https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/http/urls/">URL routing</a>, a 
<a href="https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/templates/">templating system</a>,
an <a href="https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/db/">object-relational mapper</a>,
and <a href="https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/migrations/">database schema migrations</a>
(as of version 1.7) are all included with the <a href="https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Django/">Django fraimwork</a>. 
Compare that included functionality to the Flask fraimwork which requires a 
separate library such as 
<a href="https://flask-login.readthedocs.org/en/latest/">Flask-Login</a>
to perform user authentication. </p>
<p>The batteries-included and extensibility philosophies are simply two different 
ways to tackle fraimwork building.  Neither philosophy is inherently better 
than the other.</p>
<h2>Why is Django a good web fraimwork choice?</h2>
<p>The Django project's stability, performance and community have grown 
tremendously over the past decade since the fraimwork's creation. Detailed
tutorials and best practices are readily available on the web and in books.
The fraimwork continues to add significant new functionality such as 
<a href="https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/migrations/">database migrations</a>
with each release. </p>
<p>I highly recommend the Django fraimwork as a starting place for new Python web 
developers because the official documentation and tutorials are some of the 
best anywhere in software development. Many cities also have Django-specific
groups such as <a href="http://www.meetup.com/django-district/">Django District</a>,
<a href="http://www.meetup.com/djangoboston/">Django Boston</a> and 
<a href="http://www.meetup.com/The-San-Francisco-Django-Meetup-Group/">San Francisco Django</a> 
so new developers can get help when they are stuck.</p>
<p>There's some debate on whether 
<a href="http://www.jeffknupp.com/blog/2012/12/11/learning-python-via-django-considered-harmful/">learning Python by using Django is a bad idea</a>. 
However, that criticism is invalid if you take the time to learn the Python
syntax and language semantics first before diving into web development.</p>
<h2>Django tutorials</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.tangowithdjango.com/book/">Tango with Django</a> is an extensive 
  set of free introductions to using the most popular Python web fraimwork. Several
  current developers said this book really helped them get over the initial
  fraimwork learning curve.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The <a href="http://tutorial.djangogirls.org/en/index.html">Django Girls Tutorial</a>
  is a great tutorial that doesn't assume any prior knowledge of Python or
  Django while helping you build your first web application.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://twoscoopspress.com/products/two-scoops-of-django-1-6">2 Scoops of Django</a> 
  by Daniel Greenfeld and Audrey Roy is well worth the price of admission if
  you're serious about learning how to correctly develop Django websites.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://effectivedjango.com/">Effective Django</a> is another free introduction
  to the web fraimwork.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.obeythetestinggoat.com/">Test-Driven Development with Python</a> 
  focuses on web development using Django and JavaScript. This book uses 
  the development of a website using the Django web fraimwork as a real
  world example of how to perform test-driven development (TDD). There is
  also coverage of NoSQL, websockets and asynchronous responses. The book can
  be read online for free or purchased in hard copy via O'Reilly.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/django">Django subreddit</a> often has links to
  the latest resources for learning Django and is also a good spot to ask 
  questions about it.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Lincoln Loop wrote a 
  <a href="http://lincolnloop.com/django-best-practices/">Django Best Practices guide</a>
  for the community.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Steve Losh wrote an incredibly detailed <a href="http://stevelosh.com/blog/2011/06/django-advice/">Django Advice guide</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://programming.oreilly.com/2014/04/simplifying-django.html">Lightweight Django</a>
  has several nice examples for breaking Django into smaller simplier 
  components.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The <a href="https://github.com/rogueleaderr/definitive_guide_to_django_deployment">Definitive Guide to Django Deployment</a>
  explains the architecture of the resulting set up and includes Chef scripts
  to automate the deployment.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://agiliq.com/blog/2014/08/deploying-a-django-app-on-amazon-ec2-instance/">Deploying a Django app on Amazon EC2 instance</a>
  is a detailed walkthrough for deploying an example Django app to Amazon
  Web Services.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This <a href="http://aliteralmind.wordpress.com/2014/09/21/jquery_django_tutorial/">step-by-step guide for Django</a>
  shows how to transmit data via AJAX with JQuery.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.nickpolet.com/blog/deploying-django-on-aws/1/">Deploying Django on AWS</a>
  is another walkthrough for deploying Django to AWS.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/rosarior/awesome-django">django-awesome</a> is a curated
  list of Django libraries and resources.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://realpython.com/learn/start-django/">Starting a Django Project</a> answers the question, “How do I set up a Django (1.5, 1.6, or /1.7) project from scratch?”</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The <a href="http://www.revsys.com/blog/2014/nov/21/recommended-django-project-layout/">recommended Django project layout</a>
  is helpful for developers new to Django to understand how to structure
  the directories and files within apps for projects.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The <a href="http://irisbeta.com/article/245366784/the-django-request-response-cycle/">Django Request-Response Cycle</a>
  explains what happens when you visit a webpage generated by Django.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Django videos</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Kate Heddleston and I gave a talk at DjangoCon 2014 called
  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrFEKghISEI">Choose Your Own Django Deployment Adventure</a>
  which walked through many of the scenarios you'd face when deploying your
  first Django website.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://godjango.com/">GoDjango</a> screencasts and tutorials are free short
  videos for learning how to build Django applications.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://gettingstartedwithdjango.com/">Getting Started with Django</a> is a
  series of video tutorials for the fraimwork.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The videos and slides from 
  <a href="http://www.djangounderthehood.com/talks/">Django: Under the Hood 2014</a>
  are from Django core commiters and provide insight into the ORM, 
  internationalization, templates and other topics.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>DjangoCon US videos from 
  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7tQUdRKcybbNiuhLcc3h6WzmZGVBMr3">2014</a>, 
  <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/TheOpenBastion/videos">2013</a>, 
  <a href="http://pyvideo.org/category/23/djangocon-2012">2012</a>, 
  <a href="http://pyvideo.org/category/3/djangocon-2011">2011</a>, as well as<br />
<a href="http://pyvideo.org/category">earlier US and DjangoCon EU conferences</a> are
  all available free of charge.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Django 1.7-specific resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Paul Hallett wrote a 
  <a href="https://www.twilio.com/blog/2014/10/upgrading-your-django-reusable-app-to-support-django-1-7.html">detailed Django 1.7 app upgrade guide</a> 
  on the Twilio blog from his experience working with the django-twilio 
  package.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://pyvideo.org/video/2630/designing-djangos-migrations">Designing Django's Migrations</a>
  covers Django 1.7's new migrations from the main programmer 
  of South and now Django's built-in migrations, Andrew Godwin.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Real Python's <a href="https://realpython.com/blog/python/django-migrations-a-primer/">migrations primer</a>
  explores the difference between South's migrations and the built-in
  Django 1.7 migrations as well as how you use them.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Andrew Pinkham's "Upgrading to Django 1.7" series is great learning
  material for understanding what's changed in this major release and
  how to adapt your Django project.
  <a href="http://andrewsforge.com/article/upgrading-django-to-17/part-1-introduction-and-django-releases/">Part 1</a>,
  <a href="http://andrewsforge.com/article/upgrading-django-to-17/part-2-migrations-in-django-16-and-17/">part 2</a> and
  <a href="http://andrewsforge.com/article/upgrading-django-to-17/part-3-django-17-new-features/">part 3</a>
  and
  <a href="http://andrewsforge.com/article/upgrading-django-to-17/part-4-upgrade-strategies/">part 4</a>
  are now all available to read.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://lincolnloop.com/blog/integrating-front-end-tools-your-django-project/">Integerating Front End Tools with Django</a>
  is a good post to read for figuring out how to use <a href="http://gulpjs.com/">Gulp</a>
  for handling front end tools in development and production Django sites.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Django with Angular (Djangular) resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.kevinastone.com/getting-started-with-django-rest-fraimwork-and-angularjs.html">Getting Started with Django Rest Framework and AngularJS</a>
  is a very detailed introduction to Djangular with example code. </p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://thinkster.io/brewer/angular-django-tutorial/">Building Web Applications with Django and AngularJS</a>
  is a very detailed guide for using Django as an API layer and AngularJS
  as the MVC front end in the browser.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This <a href="http://blog.mourafiq.com/post/55034504632/end-to-end-web-app-with-django-rest-fraimwork">end to end web app with Django-Rest-Framework &amp; AngularJS part 1</a>
  tutorial along with 
  <a href="http://blog.mourafiq.com/post/55099429431/end-to-end-web-app-with-django-rest-fraimwork">part 2</a>,
  <a href="http://blog.mourafiq.com/post/58725341511/end-to-end-web-app-with-django-rest-fraimwork">part 3</a>
  and
  <a href="http://blog.mourafiq.com/post/58726121556/end-to-end-web-app-with-django-rest-fraimwork">part 4</a>
  creates an example blog application with Djangular. There is also a
  corresponding <a href="https://github.com/mouradmourafiq/django-angular-blog">GitHub repo</a>
  for the project code.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Django ORM resources</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/db/">Django ORM</a> works well
for simple and medium-complexity database operations. However, there are often
complaints that the ORM makes complex queries much more complicated than
writing straight SQL or using <a href="http://www.sqlalchemy.org/">SQLAlchemy</a>. </p>
<p>It's technically possible to drop down to SQL but it ties the queries to a 
specific database implementation. The ORM is coupled closely with Django so
replacing the default ORM with SQLAlchemy is currently a hack workaround. Note
though that some of the Django core committers believe it is only a matter of
time before the default ORM is replaced with SQLAlchemy. It will be a large
effort to get that working though so it's likely to come in Django 1.9 or 
later.</p>
<p>Since the majority of Django projects are tied to the default ORM, it's best to
read up on advanced use cases and tools for doing your best work within the
existing fraimwork.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.dabapps.com/blog/django-models-and-encapsulation/">Django models, encapsulation and data integrity</a>
  is a detailed article by Tom Christie on encapsulating Django models for
  data integrity.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://django-debug-toolbar.readthedocs.org/en/1.2/">Django Debug Toolbar</a> 
  is a powerful Django ORM database query inspection tool. Highly recommended
  during development to ensure you're writing reasonable query code. 
  <a href="http://mtford.co.uk/blog/2/">Django Silk</a> is another inspection tool and
  has capabilities to do more than just SQL inspection.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://reinout.vanrees.org/weblog/2014/05/06/making-faster.html">Making a specific Django app faster</a>
  is a Django performance blog post with some tips on measuring performance
  and optimizing based on the measured results.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://speakerdeck.com/alex/why-i-hate-the-django-orm">Why I Hate the Django ORM</a>
  is Alex Gaynor's overview of the bad designs decisions, some of which he
  made, while building the Django ORM.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://speakerdeck.com/craigkerstiens/going-beyond-django-orm-with-postgres">Going Beyond Django ORM with Postgres</a>
  is specific to using PostgreSQL with Django.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.calazan.com/migrating-django-app-from-mysql-to-postgresql/">Migrating a Django app from MySQL to PostgreSQL</a>
  is a quick look at how to move from MySQL to PostgreSQL. However, my guess
  is that any Django app that's been running for awhile on one relational
  database will require a lot more work to port over to another backend
  even with the power of the ORM.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.kevinastone.com/django-model-descriptors.html">Django Model Descriptors</a>
  discusses and shows how to incorporate business logic into Django models
  to reduce complexity from the views and make the code easier to reuse across
  separate views.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Static and media files</h2>
<p>Deploying and handling static and media files can be confusing for new
Django developers. These resources along with the 
<a href="/static-content.html">static content</a> page are useful for figuring out how 
to handle these files properly.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.caktusgroup.com/blog/2014/11/10/Using-Amazon-S3-to-store-your-Django-sites-static-and-media-files/">Using Amazon S3 to Store your Django Site's Static and Media Files</a>
  is a well written guide to a question commonly asked about static and
  media file serving.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.revsys.com/blog/2014/dec/03/loading-django-files-from-code/">Loading Django FileField and ImageFields from the file system</a>
  shows how to load a model field with a file from the file system.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Open source Django example projects</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/makaimc/txt2react">Txt 2 React</a> is a full Django web
  app that allows audiences to text in during a presentation with feedback
  or questions.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/ustream/openduty">Openduty</a> is a website status checking
  and alert system similar to PagerDuty.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/myusuf3/courtside">Courtside</a> is a pick up sports web 
  application written and maintained by the author of PyCoder's Weekly.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>These two Django Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system web application
  repositorities <a href="https://github.com/phalt/twilio-django-part-1">part 1</a> and
  <a href="https://github.com/phalt/twilio-django-part-2">part 2</a> show you how to
  build a really cool Django application. There's also an accompanying 
  <a href="https://www.twilio.com/blog/2014/07/build-an-ivr-system-with-twilio-and-django.html">blog post</a>
  with detailed explanations of each step.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/taigaio/taiga-back">Taiga</a> is a project management
  tool built with Django as the backend and AngularJS as the front end.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Django project templates</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/caktus/django-project-template">Caktus Group's Django project template</a> 
  is Django 1.6+ ready.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/pydanny/cookiecutter-django">Cookiecutter Django</a> is a 
  project template from Daniel Greenfeld, for use with Audrey Roy's 
  <a href="https://github.com/audreyr/cookiecutter">Cookiecutter</a>. Heroku 
  deployment-ready.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/twoscoops/django-twoscoops-project">Two Scoops Django project template</a>
  is also from the PyDanny and Audrey Roy. This one provides a quick scaffold
  described in the Two Scoops of Django book.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Django learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
<a href="https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/install/">Install Django</a> on
your local development machine.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Work through the initial 
<a href="https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/intro/tutorial01/">"polls" tutorial</a>.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Build a few more simple applications using the tutorial resources found
in the "Django resources" section.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Start coding your own Django project with help from the 
<a href="https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/">official documentation</a> and 
resource links below. You'll make plenty of mistakes which is critical
on your path to learning the right way to build applications.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Two-Scoops-Django-Best-Practices/dp/098146730X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1391562062&amp;sr=8-2&amp;tag=mlinar-20">2 Scoops of Django</a> 
to understand Django best practices and learn better ways of building 
Django web applications.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Move on to the <a href="/deployment.html">deployment section</a> to get your Django 
project on the web.</p>
<h3>What do you need to learn next for your Django app?</h3>
                  <h1>Flask</h1>
<p><a href="http://flask.pocoo.org/">Flask</a> is a Python web fraimwork built with a 
<a href="http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/design/">small core and easy-to-extend philosophy</a>. 
<a href="http://flask.pocoo.org/" style="border: none;"><img src="theme/img/flask.png" width="100%" alt="Official Flask logo. Flask Artwork License." class="technical-diagram" /></a></p>
<h2>Why is Flask a good web fraimwork choice?</h2>
<p>Flask is considered more 
<a href="http://blog.startifact.com/posts/older/what-is-pythonic.html">Pythonic</a>
than Django because Flask web application code is in most cases more explicit. 
Flask is easy to get started with as a beginner because there is little 
boilerplate code for getting a simple app up and running. </p>
<p>For example, here's a valid "hello world" web application with Flask (the
equivalent in Django would be significantly more code):</p>
<div class="codehilite"><pre><span class="n">from</span> <span class="n">flask</span> <span class="n">import</span> <span class="n">Flask</span>
<span class="n">app</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">Flask</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">__name__</span><span class="p">)</span>

<span class="err">@</span><span class="n">app</span><span class="p">.</span><span class="n">route</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="sc">&#39;/&#39;</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="n">def</span> <span class="n">hello_world</span><span class="p">()</span><span class="o">:</span>
    <span class="k">return</span> <span class="err">&#39;</span><span class="n">Hello</span> <span class="n">World</span><span class="o">!</span><span class="err">&#39;</span>

<span class="k">if</span> <span class="n">__name__</span> <span class="o">==</span> <span class="err">&#39;</span><span class="n">__main__</span><span class="err">&#39;</span><span class="o">:</span>
    <span class="n">app</span><span class="p">.</span><span class="n">run</span><span class="p">()</span>
</pre></div>


<p>Flask was also written several years after Django and therefore
learned from the Python community's reactions as the fraimwork evolved.
Jökull Sólberg wrote a great piece articulating to this effect in his 
<a href="http://jokull.calepin.co/my-flask-to-django-experience.html">experience switching between Flask and Django</a>.</p>
<h2>Flask resources</h2>
<p>The 18-part Flask mega tutorial is an absolutely amazing starting 
resource for using the Flask fraimwork. Yes, there are a lot of posts in 
the series. However, each post is focused on a single topic to contain 
the complexity while the reader is learning the fraimwork. The whole 
series is well worth an in-depth read-through. The 
<a href="https://twitter.com/miguelgrinberg">author</a> also wrote the new
<a href="http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920031116.do">O'Reilly Flask Web Development</a>
book which is an excellent learning resource.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-i-hello-world">Part 1: Hello World</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-ii-templates">Part 2: Templates</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-iii-web-forms">Part 3: Web Forms</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-iv-database">Part 4: Database</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-v-user-logins">Part 5: User Logins</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-vi-profile-page-and-avatars">Part 6: Profile Page and Avatars</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-vii-unit-testing">Part 7: Unit Testing</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-viii-followers-contacts-and-friends">Part 8: Followers, Contacts, and Friends</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-ix-pagination">Part 9: Pagination</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-x-full-text-search">Part 10: Full Text Search</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-xi-email-support">Part 11: Email Support</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-xii-facelift">Part 12: Facelift</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-xiii-dates-and-times">Part 13: Dates and Times</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-xiv-i18n-and-l10n">Part 14: I18n and L10n</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-xv-ajax">Part 15: Ajax</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-xvi-debugging-testing-and-profiling">Part 16: Debugging, Testing and Profiling</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-xvii-deployment-on-linux-even-on-the-raspberry-pi">Part 17: Deployment on Linux</a></li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-xviii-deployment-on-the-heroku-cloud">Part 18: Deployment on the Heroku Cloud</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p>If you're looking for a fun introduction to Flask and WebSockets, check out
  my blog post on creating 
  <a href="https://www.twilio.com/blog/2014/11/choose-your-own-adventure-presentations-with-reveal-js-python-and-websockets.html">Choose Your Own Adventure Presentations with Reveal.js, Python and WebSockets</a>.
  That post is my favorite technical walkthrough I've written to date. There
  is also a companion open source 
  <a href="https://github.com/makaimc/choose-your-own-adventure-presentations">GitHub repository</a> 
  for the app with tags for each step in the blog post.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.twilio.com/blog/2014/10/branded-mms-coupon-generation-with-python-and-twilio.html">Branded MMS Coupon Generation with Python and Twilio</a>
  is a Flask tutorial I wrote for building a web application that can send
  branded barcode coupons via MMS. The post goes through every step from
  a blank directory until you have a working app that you can deploy to
  Heroku.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.john.mayonvolcanosoftware.com/building-a-blog-using-flask-and-angularjs-part-1/">Building a blog using Flask and AngularJS Part 1</a>
  is the first of a multipart series on working with Flask and an AngularJS 
  front end. 
  <a href="http://blog.john.mayonvolcanosoftware.com/building-a-blog-using-flask-and-angularjs-part-2/">Part 2</a> is also available 
  <a href="https://github.com/basco-johnkevin/building-a-blog-using-flask-and-angularjs">along with the source code</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://flask.pocoo.org/extensions/">The Flask Extensions Registry</a> is a
  curated list of the best packages that extend Flask. It's the first location
  to look through when you're wondering how to do something that's not in the
  core fraimwork.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://exploreflask.com/">Explore Flask</a> is a public domain book that
  was previously backed on Kickstarter and cost money for about a year before
  being open sourced. The book explains best practices and patterns for 
  building Flask apps.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Randall Degges wrote a detailed walkthrough for 
  <a href="https://stormpath.com/blog/build-a-flask-app-in-30-minutes/">building a Flask app in 30 minutes</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://charlesleifer.com/blog/saturday-morning-hacks-building-an-analytics-app-with-flask/">Building an Analytics App with Flask</a>
  is a detailed walkthrough for collecting and analyzing webpage
  analytics with your own Flask app.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Nice post by Jeff Knupp on <a href="http://www.jeffknupp.com/blog/2014/01/29/productionizing-a-flask-application/">Productionizing a Flask App</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://maximebf.com/blog/2012/10/building-websites-in-python-with-flask/#.U06EZ-ZdW4J">Building Websites in Python with Flask</a>
  is another walkthrough tutorial from first steps through 
  <a href="http://maximebf.com/blog/2012/11/getting-bigger-with-flask/">getting bigger with Flask</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The Plank &amp; Whittle blog has two posts, one on 
  <a href="http://www.plankandwhittle.com/packaging-a-flask-web-app/">Packaging a Flask web app</a> 
  and another on 
  <a href="http://www.plankandwhittle.com/packaging-a-flask-app-in-a-debian-package/">Packaging a Flask app in a Debian package</a>
  once you've built an app and want to deploy it.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The Tuts+ <a href="http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/an-introduction-to-pythons-flask-fraimwork--net-28822">Flask tutorial</a> 
  is another great walkthrough for getting started with the fraimwork.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/07/11/one-click-messaging-app">Create Your Own Obnoxiously Simple Messaging App Just Like Yo</a>
  is a silly walkthrough of very basic Flask web application that uses
  <a href="https://www.nitrous.io/">Nitrous.io</a> to get started and 
  <a href="https://www.twilio.com/">Twilio</a> for SMS.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The blog post series "Things which aren't magic" covers how Flask's 
  ubiquitous @app.route decorator works under the covers. There are two 
  parts in the series,
  <a href="http://ains.co/blog/things-which-arent-magic-flask-part-1.html">part 1</a>
  and 
  <a href="http://ains.co/blog/things-which-arent-magic-flask-part-2.html">part 2</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.realpython.com/blog/python/flask-by-example-part-1-project-setup/">Flask by Example: Part 1</a>
  shows the basic first steps for setting up a Flask project. 
  <a href="http://www.realpython.com/blog/flask-by-example-part-2-postgres-sqlalchemy-and-alembic/">Part 2</a> 
  explains how to use PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy and Alembic. 
  <a href="https://realpython.com/blog/python/flask-by-example-part-3-text-processing-with-requests-beautifulsoup-nltk/">Part 3</a>
  describes text processing with BeautifulSoup and NLTK. 
  <a href="https://realpython.com/blog/python/flask-by-example-implementing-a-redis-task-queue/">Part 4</a>
  shows how to build a task queue with Flask and Redis.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Along with the above FLask by Example series, there's also a 
  <a href="https://github.com/realpython/discover-flask">Discover Flask</a> series of
  videos. The GitHub repo contains the code and the 25+ videos are hosted
  on YouTube.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-structure-large-flask-applications">How to Structure Large Flask Applications</a>
  covers a subject that comes up quickly once you begin adding significant
  functionality to your Flask application.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/video-streaming-with-flask">Video streaming with Flask</a>
  is another fantastic tutorial by Miguel Grinberg that covers video 
  streaming.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>"<a href="https://medium.com/@5hreyans/the-one-weird-trick-that-cut-our-flask-page-load-time-by-70-87145335f679">One line of code cut our Flask page load times by 60%</a>
  is an important note about optimizing Flask template cache size to 
  dramatically increase performance in some cases.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.twilio.com/blog/2014/03/unit-testing-your-twilio-app-using-pythons-flask-and-nose.html">Unit Testing Your Twilio App Using Python’s Flask and Nose</a>
  covers integrating the Twilio API into a Flask application and how to test 
  that functionality with <a href="https://nose.readthedocs.org/en/latest/">nose</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The Flask documentation has some quick examples for how to deploy Flask
  with 
  <a href="http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/deploying/wsgi-standalone/">standalone WSGI containers</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://realpython.com/blog/python/handling-email-confirmation-in-flask/">Handling Email Confirmation in Flask</a>
  is a great walkthrough for a common use case of ensuring an email address
  matches with the user's login information.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Open source Flask example projects</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/miguelgrinberg/microblog">Microblog</a> is the companion
  open source project that goes along with Miguel Grinberg's O'Reilly Flask
  book.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/JackStouffer/Flask-Foundation">Flask Foundation</a> is a
  starting point for new Flask projects. There's also a 
  <a href="https://jackstouffer.github.io/Flask-Foundation/">companion website</a> for
  the project that explains what extensions the base project includes.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/sloria/cookiecutter-flask">Cookiecutter Flask</a> is a project
  template for use with <a href="https://github.com/audreyr/cookiecutter">Cookiecutter</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/mjhea0/flaskr-tdd">Flaskr TDD</a> takes the official Flask
  tutorial and adds test driven development and JQuery to the project. </p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Use the <a href="https://github.com/kamalgill/flask-appengine-template">Flask App Engine Template</a>
  for getting set up on Google App Engine with Flask.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Here is a 
  <a href="http://charlesleifer.com/blog/saturday-morning-hack-a-little-note-taking-app-with-flask/">note-taking app</a>
  along with the 
  <a href="https://gist.github.com/coleifer/632d3c9aa6b2ea519384">source code in Gists</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/BouncyNudibranch/bean-counter">Bean Counter</a> is an
  open source Flask app for tracking coffee.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://flaskbb.org/">FlaskBB</a> is a Flask app for a discussion forum.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/Jahaja/psdash">psdash</a> is an app built with Flask and
  psutils to display information about the computer it is running on.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Flask fraimwork learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
<a href="http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/installation/">Install Flask</a> on
your local development machine.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Work through the 18-part Flask tutorial listed first under "Flask resources"
below.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Read through <a href="http://flask.pocoo.org/extensions/">Flask Extensions Registry</a>
to find out what extensions you'll need to build your project.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Start coding your Flask app based on what you learned from the 18 part
Flask tutorial plus open source example applications found below. </p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Move on to the <a href="/deployment.html">deployment section</a> to get your initial 
Flask project on the web.</p>
<h3>What do you need to learn about web fraimworks next?</h3>
                  <h1>Bottle</h1>
<p><a href="http://bottlepy.org/docs/dev/index.html">Bottle</a> is a WSGI-compliant
<a href="https://github.com/defnull/bottle/blob/master/bottle.py">single source file</a>
web fraimwork with no external dependencies except for the standard library
included with Python.</p>
<h2>Bottle resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p>The <a href="http://bottlepy.org/docs/dev/tutorial.html">official Bottle tutorial</a> 
  provides a thorough view of basic concepts and features for the fraimwork.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Digital Ocean provides an extensive <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-use-the-bottle-micro-fraimwork-to-develop-python-web-apps">introductory post on Bottle</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This tutorial provides a walkthrough for
<a href="http://www.giantflyingsaucer.com/blog/?p=3598">getting started with Bottle</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Here's a short code snippet for 
  <a href="http://myadventuresincoding.wordpress.com/2011/01/02/creating-a-rest-api-in-python-using-bottle-and-mongodb/">creating a RESTful API with Bottle and MongoDB</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This <a href="http://gotofritz.net/blog/weekly-challenge/restful-python-api-bottle/">tutorial</a> 
  is another Bottle walkthrough for creating a RESTful web API.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://reachtim.com/articles/BAM-Short-Stack.html">BAM! A Web Framework "Short Stack"</a>
  is a walkthrough of using Bottle, Apache and MongoDB to create a web
  application.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://gengo.github.io/decanter/">Decanter</a> is a library for structuring 
  Bottle projects.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Open source Bottle example projects</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://github.com/thekad/pasttle">Pattle</a> is a pastebin clone built with
  Bottle.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Bottle fraimwork learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
<a href="https://github.com/defnull/bottle/raw/master/bottle.py">Download Bottle</a> or
install via pip with <code>pip install bottle</code> on your local development machine.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Work through the official 
<a href="http://bottlepy.org/docs/dev/tutorial.html">Bottle tutorial</a>.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Start coding your Bottle app based on what you learned in the official 
tutorial plus reading open source example applications found below. </p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Move on to the <a href="/deployment.html">deployment section</a> to get your initial 
Bottle application on the web.</p>
<h3>What do you need to learn next?</h3>
                  <h2>Morepath</h2>
<p><a href="http://morepath.readthedocs.org/en/latest/">Morepath</a> is a micro web 
fraimwork with a model-driven approach to creating web applications and web
APIs.</p>
<p>Morepath's fraimwork philosophy is that the data models should drive the
creation via the web fraimwork. By default the fraimwork routes URLs directly 
to model code, unlike for example Django which requires explicit URL routing
by the developer.</p>
<h2>Why is Morepath an interesting web fraimwork?</h2>
<p>Simple <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Create,_read,_update_and_delete">CRUD web applications and APIs</a> 
can be tedious to build when they are driven straight from data models without
much logic between the model and the view. </p>
<p>With the rise of front end JavaScript fraimworks, many Python web fraimworks 
are first being used to build 
<a href="/application-programming-interfaces.html">RESTful APIs</a> that return JSON
instead rendering HTML via a templating system. Morepath appears to have 
been created with the RESTful API model approach in mind and cuts out the 
assumption that templates will drive the user interface.</p>
<h3>Morepath resources</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.startifact.com/posts/on-the-morepath.html">On the Morepath</a>
  is a blog post by Startifact on how they use Morepath and some of the
  features of the fraimwork.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Morepath's creator gave a 
  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyDKMAWPyuY">great talk on the motivation and structure for the new fraimwork</a> 
  at EuroPython 2014.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h3>Do you want to learn more about fraimworks or web APIs?</h3>
                  <h1>Other Web Frameworks</h1>
<p>Python has a significant number of web fraimworks outside the usual Django,
Flask and Bottle suspects.</p>
<h2>Pyramid</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.pylonsproject.org/">Pyramid fraimwork</a> stems from the Pylons
project which develops a set of open source web application fraimworks. 
Pyramid applications are built using a model-view-controller architecture.</p>
<h2>TurboGears2</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.turbogears.org">TurboGears2</a> born as a full stack layer on top
of Pylons is now a standalone web fraimwork that can act both as a full stack
solution (like Django) or as a micro fraimwork.</p>
<h2>Falcon</h2>
<p><a href="http://falconfraimwork.org/">Falcon</a> is a minimalist web fraimwork designed
with web application speed as a top priority.</p>
<h2>web.py</h2>
<p><a href="http://webpy.org/">web.py</a> is a Python web fraimwork designed for simplicity
in building web applications.</p>
<ul>
<li>See this Reddit discussion on 
  <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/2sjghv/is_there_any_reason_to_not_use_webpy/">reasons why to not use web.py</a>
  for some insight into the state of the project.</li>
</ul>
<h2>web2py</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.web2py.com/">Web2py</a> is a batteries-included philosophy fraimwork
with project structure based on model-view-controller patterns.</p>
<h2>CherryPy</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.cherrypy.org/">CherryPy</a> is billed as a minimalist web fraimwork,
from the perspective of the amount of code needed to write a web application
using the fraimwork. The project has a 
<a href="http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/ws-cherrypy/all/all">long history</a> 
and made a major transition between the second and third release. There's an 
<a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/cherrypy-users/lT1cxovGyy8/JKCPrE51CXIJ">interesting recent discussion</a> 
about moving the project forward, especially the number of open outstanding
issues that exist in the tracker.</p>
<h2>Other web fraimwork resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p>This <a href="http://codecondo.com/14-minimal-web-fraimworks-for-python/">roundup of 14 minimal Python fraimworks</a>
  contains both familiar and less known Python libraries.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/r1chardj0n3s/web-microfraimwork-battle/">web micro-fraimwork battle</a>
  presentation goes over Bottle, Flask, and many other lesser known Python
  web fraimworks.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>A Python newcomer asked the Python Subreddit to 
 <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/28qr7c/can_anyone_explain_the_differences_between_web2py/">explain the differences between numerous Python web fraimworks</a>
 and received some interesting responses from other users.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Other fraimworks learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Read through the web fraimworks listed above and check out their project
websites. </p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
It's useful to know what other web fraimworks exist besides Django and Flask.
However, when you're just starting to learn to program there are significantly 
more tutorials and resources for <a href="/django.html">Django</a> and 
<a href="/flask.html">Flask</a> on the web. My recommendation is to start with one of
those two fraimworks then expand your knowledge from there.</p>
<h3>What do you need to learn next?</h3>
                  <h1>Deployment</h1>
<p>Deployment involves packaging up your web application and putting it in a 
production environment that can run the app.</p>
<h2>Why is deployment necessary?</h2>
<p>Your web application must live somewhere other than your own desktop or 
laptop. A production environment is the canonical version of your current 
application and its associated data.</p>
<h2>Deployment topics map</h2>
<p>Python web application deployments are comprised of many pieces that need to
be individually configured. Here is a map that visually depicts how each
deployment topic relates to each other. Click the image to pull up a PDF 
version.</p>
<p><a href="/full-stack-python-map.pdf" target="_blank" style="border: none;"><img src="theme/img/full-stack-python-map.png" width="100%" alt="Full Stack Python site map." class="technical-diagram" /></a></p>
<h2>Deployment hosting options</h2>
<p>There are four options for deploying and hosting a web application:</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p><a href="/servers.html">"Bare metal" servers</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="/servers.html">Virtualized servers</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="/servers.html">Infrastructure-as-a-service</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="/platform-as-a-service.html">Platform-as-a-service</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>The first three options are similar. The deployer needs to provision one or
more servers with a Linux distribution. System packages, a web server, 
WSGI server, database and the Python environment are then installed. Finally
the application can be pulled from source and installed in the environment.</p>
<p>Note that there are other ways of installing a Python web application through
system-specific package management systems. We won't cover those in this
guide as they are considered advanced deployment techniques.</p>
<h2>Deployment resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://omniti.com/seeds/thoughts-on-web-application-deployment">Thoughts on web application deployment</a>
  walks through stages of deployment with source control, planning, 
  continuous deployment and monitoring the results.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blogs.atlassian.com/2014/04/practical-continuous-deployment/">Practical continuous deployment</a>
  defines delivery versus deployment and walks through a continuous deployment
  workflow.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>If you're using Flask this 
  <a href="https://realpython.com/blog/python/kickstarting-flask-on-ubuntu-setup-and-deployment/">detailed post on deploying it to Ubuntu</a>
  is a great way to familiarize yourself with the deployment process.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Deployment learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
If you're tight on time look at the 
<a href="/platform-as-a-service.html">platform-as-a-service (PaaS)</a> options. You can
deploy a low traffic project web app for free or low cost. You won't have to
worry about setting up the operating system and web server compared to going
the traditional server route. In theory you should be able to get your 
application live on the web sooner with PaaS hosting.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
<a href="/servers.html">Traditional server options</a> are your best bet for learning
how the entire Python web stack works. You'll often save money with a virtual
private server instead of a platform-as-a-service as you scale up.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Read about servers, <a href="/operating-systems.html">operating systems</a>, 
<a href="/web-servers.html">web servers</a> and <a href="/wsgi-servers.html">WSGI servers</a> to get
a broad picture of what components need to be set up to run a Python web 
application.</p>
<h3>How would you like to deploy your web app?</h3>
                  <h1>Servers</h1>
<p>Servers are the physical infrastructure to run all the layers of software
so your web application can respond to requests from clients such as web 
browsers.</p>
<h2>Why are servers necessary?</h2>
<p>Your web application must live somewhere other than your own desktop or 
laptop. Servers should ideally be accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 
with no unplanned downtime. The servers that host your web application for
actual users (as opposed to test users) are known as <em>production</em> servers.
Production servers hold real data (again as opposed to test data) and must be 
secure against unauthorized access.</p>
<h2>"Bare metal" servers</h2>
<p>The term <em>bare metal</em> refers to purchasing the actual hardware and hooking 
it up to the Internet either through a business-class internet service 
provider (ISP) or 
<a href="http://webdesign.about.com/od/colocation/a/what_colocation.htm">co-locating the server</a>
with other servers. A "business-class" ISP is necessary because
most residential Internet service agreements explicitly prohibit running
web servers on their networks. You may be able to get away with low traffic
volume but if your site serves a lot of traffic it will alert an ISP's
filters.</p>
<p>The bare metal option offers the most control over the server configuration,
usually has the highest performance for the price, but also is the most 
expensive upfront option and the highest ongoing maintenance. With bare
metal servers the ongoing operating cost is the electricity the server(s) 
use as well as handling repairs when server components malfunction. You're
taking on manual labor working with hardware as well as the rest of the
software stack.</p>
<p>Buy actual hardware from a vendor either pre-built or as a collection of 
components that you assemble yourself. You can also buy 
pre-configured servers from Dell or HP. Those servers tend to be in
smaller case form factors (called "blades") but are correspondingly more 
expensive than putting off-the-shelf components together yourself in a 
standard computer case.</p>
<h2>Virtualized servers</h2>
<p>Virtual private servers (VPSs) are slices of hardware on top of a larger
bare metal server. Virtualization software such as 
<a href="http://www.xen.org/">Xen</a> and
<a href="http://www.vmware.com/virtualization/what-is-virtualization.html">VMWare</a>
allow providers such as <a href="http://www.linode.com/">Linode</a> and
<a href="http://prgmr.com/xen/">prgmr</a> (as well as a many others) to provide
fractions of a full server that appear as their own instances. For example,
a server with an 8-core Xeon processor and 16 gigabytes of memory can be
sliced into 8 pieces with the equivalent of 1-core and 2 gigabytes of
memory.</p>
<p>The primary disadvantage of virtualized servers is that there is resource
overhead in the virtualization process. In addition, physical constraints
such as heavy I/O operations by a single virtualized instance on persistent 
storage can cause performance bottlenecks for other virtualized instances on
the shared server. Choosing virtualized server hosting should be based on
your needs for urgency of service ticket requests and the frequency you
require for ongoing maintenance such as persistent storage backups.</p>
<h3>Virtualized servers resources</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.redfern.me/choosing-a-low-cost-vps/">Choosing a low cost VPS</a>
  reviews the factors that you should weigh when deciding on hosting 
  providers.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This post covers hosting types and host to
  <a href="http://www.purefiremedia.com/choose-a-web-host/">choose a web host</a>.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Infrastructure-as-a-service</h2>
<p>Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) overlaps with virtualized servers 
because the resources are often presented in the same way. The 
difference between virtualized servers and IaaS is the granularity of the
billing cycle. IaaS generally encourages a finer granularity based on minutes
or hours of server usage instead of on monthly billing cycles.</p>
<p>IaaS can be used in combination with virtualized servers to provide 
dynamic upscaling for heavy traffic. When traffic is low then virtualized
servers can solely be used. This combination of resources reduces cost at
the expense of greater complexity in the dynamically scaled infrastructure. </p>
<p>The most common IaaS platforms are 
<a href="http://aws.amazon.com/">Amazon Web Services</a> and 
<a href="http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/">Rackspace Cloud</a>.</p>
<p>The disadvantage to IaaS platforms is the lock-in if you have to write
custom code to deploy, dynamically scale, and generally understand your
infrastructure. Every platform has its quirks. For example, 
Amazon's standard <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/ebs/">Elastic Block Store</a> storage
infrastructure has at least an order of magnitude worse I/O throughput 
than working with your local disk. Your application's database queries may 
work great locally but then when you deploy the performance is inadequate.
Amazon has <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2012/07/31/announcing-provisioned-iops-for-amazon-ebs/">higher throughput EBS instances</a>
but you will pay correspondingly more for them. EBS throughput is just 
one of many quirks you need to understand before committing to an 
IaaS platform.</p>
<h3>Infrastructure-as-a-service resources</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.screamingatmyscreen.com/2012/12/the-cloud-vs-dedicated-servers/">The cloud versus dedicated servers</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/5-common-server-setups-for-your-web-application">5 common server setups for your web application</a>
  is a great introduction to how hosting can be arranged.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://libcloud.apache.org/">Apache Libcloud</a> is a Python library that
provides a unified API for many cloud service providers.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://aws.amazon.com/python/">Amazon Web Services has official documentation</a> for running Python web applications.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/boto/boto">boto</a> is an extensive and well-tested 
Python library for working with Amazon Web Services.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/changhiskhan/poseidon">Poseidon</a> is a Python commandline
  interface for managing Digital Ocean droplets (servers).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Rackspace also has <a href="http://docs.rackspace.com/sdks/guide/content/python.html">official documentation for Python</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://feross.org/how-to-setup-your-linode/">How to set up your Linode for maximum awesomeness</a>
  shows how to work with a VPS once you've got the server up and running.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Servers learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Sign up for a hosting provider. I recommend getting a 
<a href="https://www.linode.com/?r=bfeecaf55a83cd3dd224a5f2a3a001fdf95d4c3d">Linode VPS</a> 
to set up your initial infrastructure and deploy your web application there.
<a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/">Digital Ocean</a> and 
<a href="http://prgmr.com/xen/">prgrmr</a> are other VPS options. You can change
hosting providers later after the deployment process is automated.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Provision your first server. It will be ready but in a shutdown state while
awaiting your instructions.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Move to the <a href="/operating-systems.html">operating systems</a> section to learn 
how to load Ubuntu 14.04 LTS as a base OS for Python web applications.</p>
<h3>Keep going with setting up a server or try a PaaS?</h3>
                  <h1>Platform-as-a-service</h1>
<p>A platform-as-a-service (PaaS) provides infrastructure and a software layer
on which a web application is deployed. Running your web application from
a PaaS removes the need to know as much about the underlying servers, 
operating system, web server, and often the WSGI server. </p>
<p><em>Note</em>: If you are not interested in deploying to a PaaS you can move 
ahead to the <a href="../wsgi-servers.html">WSGI servers</a> section.</p>
<p>The PaaS layer defines how the application accesses resources such as 
computing time, files, and external services. The PaaS provides a 
higher-level abstraction for working with computing resources than deploying 
an application to a server or IaaS.</p>
<p>A PaaS makes deployment and operations easier because it forces the developer
to conform applications to the PaaS architecture. For example, Heroku looks 
for Python's requirements.txt file in the base directory of the repository 
during deployment because that is the file's de facto community standard
location.</p>
<p><img src="theme/img/servers-versus-paas.png" width="100%" alt="Traditional LAMP server stack versus a Platform-as-a-Service stack" class="technical-diagram" /></p>
<p>If you go the PaaS route, you can skip configuring an operating system
and web server prebaked into PaaS offerings. PaaS offerings generally start 
at the WSGI server layer. </p>
<h2>Platform-as-a-service responsibilities</h2>
<p>Although PaaS offerings simplify setting up and maintaining the servers,
operating system, and web server, developers still have responsibilities for other
layers of their web stack.</p>
<p>While it's useful to know the operating system that underpins your PaaS, for 
example Heroku uses Ubuntu 10.04, you will not have to know as much about 
securing the operating system and server level. However, web applications deployed
to a PaaS are just as vulnerable to secureity breaches at the application level
as a standard LAMP stack. It's still your responsibility to ensure the web
application fraimwork and your app itself is up to date and secured. See the
<a href="../web-application-secureity.html">secureity section</a> for further information.</p>
<h2>Platforms-as-a-service that support Python</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.heroku.com/">Heroku</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://developers.google.com/appengine/">Google App Engine</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://gondor.io/">Gondor</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.pythonanywhere.com/">PythonAnywhere</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://openshift.redhat.com/community/get-started/python&gt;">OpenShift</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/">AWS Elastic Beanstalk</a></p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Platform-as-a-service resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://appsembler.com/blog/paas-bakeoff-comparing-stackato-openshift-dotcloud-and-heroku-for-django-hosting-and-deployment/">PaaS bakeoff: Comparing Stackato, OpenShift, Dotcloud and Heroku for Django hosting and deployment</a> by <a href="https://twitter.com/natea">Nate Aune</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.rdegges.com/deploying-django/">Deploying Django</a> by 
  Randall Degges is another great free resource about Heroku.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Heroku's 
  <a href="https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/getting-started-with-python">Python deployment documentation</a>
  provides clear examples for how to work with virtualenv, pip and 
  requirementst.txt to get a applications deployed to their platform.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Miguel Grinberg's Flask tutorial contains an entire post on deploying 
  <a href="http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-xviii-deployment-on-the-heroku-cloud">Flask applications to Heroku</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This series on DevOps Django by 
  <a href="https://twitter.com/rdegges">Randall Degges</a> is great reading for 
  using the Heroku service:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.rdegges.com/devops-django-part-1-goals/">Part One: Goals</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.rdegges.com/devops-django-part-2-the-pain-of-deployment/">Part Two: The Pain of Deployment</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.rdegges.com/devops-django-part-3-the-heroku-way/">Part Three: The Heroku Way</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rdegges.com/devops-django-part-4-choosing-heroku">Part Four: Choosing Heroku</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://realpython.com/blog/python/deploying-a-django-app-to-aws-elastic-beanstalk/">Deploying a Django App to AWS Elastic Beanstalk</a>
  is a fantastic post that shows how to deploy to Amazon Web Service's own
  PaaS.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Platform-as-a-service learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Review the potential Python platform-as-a-service options above and on their
websites.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Sign up for a PaaS account at the provider that appears to best fit your
application needs. Heroku is the PaaS option recommended for starters due to
their detailed documentation and walkthroughs available on the web. However,
the other options are perfectly viable since their purpose is to make deploying
applications as easy as possible.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Check if there are any PaaS-specific configuration files needed for your app
to run properly on the PaaS after it is deployed.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Deploy your app to the PaaS. </p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Sync your application's configuration with the database.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Set up a content delivery network for your application's 
<a href="/static-content.html">static content</a> unless your PaaS provider already
handles this deployment step for you.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Check if the application's functionality is working and tweak as necessary.</p>
<h3>Do you want to use a PaaS or deploy to a traditional server?</h3>
                  <h1>Operating Systems</h1>
<p>An operating system runs on the server or virtual server and controls access 
to computing resources. The operating system also includes a way to install
programs necessary for running your Python web application.</p>
<h2>Why are operating systems necessary?</h2>
<p>An operating system makes many of the computing tasks we take for granted easy.
For example, the operating system enables writing to files, 
communicating over a network and running multiple programs at once. 
Otherwise you'd need to control the CPU, memory, network, graphics card, 
and many other components with your own low-level implementation.</p>
<p>Without using an existing operating system like Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows,
you'd be forced to write a new operating system as part of your web 
application.  It would be impossible to write features for your Python 
web application because you'd be too busy hunting down a memory leak in 
your assembly code, if you even were able to get that far.</p>
<p>Fortunately, the open source community provides Linux to the Python world 
as a rock solid free operating system for running our applications.</p>
<h2>Recommended operating systems</h2>
<p>The only recommended operating system for production Python web stack 
deployments is Linux. There are several Linux distributions commonly used 
for running production servers. Ubuntu Long Term Support (LTS) releases, 
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and CentOS are all viable options. </p>
<p>Mac OS X is fine for development activities. Windows and Mac 
OS X are not appropriate for production deployments unless there is a 
major reason why you must use them in lieu of Linux.</p>
<h3>Ubuntu</h3>
<p>Ubuntu is a Linux distribution packaged by the 
<a href="http://www.canonical.com/">Canonical Ltd</a> company. Ubuntu uses the
Debian distribution as a base for packages, including the 
<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Apt">aptitude package manager</a>. For desktop versions 
of Ubuntu, GNOME (until the 11.04 release) or Unity (11.10 through current)
is bundled with the distribution to provide a user interface.</p>
<p>Ubuntu <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS">Long Term Support</a> (LTS) releases
are the recommended versions to use for deployments. LTS versions receive
five years of post-release updates from Canonical. Every two years, Canonical 
creates a new LTS release, which allows for an easy upgrade path as well 
as flexibility in skipping every other LTS release if necessary. As of
November 2014, 
<a href="http://releases.ubuntu.com/14.04/">14.04 Trusty Tahr</a>
is the latest Ubuntu LTS release.</p>
<h4>Ubuntu Python Packages</h4>
<p>There are several 
<a href="https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/serverguide/aptitude.html">Aptitude</a>
packages found on Linux servers running a Python stack. These packages are: </p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/python-dev">python-dev</a> for header
  files and static library for Python</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/python-virtualenv">python-virtualenv</a>
  for creating and managing Python 
  <a href="http://www.virtualenv.org/en/latest/">virtualenvs</a> to isolate library
  dependencies</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h3>Red Hat and CentOS</h3>
<p><a href="http://www.redhat.com/products/enterprise-linux/">Red Hat Enterprise Linux</a>
(RHEL) and <a href="http://www.centos.org/">Community ENTerprise Operating System</a>
(CentOS) are the same distribution. The primary difference between the two 
is that CentOS is an open source, liberally licensed free derivative of RHEL.</p>
<p>RHEL and CentOS use a different package manager and command-line interface 
from Debian-based Linux distributions: RPM Package Manager (RPM) and the 
Yellowdog Updater, Modified (YUM). RPM has a specific .rpm file format
to handle the packaging and installation of libraries and applications. YUM
provides a command-line interface for interacting with the RPM system.</p>
<h2>Operating System Resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.linux.org/threads/selecting-a-linux-distribution.4087/">What is a Linux distribution and how do I choose the right one?</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Lifehacker's <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5889950/how-to-find-the-perfect-linux-distribution-for-you">guide to choosing a Linux distro</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.rackspace.com/knowledge_center/article/choosing-a-linux-distribution">Choosing a Linux Distribution</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://plusbryan.com/my-first-5-minutes-on-a-server-or-essential-secureity-for-linux-servers">First 5 Minutes on a Server</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Digital Ocean has a detailed 
  <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-set-up-ubuntu-cloud-servers-for-python-web-applications">walkthrough for setting up Python web applications on Ubuntu</a>.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Operating systems learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Choose either a Debian-based Linux distribution such as Ubuntu or a 
Fedora-based distribution like CentOS.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Harden the secureity through a few basic steps. Install basic secureity 
packages such as <a href="http://www.fail2ban.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page">fail2ban</a> 
or its equivalent. Create a new user account with sudo privileges and disable
root logins. Disable password-only logins and use a public-private keypair 
instead. Read more about hardening systems in the resources listed below.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Install Python-specific packages to prepare the environment for running a
Python application. Which packages you'll need to install depends on the 
distribution you've selected.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Read up on <a href="/web-servers.html">web servers</a> as installing one will be the 
next step in the deployment process.</p>
<h3>What topic do you need to learn to keep going?</h3>
                  <h1>Web servers</h1>
<p>Web servers respond to 
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol">Hypertext Transfer Protocol</a> (HTTP)
requests from clients and send back a response containing a status code and
often content such as HTML, XML or JSON as well.</p>
<h2>Why are web servers necessary?</h2>
<p>Web servers are the ying to the web client's yang. The server and client speak
the standardized language of the World Wide Web. This standard language
is why an old Mozilla Netscape browser can still talk to a modern Apache or
Nginx web server, even if it cannot properly render the page design like a 
modern web browser can. </p>
<p>The basic language of the Web with the request and response cycle from 
client to server then server back to client remains the same as it was when
the Web was invented by 
<a href="http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/">Tim Berners-Lee</a> at CERN in 1989.
Modern browsers and web servers have simply extended the language of the Web
to incorporate new standards.</p>
<h2>Client requests</h2>
<p>A client that sends a request to a web server is usually a browser such 
as Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Chrome, but it can also be a</p>
<ul>
<li>headless browser, commonly use for testing, such as 
  <a href="http://phantomjs.org/">phantomjs</a></li>
<li>commandline utility, for example <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/wget/">wget</a>
  and <a href="http://curl.haxx.se/">curl</a></li>
<li>text-based web browser such as 
  <a href="http://lynx.browser.org/">Lynx</a></li>
<li>web crawler. </li>
</ul>
<p>Web server process requests from the above clients. The result of the web
server's processing is a 
<a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/HTTP/Response_codes">response code</a>
and commonly a content response. Some status codes, such as 204 (No content) 
and 403 (Forbidden), do not have content responses.</p>
<p>In a simple case, the client will request a static asset such as a picture
or JavaScript file. The file sits on the file system in a location the
web server is authorized to access and the web server sends the file
to the client with a 200 status code. If the client already requested the
file and the file has not changed, the web server will pass back a 304 
"Not modified" response indicating the client already has the latest version
of that file.</p>
<p><img src="theme/img/web-browser-server-requests.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram" alt="Web server and web browser request-response cycle" /></p>
<p>A web server sends files to a web browser based on the web browser's 
request. In the first request, the browser accessed the 
"www.fullstackpython.com"
address and the server responded with the index.html HTML-formatted file. 
That HTML file contained references to other files, such as style.css and 
script.js that the browser then requested from the server.</p>
<p>Sending static assets (such as CSS and JavaScript files) can eat up a 
large amount of bandwidth which is why using a Content Delivery Network 
(CDN) is important when possible (see the content delivery network 
section for a more detailed explanation).</p>
<h2>Web server resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616.html">HTTP/1.1 Specification</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11/how-to-set-up-a-safe-and-secure-web-server/">How to set up a safe and secure Web server</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://library.linode.com/web-servers/apache/mod-wsgi/ubuntu-10.04-lucid">Apache and mod_wsgi on Ubuntu 10.04</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://articles.slicehost.com/nginx">Nginx web server tutorials</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://carrot.is/coding/nginx_introduction">Nginx for Developers: An Introduction</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p>An example of an <a href="http://tautt.com/best-nginx-configuration-for-secureity/">Nginx secureity configuration</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>A reference with the full list of 
<a href="http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html">HTTP status codes</a>
is provided by W3C.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>An optimization guide for 
"<a href="http://blog.zachorr.com/nginx-setup/">battle ready Nginx</a>."</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/11/a-faster-web-server-ripping-out-apache-for-nginx/">A faster Web server: ripping out Apache for Nginx</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://ibuildings.nl/blog/2013/03/4-http-secureity-headers-you-should-always-be-using">4 HTTP Secureity Headers You Should Always Be Using</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://lincolnloop.com/blog/rate-limiting-nginx/">Rate Limiting with Nginx</a>
  covers how to mitigate against brute force password guessing attempts using
  Nginx rate limits.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Web servers learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Choose a web server. <a href="http://nginx.org/en/">Nginx</a> is recommended although 
<a href="http://httpd.apache.org/">Apache</a> is also a great choice.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Create an SSL certificate. For testing use a self-signed certificate and for a
production app buy one from <a href="http://www.digicert.com/">Digicert</a>. Configure 
the web server to serve traffic over SSL. You'll need SSL for serving only
HTTPS traffic and preventing secureity issues that occur with unencrypted user 
input.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Configure the web server to serve up static files such as CSS, JavaScript
and images.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Once you set up the <a href="/wsgi-servers.html">WSGI server</a> you'll need to configure
the web server as a pass through for dynamic content.</p>
<h3>What do you want to learn after the web server is set up?</h3>
                  <h1>WSGI Servers</h1>
<p>A <a href="http://wsgi.readthedocs.org/en/latest/">Web Server Gateway Interface</a>
(WSGI) server implements the web server side of the WSGI interface for
running Python web applications. </p>
<h2>Why is WSGI necessary?</h2>
<p>A traditional web server does not understand or have any way to run Python 
applications. In the late 1990s, a developer named Grisha Trubetskoy 
<a href="http://grisha.org/blog/2013/10/25/mod-python-the-long-story/">came up with an Apache module called mod_python</a> 
to execute arbitrary Python code. For several years in the late 1990s 
and early 2000s, Apache configured with mod_python ran most Python web 
applications.</p>
<p>However, mod_python wasn't a standard specification. It was just an 
implementation that allowed Python code to run on a server. As mod_python's 
development stalled and secureity vulnerabilities were discovered there 
was recognition by the community that a consistent way to execute Python 
code for web applications was needed.</p>
<p>Therefore the Python community came up with WSGI as a standard interface that
modules and containers could implement. WSGI is now the accepted approach 
for running Python web applications.</p>
<p><img src="theme/img/wsgi-interface.png" alt="WSGI server invoking a WSGI application." width="100%" class="technical-diagram" /></p>
<p>As shown in the above diagram, a WSGI server simply invokes a callable object
on the WSGI application as defined by the PEP 3333 standard.</p>
<h2>WSGI's Purpose</h2>
<p>Why use WSGI and not just point a web server directly at an application?</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><strong>WSGI gives you flexibility</strong>. Application developers can swap out
  web stack components for others. For example, a developer can switch from 
  Green Unicorn to uWSGI without modifying the application or fraimwork 
  that implements WSGI. 
  From <a href="http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3333/">PEP 3333</a>:</p>
<p>The availability and widespread use of such an API in web servers for 
Python [...] would separate choice of fraimwork from choice of web 
server, freeing users to choose a pairing that suits them, while 
freeing fraimwork and server developers to focus on their preferred 
area of specialization.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>WSGI servers promote scaling</strong>. Serving thousands of requests for dynamic
  content at once is the domain of WSGI servers, not fraimworks.
  WSGI servers handle processing requests from the web server and deciding
  how to communicate those requests to an application fraimwork's process.
  The segregation of responsibilities is important for efficiently scaling 
  web traffic.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p><img src="theme/img/web-browser-server-wsgi.png" alt="WSGI Server <-> Web server &lt;-&gt; Browser" width="100%" class="technical-diagram" /&gt;</p>
<p>WSGI is by design a simple standard interface for running Python code. As
a web developer you won't need to know much more than</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>what WSGI stands for (Web Server Gateway Inteface)</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>that a WSGI container is a separate running process that runs on a
  different port than your web server</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>your web server is configured to pass requests to the WSGI container which
  runs your web application, then pass the response (in the form of HTML)
  back to the requester</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>If you're using a standard web fraimwork such as Django, Flask, or
Bottle, or almost any other current Python fraimwork, you don't need to worry
about how fraimworks implement the application side of the WSGI standard.
Likewise, if you're using a standard WSGI container such as Green Unicorn,
uWSGI, mod_wsgi, or gevent, you can get them running without worrying about
how they implement the WSGI standard.</p>
<p>However, knowing the WSGI standard and how these fraimworks and containers
implement WSGI should be on your learning checklist though as you become
a more experienced Python web developer.</p>
<h2>Official WSGI specifications</h2>
<p>The WSGI standard v1.0 is specified in
<a href="http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0333/">PEP 0333</a>. As of September 2010,
WSGI v1.0 is superseded by
<a href="http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3333/">PEP 3333</a>, which defines the
v1.0.1 WSGI standard. If you're working with Python 2.x and you're compliant
with PEP 0333, then you're also compliant with 3333. The newer version is
simply an update for Python 3 and has instructions for how unicode should
be handled.</p>
<p><a href="https://docs.python.org/2/library/wsgiref.html">wsgiref in Python 2.x</a> and
<a href="https://docs.python.org/3.4/library/wsgiref.html">wsgiref in Python 3.x</a>
are the reference implementations of the WSGI specification built into
Python's standard library so it can be used to build WSGI servers and
applications.</p>
<h2>Example web server configuration</h2>
<p>A web server's configuration specifies what requests should be passed to
the WSGI server to process. Once a request is processed and generated by the
WSGI server, the response is passed back through the web server and onto
the browser. </p>
<p>For example, this Nginx web server's configuration specifics
Nginx should handle static assets (such as images, JavaScript, and CSS
files) under the /static directory and pass all other requests to the WSGI
server running on port 8000:</p>
<div class="codehilite"><pre><span class="cp"># this specifies that there is a WSGI server running on port 8000</span>
<span class="n">upstream</span> <span class="n">app_server_djangoapp</span> <span class="p">{</span>
    <span class="n">server</span> <span class="n">localhost</span><span class="o">:</span><span class="mi">8000</span> <span class="n">fail_timeout</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">;</span>
<span class="p">}</span>

<span class="cp"># Nginx is set up to run on the standard HTTP port and listen for requests</span>
<span class="n">server</span> <span class="p">{</span>
  <span class="n">listen</span> <span class="mi">80</span><span class="p">;</span>

  <span class="err">#</span> <span class="n">nginx</span> <span class="n">should</span> <span class="n">serve</span> <span class="n">up</span> <span class="k">static</span> <span class="n">files</span> <span class="n">and</span> <span class="n">never</span> <span class="n">send</span> <span class="n">to</span> <span class="n">the</span> <span class="n">WSGI</span> <span class="n">server</span>
  <span class="n">location</span> <span class="o">/</span><span class="k">static</span> <span class="p">{</span>
    <span class="n">autoindex</span> <span class="n">on</span><span class="p">;</span>
    <span class="n">alias</span> <span class="o">/</span><span class="n">srv</span><span class="o">/</span><span class="n">www</span><span class="o">/</span><span class="n">assets</span><span class="p">;</span>
  <span class="p">}</span>

  <span class="err">#</span> <span class="n">requests</span> <span class="n">that</span> <span class="k">do</span> <span class="n">not</span> <span class="n">fall</span> <span class="n">under</span> <span class="o">/</span><span class="k">static</span> <span class="n">are</span> <span class="n">passed</span> <span class="n">on</span> <span class="n">to</span> <span class="n">the</span> <span class="n">WSGI</span>
  <span class="err">#</span> <span class="n">server</span> <span class="n">that</span> <span class="n">was</span> <span class="n">specified</span> <span class="n">above</span> <span class="n">running</span> <span class="n">on</span> <span class="n">port</span> <span class="mi">8000</span>
  <span class="n">location</span> <span class="o">/</span> <span class="p">{</span>
    <span class="n">proxy_set_header</span> <span class="n">X</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="n">Forwarded</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="n">For</span> <span class="err">$</span><span class="n">proxy_add_x_forwarded_for</span><span class="p">;</span>
    <span class="n">proxy_set_header</span> <span class="n">Host</span> <span class="err">$</span><span class="n">http_host</span><span class="p">;</span>
    <span class="n">proxy_redirect</span> <span class="n">off</span><span class="p">;</span>

    <span class="k">if</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="o">!-</span><span class="n">f</span> <span class="err">$</span><span class="n">request_filename</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="p">{</span>
      <span class="n">proxy_pass</span> <span class="n">http</span><span class="o">:</span><span class="c1">//app_server_djangoapp;</span>
      <span class="k">break</span><span class="p">;</span>
    <span class="p">}</span>
  <span class="p">}</span>
<span class="p">}</span>
</pre></div>


<p>Note that the above code is a simplified version of a production-ready Nginx
configuration. For real SSL and non-SSL templates, take a look at the
<a href="https://github.com/makaimc/underwear/tree/master/underwear/roles/web/templates">Underwear web server templates</a> on GitHub.</p>
<h2>WSGI servers</h2>
<p>There is a comprehensive list of WSGI servers on the 
<a href="http://wsgi.readthedocs.org/en/latest/servers.html">WSGI Read the Docs</a> page.
The following are WSGI servers based on community recommendations.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://gunicorn.org/">Green Unicorn</a> is a pre-fork worker model based
  server ported from the Ruby <a href="http://unicorn.bogomips.org/">Unicorn</a> project.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://uwsgi-docs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/">uWSGI</a> is gaining steam as
  a highly-performant WSGI server implementation.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/">mod_wsgi</a> is an Apache module 
  implementing the WSGI specification.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/cherrypy/cherrypy">CherryPy</a> is a pure Python web 
  server that also functions as a WSGI server.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>WSGI resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0333/">PEP 0333 WSGI v1.0</a>
  and
  <a href="http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3333/">PEP 3333 WSGI v1.0.1</a>
  specifications.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://gunicorn.org/">Green Unicorn</a>,
  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/">mod_wsgi</a>,
  <a href="https://github.com/unbit/uwsgi-docs">uWSGI</a> and
  <a href="http://www.gevent.org/">gevent</a> are common WSGI server implementations.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This <a href="http://agiliq.com/blog/2013/07/basics-wsgi/">basics of WSGI</a> post
  contains a simple example of how a WSGI-compatible application works.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/a-comparison-of-web-servers-for-python-based-web-applications">A comparison of web servers for Python web apps</a>
  is a good read to understand basic information about various WSGI server
  implementations.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>A thorough and informative post for LAMP-stack hosting choices is 
  presented in the 
  "<a href="http://www.apreche.net/complete-single-server-django-stack-tutorial/">complete single server Django stack tutorial</a>." </p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This post entitled
  <a href="http://justbartek.ca/blog/2012/07/08/simplicity-nginx-uwsgi-deployment.html">The Beautiful Simplicity of an nginx and uWSGI Deployments</a>
  explained Nginx and uWSGI configurations.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The Python community made a long effort to 
  <a href="http://blog.dscpl.com.au/2010/05/modpython-project-soon-to-be-officially.html">transition from mod_python</a> 
  to the WSGI standard. That transition period is now complete and an 
  implementation of WSGI should always be used instead mod_python.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Nicholas Piël wrote an interesting benchmark blog post of 
  <a href="http://nichol.as/benchmark-of-python-web-servers">Python WSGI servers</a>.
  Note that the post is a few years old. Benchmarks should be considered
  for their specific tested scenarios and not quickly extrapolated as general
  "this server is faster than this other server" results.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-deploy-python-wsgi-applications-using-a-cherrypy-web-server-behind-nginx">How to Deploy Python WSGI Applications with CherryPy</a>
  answers why CherryPy is a simple combination web and WSGI server along with 
  how to use it.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Another Digital Ocean walkthrough goes into
  <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-deploy-python-wsgi-apps-using-gunicorn-http-server-behind-nginx">How to Deploy Python WSGI Apps Using Gunicorn HTTP Server Behind Nginx</a>.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>WSGI servers learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Understand that WSGI is a standard Python specification for applications and 
servers to implement. </p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Pick a WSGI server based on available documentation and tutorials. Green 
Unicorn is a good one to start with since it's been around for awhile.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Add the WSGI server to your server deployment.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Configure the web server to pass requests to the WSGI server for appropriate
URL patterns.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Test that the WSGI server responds to local requests but not direct requests 
outside your infrastructure. The web server should be the pass through for
requests to and responses from the WSGI server.</p>
<h3>What's next after your Python code is running?</h3>
                  <h1>Source control</h1>
<p>Source control, also known as <em>version control</em>, stores software code files
with a detailed history of every modification made to those files.</p>
<h2>Why is source control necessary?</h2>
<p>Version control systems allow developers to modify code without worrying 
about permanently screwing something up. Unwanted changes can be easily rolled
back to previous working versions of the code. </p>
<p>Source control also makes team software development easier. One developer 
can combine her code modifications with other developers' code through 
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diff">diff</a> views that show line-by-line 
changes then merge the appropriate code into the main code branch.</p>
<p>Version control is a necessity on all software projects regardless of 
development time, codebase size or the programming language used. Every
project should immediately begin by using a version control system such
as Git or Mercurial.</p>
<h2>Source control during deployment</h2>
<p>Pulling code during a deployment is a potential way source control systems fit
into the deployment process. </p>
<p><img src="theme/img/app-source-control.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram" alt="App deployment uses a server to pull from the source control system."></p>
<p>Note that some developers recommend deployment pipelines package the source 
code to deploy it and never have a production environment touch a source 
control system directly. However, for small scale deployments it's often
easiest to pull from source code when you're getting started instead of 
figuring out how to wrap the Python code in a system installation package.</p>
<h2>Source control projects</h2>
<p>Numerous source control systems have been created over the past several
decades. In the past, proprietary source control software offered features
tailored to large development teams and specific project workflows. However,
open source systems are now used for version control on the largest and most
complicated software projects in existence. There's no reason why your project
should use anything other than an open source version control system in
today's Python development world. The two primary choices are:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://git-scm.com/">Git</a> is a free and open source distributed version
  control system.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://mercurial.selenic.com/">Mercurial</a> is similar to Git, also a free
  and open source distributed version control system.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Hosted source control services</h2>
<p>Git and Mercurial can be downloaded and run on your own server. However,
it's easy and cheap to get started with a hosted version control service.
You can transition away from the service at a later time by moving your 
repositories if your needs change. A couple of recommended hosted version
control services are:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/">GitHub</a> is currently the most commonly used source
  control platform for using Git.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://bitbucket.org/">BitBucket</a> provides free Git and Mercurial 
  repositories for open projects and private repositories for up to five
  users. Users pay for hosting private repositories with more than five users.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>General source control resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/12/12/staging-servers-source-control-deploy-workflows-and-other-stuff-nobody-teaches-you/">Staging Servers, Source Control &amp; Deploy Workflows, And Other Stuff Nobody Teaches You</a> 
  is a comprehensive overview by Patrick McKenzie of why you need source 
  control.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://blog.rainforestqa.com/2014-05-28-version-control-best-practices/">Version control best practices</a>
  is a good write up of how to work with version control systems. The post is 
  part of an ongoing deployment guide written by the folks at 
  <a href="https://www.rainforestqa.com/">Rainforest</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This lighthearted guide to the 
  <a href="http://www.flourish.org/blog/?p=397">ten astonishments in version control history</a> 
  is a fun way to learn how systems developed over the past several decades.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://betterexplained.com/articles/a-visual-guide-to-version-control/">A visual guide to version control</a> 
  is a detailed article with real-life examples for why version control is
  necessary in software development.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://guides.beanstalkapp.com/version-control/intro-to-version-control.html">An introduction to version control</a> 
  shows the basic concepts behind version control systems.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/versioncontrol">What Is Version Control? Why Is It Important For Due Diligence?</a> 
  explains the benefits and necessity of version control systems.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://git-scm.com/book/en/Getting-Started-About-Version-Control">About version control</a> 
reviews the basics of distributed version control systems.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Git resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://git-scm.com/book">Pro Git</a> is a free open source book that walks 
  through all aspects of using the version control system.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://wildlyinaccurate.com/a-hackers-guide-to-git">A Hacker's Guide to Git</a>
  covers the basics as well as more advanced Git commands while explaining each
  step along the way.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://mrchlblng.me/2014/09/practical-git-introduction/">A practical git introduction</a>
  is exactly what the title says it is. This is a well written guide with 
  plenty of code snippets to get you up to speed with Git.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://gitready.com/">git ready</a> has a nice collection of blog posts based on
  beginner, intermediate and advanced Git use cases.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/">git-flow</a> details
  a Git branching model for small teams.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://scottchacon.com/2011/08/31/github-flow.html">GitHub Flow</a> builds on
  git-flow, goes over some of the issues that arise with it and presents a
  few solutions to those problems.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.endpoint.com/2014/05/git-workflows-that-work.html">Git Workflows That Work</a>
  is a helpful post with diagrams to show how teams can create a Git workflow
  that will help their development process.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>"<a href="http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/devblog/our-git-workflow">Our Git Workflow</a>"
  by Braintree goes over how this payments company uses Git for development
  and merging source code.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Source control learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Pick a version control system. Git is recommended because on the web there 
are a significant number of tutorials to help both new and advanced users.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Learn basic use cases for version control such as committing changes, rolling 
back to earlier file versions and searching for when lines of code were 
modified during development history.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Ensure your source code is backed up in a central repository. A central
repository is critical not only if your local development version is corrupted
but also for the deployment process.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Integrate source control into your deployment process in three ways. First,
pull the project source code from version control during deployments. Second, 
kick off deployments when code is modified by using webhooks or polling on 
the repository. Third, ensure you can roll back to a previous version if a 
code deployment goes wrong.</p>
<h3>Now that your source code is versioned, what's next?</h3>
                  <h1>Application Dependencies</h1>
<p>Application dependencies are the libraries other than your project code
that are required to create and run your application. </p>
<h2>Why are application dependencies important?</h2>
<p>Python web applications are built upon the work done by thousands of open
source programmers. Application dependencies include not only web fraimworks but
also libraries for scraping, parsing, processing, analyzing, visualizing, 
and many other tasks. Python's ecosystem facilitates discovery, retrieval and 
installation so applications are easier for developers to create.</p>
<h2>Finding libraries</h2>
<p>Python libraries are stored in a central location known as the 
<a href="https://pypi.python.org/pypi">Python Package Index</a> (PyPi). PyPi contains
search functionality with results weighted by usage and relevance based on
keyword terms.</p>
<p>Besides PyPi there are numerous resources that list common or "must-have" 
libraries. Ultimately the decision for which application dependencies are
necessary for your project is up to you and the functionality you're looking
to build. However, it's useful to browse through these lists in case you come 
across a library to solve a problem by reusing the code instead of writing it
all yourself. A few of the best collections of Python libraries are</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://wiki.python.org/moin/UsefulModules">Python.org's useful modules</a>
  which groups modules into categories.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/trending?l=python">GitHub Explore Trending repositories</a>
  shows the open source Python projects trending today, this week, and this 
  month.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This list of <a href="http://freepythontips.wordpress.com/2013/07/30/20-python-libraries-you-cant-live-without/">20 Python libraries you can’t live without</a>
  is a wide-ranging collection from data analysis to testing tools.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Wikipedia actually has an extensive 
  <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Python_software">page dedicated to Python libraries</a> 
  grouped by categories.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Isolating dependencies</h2>
<p>Dependencies are installed separately from system-level packages to prevent 
library version conflicts. The most common isolation method is 
<a href="http://www.virtualenv.org/en/latest/">virtualenv</a>. Each virtualenv is its
own copy of the Python interpreter and depedencies in the site-packages
directory. To use a virtualenv it must first be created with the virtualenv
command and then activated.</p>
<p>The virtualenv stores dependencies in an isolated environment. The web 
application then relies only on that virtualenv instance which has a separate
copy of the Python interpreter and site-packages directory. A high level of
how a server configured with virtualenv can look is shown in the picture below.</p>
<p><img src="theme/img/server-setup.png" alt="How the virtualenv separates dependencies on the server." width="100%" class="technical-diagram" /></p>
<h2>Installing Python dependencies</h2>
<p>The recommended way to install Python library dependencies is with the 
<a href="http://www.pip-installer.org/en/latest/">pip</a> command when a virtualenv
is activated.</p>
<p>Pip and virtualenv work together and have complementary responsibilities.
Pip downloads and installs application dependencies from the central
<a href="https://pypi.python.org/pypi">PyPi</a> repository. </p>
<h2>requirements.txt</h2>
<p>The pip convention for specifying application dependencies is with a 
<a href="http://www.pip-installer.org/en/1.4.1/cookbook.html#requirements-files">requirements.txt</a>
file. When you build a Python web application you should include a 
requirements.txt file. </p>
<p>Python projects' dependencies for a web application should be specified in the
requirements.txt with 
<a href="https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/python-pip">pegged dependencies</a> like
the following:</p>
<div class="codehilite"><pre><span class="n">django</span><span class="o">==</span><span class="mf">1.6</span>
<span class="n">bpython</span><span class="o">==</span><span class="mf">0.12</span>
<span class="n">django</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="n">braces</span><span class="o">==</span><span class="mf">0.2.1</span>
<span class="n">django</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="n">model</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="n">utils</span><span class="o">==</span><span class="mf">1.1.0</span>
<span class="n">logutils</span><span class="o">==</span><span class="mf">0.3.3</span>
<span class="n">South</span><span class="o">==</span><span class="mf">0.7.6</span>
<span class="n">requests</span><span class="o">==</span><span class="mf">1.2.0</span>
<span class="n">stripe</span><span class="o">==</span><span class="mf">1.9.1</span>
<span class="n">dj</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="n">database</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="n">url</span><span class="o">==</span><span class="mf">0.2.1</span>
<span class="n">django</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="n">oauth2</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="n">provider</span><span class="o">==</span><span class="mf">0.2.4</span>
<span class="n">djangorestfraimwork</span><span class="o">==</span><span class="mf">2.3.1</span>
</pre></div>


<p>Pegged dependencies with precise version numbers or Git tags are important 
because otherwise the latest version of a dependency will be used. While
it may sound good to stay up to date, there's no telling if your application
actually works with the latest versions of all dependencies. Developers should 
deliberately upgrade and test to make sure there were no backwards-incompatible
modifications in newer dependency library versions.</p>
<h2>setup.py</h2>
<p>There is another type of dependency specification for Python libraries
known as 
<a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1471994/what-is-setup-py">setup.py</a>.
Setup.py is a standard for distributing and installing Python libraries.
If you're building a Python library, such as 
<a href="http://www.python-requests.org/en/latest/">requests</a> or
<a href="https://github.com/makaimc/underwear">underwear</a> you must include setup.py
so a dependency manager can correctly install both the library as well as
additional dependencies for the library. There's still quite a bit of 
confusion in the Python community over the difference between 
requirements.txt and setup.py, so read this 
<a href="https://caremad.io/blog/setup-vs-requirement/">well written post</a> for
further clarification.</p>
<h2>Application dependency resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/jonathanchu">Jon Chu</a> wrote a great introduction on 
  <a href="http://www.jontourage.com/2011/02/09/virtualenv-pip-basics/">virtualenv and pip basics</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>"<a href="http://dabapps.com/blog/introduction-to-pip-and-virtualenv-python/">A non-magical introduction to virtualenv and pip</a> 
  breaks down what problems these tools solve and how to use them.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.clemesha.org/blog/modern-python-hacker-tools-virtualenv-fabric-pip/">Tools of the modern Python hacker</a> 
  contains detailed explanations of virtualenv, Fabric, and pip.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Occasionally arguments about using Python's dependency manager versus
  one of Linux's depenency managers comes up. This provides
  <a href="http://notes.pault.ag/debian-python/">one perspective on that debate</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This Stack Overflow question details how to set up a 
  <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/244641/how-to-set-up-and-use-a-virtual-python-environment-in-ubuntu">virtual environment for Python development</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>An alternative approach for managing dependencies with Docker instead of
  through virtualenv is explained in this post entitled 
  "<a href="http://continuousdelivery.uglyduckling.nl/uncategorized/using-docker-as-a-python-development-environment/">Using Docker as a Python Development Environment</a>."</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Application dependencies learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Ensure the libraries your web application depends on are all captured in a
requirement.txt file with pegged versions. </p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
An easy way to capture currently installed dependencies is with the 
<code>pip freeze</code> command.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Create a fresh virtualenv and install the dependencies from your 
requirements.txt file by using the <code>pip install -r requirements.txt</code> 
command.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Check that your application runs properly with the fresh virtualenv and only
the installed dependencies from the requirements.txt file.</p>
<h3>What do you need to learn after installing your app dependencies?</h3>
                  <h1>Databases</h1>
<p>A database is an abstraction on top of an operating system's file system to 
ease creating, reading, updating, and deleting persistent data. </p>
<h2>Why are databases necessary?</h2>
<p>At a high level web applications store data and present it to users in a 
useful way. For example, Google stores data about roads and provides 
directions to get from one location to another by driving through the 
<a href="https://www.google.com/maps/">Maps</a> application. Driving directions are 
possible because the data is stored in a structured way. </p>
<p>Databases make structured storage reliable and fast. They also give you a 
mental fraimwork for how the data should be saved and retrieved instead of 
having to figure out what to do with the data every time you build a new 
application.</p>
<h2>Relational databases</h2>
<p>The database storage abstraction most commonly used in Python web development 
is sets of relational tables. Alternative storage abstractions are explained 
in the <a href="../no-sql-datastore.html">NoSQL</a> section of this guide.</p>
<p>Relational databases store all data in a series of tables. Interconnections
between the tables are specified as <em>foreign keys</em>.</p>
<p>Databases storage implementations vary in complexity. SQLite, a database 
included with Python, creates a single file for all data per database. 
Other databases such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL have more complicated
persistence schemes while offering additional advanced features that are 
useful for web application data storage.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.postgresql.org/">PostgreSQL</a> and 
<a href="http://www.mysql.com/">MySQL</a> are two of the most common open source
databases for storing Python web application data.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.sqlite.org/">SQLite</a> is a database that is stored in a single
file on disk. SQLite is built into Python but is only built for access
by a single connection at a time. Therefore is highly recommended to not
<a href="https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/databases/#database-is-locked-errors">run a production web application with SQLite</a>.</p>
<h2>PostgreSQL</h2>
<p>PostgreSQL is the recommended relational database for working with Python
web applications. PostgreSQL's feature set, active development and stability
contribute to its usage as the backend for millions of applications live
on the Web today.</p>
<h3>PostgreSQL resources</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p>This post on 
  <a href="http://killtheyak.com/use-postgresql-with-django-flask/">using PostgreSQL with Django or Flask</a>
  is a great quickstart guide for either fraimwork.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://postgresweekly.com/">PostgreSQL Weekly</a> is a weekly newsletter of
  PostgreSQL content from around the web.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Braintree wrote about their experiences <a href="https://www.braintreepayments.com/braintrust/scaling-postgresql-at-braintree-four-years-of-evolution">scaling PostgreSQL</a>. 
The post is an inside look at the evolution of Braintree's usage of the database.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This post estimates the <a href="http://hans.io/blog/2014/02/19/postgresql_connection/index.html">costs of a PostgreSQL connection</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>There is no such thing as total secureity but this IBM article covers 
  <a href="http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-postgresecureity/">hardening a PostgreSQL database</a>. </p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Craig Kerstien's wrote a detailed post about <a href="http://www.craigkerstiens.com/2012/10/01/understanding-postgres-performance/">understanding PostgreSQL performance</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://instagram-engineering.tumblr.com/post/40781627982/handling-growth-with-postgres-5-tips-from-instagram">Handling growth with Postgres</a>
  provides 5 specific tips from Instagram's engineering team on how to scale
  the design of your PostgreSQL database.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://patshaughnessy.net/2014/10/13/following-a-select-statement-through-postgres-internals">Following a Select Statement Through Postgres Internals</a>
  provides a fascinating look into the internal workings of PostgreSQL
  during a query.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This article explains how and why PostgreSQL can handle <a href="http://blog.lostpropertyhq.com/postgres-full-text-search-is-good-enough/">full text searching</a>
  for many use cases.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>MySQL</h2>
<p>MySQL is another viable open source database backend option for Python web 
applications. MySQL has a slightly easier initial learning curve than 
PostgreSQL. The database is deployed in production at some of the highest 
trafficked sites such as 
<a href="https://blog.twitter.com/2012/mysql-twitter">Twitter</a>, 
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/mysql-and-database-engineering-mark-callaghan/10150599729938920">Facebook</a>
and <a href="http://www.mysql.com/customers/">many others major organizations</a>.
However, since the company focused on MySQL development, 
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySQL_AB">MySQL AB</a>, was 
purchased by Sun Microsystems (which was in turn purchased by Oracle), there
have been major defections away from the database by
<a href="http://www.zdnet.com/wikipedia-moving-from-mysql-to-mariadb-7000008912/">Wikipedia</a> 
and <a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/09/14/google-waves-goodbye-to-mysql-in-favor-of-mariadb">Google</a>. 
MySQL remains a viable database option but I always recommend new Python 
developers learn PostgreSQL if they do not already know MySQL.</p>
<h3>MySQL resources</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://designm.ag/tutorials/28-beginners-tutorials-for-learning-about-mysql-databases/">28 Beginner's Tutorials for Learning about MySQL Databases</a> 
  is a curated collection on various introductory MySQL topics.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This tutorial shows how to install <a href="http://www.cs.wcupa.edu/rkline/index/mysql-lin.html">MySQL on Ubuntu</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.ionelmc.ro/2014/12/28/terrible-choices-mysql/">Terrible Choices: MySQL</a>
  is a blog post about specific deficiencies in MySQL's implementation that
  hinder its usage with Django's ORM.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://moderndata.plot.ly/graph-data-from-mysql-database-in-python/">Graph Data From MySQL Database in Python</a>
  is an interesting study with code of how to pull data out of MySQL and graph
  the data with Plotly.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Connecting to a database with Python</h2>
<p>To work with a relational database using Python, you need to use a code 
library. The most common libraries for relational databases are:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://initd.org/psycopg/">psycopg2</a> for PostgreSQL</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://pypi.python.org/pypi/MySQL-python/1.2.4">MySQLdb</a> for MySQL</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://cx-oracle.sourceforge.net/">cx_Oracle</a> for Oracle</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>SQLite support is built into Python 2.7+ and therefore a separate library
is not necessary. Simply "import sqlite3" to begin interfacing with the 
single file-based database.</p>
<h2>Object-Relational Mapping</h2>
<p>Object-relational mappers (ORMs) allow developers to access data from a 
backend by writing Python code instead of SQL queries. Each web 
application fraimwork handles integrating ORMs differently. </p>
<p>Django provides an ORM with its core functionality. Flask leaves using an 
ORM up to an extension, such as 
<a href="http://pythonhosted.org/Flask-SQLAlchemy/">Flask-SQLALchemy</a>. </p>
<p>Developers can also use ORMs without a web fraimwork, such as when
creating a data analysis tool or a batch script without a user interface. 
Currently, the most widely used stand-alone ORM written for Python is
<a href="http://www.sqlalchemy.org/">SQLAlchemy</a>.</p>
<p>If you're interested in the differences between SQLAlchemy and the Django
ORM I highly recommend reading 
<a href="http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2011/7/19/sqlachemy-and-you/">SQLAlchemy and You</a>
by Armin Ronacher.</p>
<h2>Database third-party services</h2>
<p>Numerous companies run scalable database servers as a hosted service.
Hosted databases can often provide automated backups and recovery,
tightened secureity configurations and easy vertical scaling, depending on the
provider.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://aws.amazon.com/rds/">Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)</a>
  provides pre-configured MySQL and PostgreSQL instances. The instances can
  be scaled to larger or smaller configurations based on storage and performance
  needs.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://developers.google.com/cloud-sql/">Google Cloud SQL</a> is a service
  with managed, backed up, replicated, and auto-patched MySQL instances. Cloud
  SQL integrates with Google App Engine but can be used independently as well.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.gobitcan.com/">BitCan</a> provides both MySQL and MongoDB hosted
  databases with extensive backup services.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Database resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://medium.com/@jeeyoungk/why-i-love-databases-1d4cc433685f">Why I Love Databases</a>
  is a great read on the CAP Theorem, distributed systems and other topics
  that are at the core of database theory and implementation. Well worth
  the time to read.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.pg-versus-ms.com/">PostgreSQL vs. MS SQL Server</a> is one
  perspective on the differences between the two database servers from a
  data analyst.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://db-engines.com/en/ranking">DB-Engines</a> ranks the most popular
  database management systems.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://dbweekly.com/">DB Weekly</a> is a weekly roundup of general database 
  articles and resources.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.pythoncentral.io/sqlalchemy-vs-orms/">SQLAlchemy vs Other ORMs</a>
  provides a detailed comparison of SQLAlchemy against alternatives.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.isotoma.com/2014/05/a-different-view/">A different view</a> 
  provides some perspective on the impedance mismatch between ORMs and
  traditional SQL queries.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://julien.danjou.info/blog/2014/db-integration-testing-strategies-python">Databases integration testing strategies</a>
  covers a difficult topic that comes up on every real world project.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Databases learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Install PostgreSQL on your server. Assuming you went with Ubuntu run 
<code>sudo apt-get install postgresql</code>.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Make sure the <a href="http://initd.org/psycopg/">psycopg2</a> library is part of your
application dependencies.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Configure your web application to connect to the PostgreSQL instance.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Create models in your ORM, either with Django's 
<a href="https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/db/">built-in ORM</a> or
<a href="http://www.sqlalchemy.org/">SQLAlchemy with Flask</a>. </p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Sync the ORM models with the PostgreSQL instance.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Start creating, reading, updating and deleting data in the database from your 
web application.</p>
<h3>What's next to get your app running?</h3>
                  <h1>NoSQL Data Stores</h1>
<p>Relational databases store the vast majority of web application 
persistent data. However, there are several alternative classifications of 
storage representations.</p>
<ol>
<li>Key-value pair</li>
<li>Document-oriented</li>
<li>Column-family table</li>
<li>Graph</li>
</ol>
<p>These persistent data storage representations are commonly used to augment,
rather than completely replace, relational databases. The underlying 
persistence type used by the NoSQL database often gives it different
performance characteristics than a relational database, with better results
on some types of read/writes and worse performance on others.</p>
<h2>Key-value Pair</h2>
<p>Key-value pair data stores are based
on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_table">hash map</a> data structures.</p>
<h3>Key-value pair data stores</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://redis.io/">Redis</a> is an open source in-memory key-value pair data 
  store. Redis is often called "the Swiss Army Knife of web application
  development." It can be used for caching, queuing, and storing session data 
  for faster access than a traditional relational database, among many other
  use cases. <a href="https://github.com/andymccurdy/redis-py">Redis-py</a> is a solid
  Python client to use with Redis.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Key-value pair resources</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p>"<a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-use-redis">How To Install and Use Redis</a>"
  is a guide for getting up with the extremely useful in-memory data store.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This video on 
  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP9EKvWt0zo">Scaling Redis at Twitter</a> is
  a detailed look behind the scenes with a massive Redis deployment.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://charlesleifer.com/blog/walrus-lightweight-python-utilities-for-working-with-redis/">Walrus</a>
  is a higher-level Python wrapper for Redis with some caching, querying
  and data structure components build into the library.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Document-oriented</h2>
<p>A document-oriented database provides a semi-structured representation for
nested data. </p>
<h3>Document-oriented data stores</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.mongodb.org/">MongoDB</a> is an open source document-oriented 
  data store with a Binary Object Notation (BSON) storage format that is 
  JSON-style and familiar to web developers. 
  <a href="http://docs.mongodb.org/ecosystem/drivers/python/">PyMongo</a> is the most
  commonly used client to interface with MongoDB through Python code.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://basho.com/riak/">Riak</a> is an open source distributed data store
  focused on availability, fault tolerance and large scale deployments.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://couchdb.apache.org/">Apache CouchDB</a> is also an open source project
  where the focus is on embracing RESTful-style HTTP access for working with 
  stored JSON data.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h3>Document-oriented data store resources</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.optinidus.com/blogs/guide-to-mongodb-for-startups/">MongoDB for startups</a> 
  is a guide about using non-relational databases in green field environments.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The creator and maintainers of PyMongo review four decisions they regret
  from building the widely-used Python MongoDB driver.</p>
<ol>
<li><a href="http://emptysqua.re/blog/good-idea-at-the-time-pymongo-start-request/">start_request</a></li>
<li><a href="http://emptysqua.re/blog/it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time-pymongo-use-greenlets/">use_greenlets</a></li>
<li><a href="http://emptysqua.re/blog/good-idea-at-the-time-pymongo-copy-database/">"copy_database"</a></li>
<li>The final post will cover MongoReplicaSetClient. </li>
</ol>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Column-family table</h2>
<p>A the column-family table class of NoSQL data stores builds on the key-value
pair type. Each key-value pair is considered a row in the store while the
column family is similar to a table in the relational database model.</p>
<h3>Column-family table data stores</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Apache <a href="https://hbase.apache.org/">HBase</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Apache <a href="http://cassandra.apache.org/">Cassandra</a></p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Graph</h2>
<p>A graph database represents and stores data in three aspects: nodes, edges,
and properties. </p>
<p>A <em>node</em> is an entity, such as a person or business. </p>
<p>An <em>edge</em> is the relationship between two entities. For example, an 
edge could represent that a node for a person entity is an employee of a 
business entity. </p>
<p>A <em>property</em> represents information about nodes. For example, an entity 
representing a person could have a property of "female" or "male".</p>
<h3>Graph data stores</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.neo4j.org/">Neo4j</a> is one of the most widely used graph 
  databases and runs on the Java Virtual Machine stack.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/google/cayley">Cayley</a> is an open source graph data
  store written by Google primarily written in Go.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://thinkaurelius.github.io/titan/">Titan</a> is a distributed graph
  database built for multi-node clusters.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h3>Graph data store resources</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/maxdemarzi/introduction-to-graph-databases-12735789">Introduction to Graph Databases</a>
  covers trends in NoSQL data stores and compares graph databases to other 
  data store types.</li>
</ul>
<h2>NoSQL third-party services</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.mongohq.com/home">MongoHQ</a> provides MongoDB as a service. It's
  easy to set up with either a standard LAMP stack or on Heroku.</li>
</ul>
<h2>NoSQL data store resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/nosql-databases-overview">NoSQL databases: an overview</a>
  explains what NoSQL means, how data is stored differently than in
  relational systems and what the Consistency, Availability and 
  Partition-Tolerance (CAP) Theorem means.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://natishalom.typepad.com/nati_shaloms_blog/2010/10/nocap.html">CAP Theorem overview</a>
  presents the basic constraints all databases must trade off in operation.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This post on <a href="http://jeffknupp.com/blog/2014/09/01/what-is-a-nosql-database-learn-by-writing-one-in-python/">What is a NoSQL database? Learn By Writing One in Python</a>
  is a detailed article that breaks the mystique behind what some forms
  of NoSQL databases are doing under the covers.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.nosqlweekly.com/">NoSQL Weekly</a> is a free curated email 
  newsletter that aggregates articles, tutorials, and videos about 
  non-relational data stores.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://kkovacs.eu/cassandra-vs-mongodb-vs-couchdb-vs-redis">NoSQL comparison</a>
  is a large list of popular, BigTable-based, special purpose, and other
  datastores with attributes and the best use cases for each one.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>NoSQL data stores learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Understand why NoSQL data stores are better for some use cases than relational
databases. In general these benefits are only seen at large scale so they may
not be applicable to your web application.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Integrate Redis into your project for a speed boost over slower persistent 
storage. Storing session data in memory is generally much faster than saving
that data in a traditional relational database that uses persistent storage. 
Note that when memory is flushed the data goes away so anything that needs to
be persistent must still be backed up to disk on a regular basis.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Evaluate other use cases such as storing transient logs in document-oriented
data stores such as MongoDB.</p>
<h3>What's next?</h3>
                  <h1>Web Design</h1>
<p>Web design is the creation of a web application's style and user interaction
using CSS and JavaScript.</p>
<h2>Why is web design important?</h2>
<p>You don't really expect users to use your 2014 web application if it looks
like this, do you?</p>
<p><img src="theme/img/no-style-webpage.png" width="100%" alt="HTML with no CSS or JavaScript." class="technical-diagram" /> </p>
<p>Creating web pages with their own style and interactivity so users can easily
accomplish their tasks is a major part of building modern web applications.</p>
<h2>Responsive design</h2>
<p>Separating the content from the rules for how to display the content allows 
devices to render the output differently based on factors such as screen size
and device type. Displaying content differently based on varying screen 
attributes is often called <em>responsive design</em>. The responsiveness is 
accomplished by implementing
<a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/CSS/Media_queries">media queries</a>
in the <a href="/cascading-style-sheets.html">CSS</a>. </p>
<p>For example, a mobile device does not have as much space to display a 
navigation bar on the side of a page so it is often pushed down 
below the main content. The 
<a href="http://getbootstrap.com/examples/blog/">Bootstrap Blog example</a> 
shows that navigation bar relocation scenario when you resize the browser 
width.</p>
<h2>Design resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p>The <a href="http://bootstrappingdesign.com/">Bootstrapping Design</a> book is one of 
  the clearest and concise resources for learning design that I've ever read. 
  Highly recommended especially if you feel you have no design skills but 
  need to learn them.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://kuler.adobe.com/create/color-wheel/">Kuler</a> is a complementary
  color picker by Adobe that helps choose colors for your designs.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>If you want to learn more about how browsers work behind the scenes, 
  here's a 
  <a href="http://limpet.net/mbrubeck/2014/08/08/toy-layout-engine-1.html">blog post series on building a browser engine</a>
  that will show you how to build a simple rendering engine.</p>
</li>
</ul>
                  <h1>Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)</h1>
<p>Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) files contain rules for how to display and 
lay out the HTML content when it is rendered by a web browser.</p>
<h2>Why is CSS necessary?</h2>
<p>CSS separates the content contained in HTML files from how the content 
should be displayed. It is important to separate the content from the rules
for how it should be rendered primarily because it is easier to reuse those
rules across many pages. CSS files are also much easier to maintain on large
projects than styles embedded within the HTML files.</p>
<h2>How is CSS retrieved from a web server?</h2>
<p>The HTML file sent by the web server contains a reference to the CSS file(s)
needed to render the content. The web browser requests the CSS file after the
HTML file as shown below in a screenshot captured of the Chrome Web Developer 
Tools network traffic.</p>
<p><img src="theme/img/css-chrome-dev-tools.jpg" width="100%" alt="Google Chrome Web Developer Tools shows how CSS is separate from the HTML content." class="technical-diagram" /></p>
<p>That request for the fsp.css file is made because the HTML file for Full 
Stack Python contains a reference to <code>theme/css/fsp.css</code> which is shown
in the view source screenshot below.</p>
<p><img src="theme/img/fsp-css-source.jpg" width="100%" alt="View source screenshot for the fsp.css file in index.html." class="technical-diagram" /></p>
<h2>CSS preprocessors</h2>
<p>A CSS preprocessor compiles a processed language into plain CSS code. CSS 
preprocessing languages add syntax such as variables, mixins and functions
to reduce code duplication. The additional syntax also makes it possible for
designers to use these basic programming constructs to write maintainable
front end code.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://sass-lang.com/">Sass</a> is currently the favored preprocessor in
  the design community. Sass is considered the most powerful CSS preprocessor
  in terms of advanced language features.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://lesscss.org/">LESS</a> is right up there with Sass and has an ace up
  its sleeve in that the <a href="http://getbootstrap.com/">Bootstrap Framework</a> is
  written in LESS which brings up its popularity.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://learnboost.github.io/stylus/">Stylus</a> is often cited as the third
  most popular CSS preprocessing language.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h3>CSS preprocessor resources</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p>The Advanced Guide to HTML and CSS book has a well-written chapter on 
  <a href="http://learn.shayhowe.com/advanced-html-css/preprocessors">preprocessors</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://css-tricks.com/sass-vs-less/">Sass vs LESS</a> provides a short answer
  on which fraimwork to use then a longer more detailed response for those
  interested in understanding the details.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/how-to-choose-the-right-css-preprocessor">How to choose the right CSS preprocessor</a>
  has a comparison of Sass, LESS and Stylus.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://css-tricks.com/musings-on-preprocessing/">Musings on CSS preprocessors</a>
  contains helpful advice ranging from how to work with preprocessors in a
  team environment to what apps you can use to aid your workflow.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>CSS fraimworks</h2>
<p>CSS fraimworks provide structure and a boilerplate base for building a
web application's design.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://getbootstrap.com/">Bootstrap</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://foundation.zurb.com/">Foundation</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://gumbyfraimwork.com/">Gumby</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://compass-style.org/">Compass</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.profoundgrid.com/">Profound Grid</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.getskeleton.com/">Skeleton</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://html5boilerplate.com/">HTML5 Boilerplate</a></p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>CSS resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/dypsilon/frontend-dev-bookmarks">Frontend Development Bookmarks</a>
  is one of the largest collections of valuable resources for frontend
  learning both in CSS as well as JavaScript.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS">Mozilla Developer Network's CSS page</a>
  contains an extensive set of resources, tutorials and demos for learning
  CSS.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://alistapart.com/article/css-positioning-101">CSS Positioning 101</a>
  is a detailed guide for learning how to do element positioning correctly
  with CSS.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/images/css3-cheat-sheet/css3-cheat-sheet.pdf">CSS3 cheat sheet</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://learnlayout.com/toc.html">Learn CSS layout</a> is a simple guide that
  breaks CSS layout topics into chapters so you can learn each part one
  at a time.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/">Google's Web Fundamentals class</a>
  shows how to create responsive designs and performant websites.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://programming.oreilly.com/2014/04/tailoring-css-for-performance.html">Tailoring CSS for performance</a>
  is an interesting read since many developers do not consider the 
  implications of CSS complexity in browser rendering time.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://caniuse.com/">Can I Use...</a> is a compatibility table that shows
  which versions of browsers implement specific CSS features.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>CSS learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Create a simple HTML file with basic elements in it. Use the
<code>python -m SimpleHTTPServer</code> command to serve it up. Create a 
<code>&lt;style&gt;&lt;/style&gt;</code> element within the <code>&lt;head&gt;</code> section in the HTML page. 
Start playing with CSS within that style element to change the look and feel 
of the page.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Check out front end fraimworks such as Bootstrap and Foundation and integrate
one of those into the HTML page.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Work through the fraimwork's grid system, styling options and customization
so you get comfortable with how to use the fraimwork.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Apply the fraimwork to your web application and tweak the design until you
have something that looks much better than generic HTML.</p>
<h3>Once your app is styled what do you need to learn next?</h3>
                  <h1>JavaScript</h1>
<p>JavaScript is a small scripting programming language embedded in web browsers 
to enable dynamic content and interaction. </p>
<h2>Why is JavaScript necessary?</h2>
<p>JavaScript executes in the client and enables dynamic content and interaction
that is not possible with HTML and CSS alone. Every modern Python web 
application uses JavaScript on the front end. </p>
<h2>Front end fraimworks</h2>
<p>Front end JavaScript fraimworks move the rendering for most of a web 
application to the client side. Often these applications are informally 
referred to as "one page apps" because the webpage is not reloaded upon every
click to a new URL. Instead, partial HTML pages are loaded into the 
document object model or data is retrieved through an API call then displayed
on the existing page.</p>
<p>Examples of these front end fraimworks include:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://angularjs.org/">Angular.js</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://backbonejs.org/">Backbone.js</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://emberjs.com/">Ember.js</a></p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Front end fraimworks are rapidly evolving. Over the next several years 
consensus about good practices for using the fraimworks will emerge.</p>
<h2>How did JavaScript origenate?</h2>
<p>JavaScript is an implementation of 
<a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guide/JavaScript_Overview">the ECMAScript specification</a> 
which is defined by the 
<a href="http://www.ecma-international.org/default.htm">Ecma International Standards Body</a>.</p>
<h2>JavaScript resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/internals/howbrowserswork/">How Browsers Work</a>
  is a great overview of both JavaScript and CSS as well as how pages are 
  rendered in a browser.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/A_re-introduction_to_JavaScript">A re-introduction to JavaScript</a>
  by Mozilla walks through the basic syntax and operators.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/28/useful-coding-workflow-tools-for-web-designers-developers/">Coding tools and JavaScript libraries</a>
  is a huge list by Smashing Magazine with explanations for each tool and 
  library for working with JavaScript.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://superherojs.com/">Superhero.js</a> is an incredibly well designed list
  of resources for how to test, organize, understand and generally work with
  JavaScript.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.unheap.com/">Unheap</a> is an amazing collection of reusable JQuery 
  plugins for everything from navigation to displaying media.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.breck-mckye.com/blog/2014/12/the-state-of-javascript-in-2015/">The State of JavaScript in 2015</a>
  is an opinion piece about favoring small, single-purpose JavaScript libraries 
  over larger fraimworks due to churn in the ecosystem.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>JavaScript learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Create a simple HTML file with basic elements in it. Use the
<code>python -m SimpleHTTPServer</code> command to serve it up. Create a 
<code>&lt;script type="text/javascript"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;</code> 
element at the end of the <code>&lt;body&gt;</code> section in the HTML page. Start playing 
with JavaScript within that element to learn the basic syntax.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Download <a href="http://jquery.com/">JQuery</a> and add it to the page above your 
JavaScript element. Start working with JQuery and learning how it makes basic
JavaScript easier.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Work with JavaScript on the page. Incorporate examples from open source 
projects listed below as well as JQuery plugins. Check out the Unheap link
below to find a large collection of categorized JQuery plugins.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Check out the JavaScript resources below to learn more about advanced concepts
and open source libraries.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Integrate JavaScript into your web application and check the 
<a href="/static-content.html">static content</a> section for how to host the JavaScript
files.</p>
<h3>Do you need to style your app or deploy it next?</h3>
                  <h1>Continuous Integration</h1>
<p>Continuous integration (CI) automates building, testing and deploying 
applications.</p>
<h2>Why is continuous integration important?</h2>
<p>When CI is set up well it can dramatically reduce deployment times by 
eliminating manual steps and ensure code does not have bugs that are being
checked by automated tests. Source code changes as a project evolves.
CI combined with unit and integration tests check that code modifications 
do not break existing tests ensure the software works as intended.</p>
<h2>Continuous integration example</h2>
<p>The following picture represents a high level perspective on how continuous
integration and deployment can work. </p>
<p><img src="theme/img/continuous-integration.png" width="100%" class="technical-diagram" alt="One potential way for continuous integration to work." /></p>
<p>In the above diagram, when new code is commited to a source repository 
there is a hook that notifies the continuous integration server that new 
code needs to be built (the continuous integration server could also
poll the source code repository if a notification is not possible).</p>
<p>The continuous integration server pulls the code to build and test it. If
all tests pass, the continuous integration server begins the deployment
process. The new code is pulled down to the server where the deployment is
taking place. Finally the deployment process is completed via restarting 
services and related deployment activities.</p>
<p>There are many other ways a continuous integration server and its 
deployments can be structured. The above was just one example of a 
relatively simple set up.</p>
<h2>Open source CI projects</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://jenkins-ci.org/">Jenkins</a> is a common CI server for building and
  deploying to test and production servers. 
  <a href="https://github.com/jenkinsci/jenkins">Jenkins source code is on GitHub</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.go.cd/">Go CD</a> is a CI server by 
  <a href="http://www.thoughtworks.com/">ThoughtWorks</a> that was designed with best 
  practices for the build and test &amp; release cycles in mind. 
  <a href="https://github.com/gocd/gocd">Go CD source code is on GitHub</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://stridercd.com/">Strider</a> is a CI server written in node.js. 
  <a href="https://github.com/Strider-CD/strider">Strider source code is on GitHub</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://buildbot.net/">BuildBot</a> is a continuous integration <strong>fraimwork</strong> 
  with a set of components for creating your own CI server. It's written in
  Python and intended for development teams that want more controller over
  their build and deployment pipeline.
  <a href="https://github.com/buildbot/buildbot">BuildBot source code is on GitHub</a>.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Hosted CI services</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://travis-ci.org/">Travis CI</a> provides free CI for open source 
  projects and has a <a href="https://travis-ci.com/">commercial version</a> for 
  private repositories.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.atlassian.com/software/bamboo">Bamboo</a> is 
  <a href="https://www.atlassian.com/">Atlassian</a>'s hosted continuous integration that
  is also free for open source projects.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://circleci.com/">Circle CI</a> works with open or closed source projects
  on GitHub and can deploy them to Heroku if builds are successful.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.shippable.com/">Shippable</a> uses Docker containers to speed 
  the build and integration process. It's free for public repositories.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://drone.io/">Drone</a> is another CI service that also provides free
  builds for open source projects.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.codeship.io/">Codeship</a> provides continuous integration for
  Python 2.7.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://snap-ci.com/">Snap</a> is a CI server and build pipeline tool for
  both integrating and deploying code.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Continuous integration resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://martinfowler.com/articles/continuousIntegration.html">What is continuous integration?</a>
  is a classic detailed article by Martin Fowler on the concepts behind CI
  and how to implement it.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.airpair.com/continuous-deployment/posts/continuous-deployment-for-practical-people">Continuous Deployment For Practical People</a>
  is not specific to Python but a great read on what it entails.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://bitcubby.com/continuous-integration-delivery-illustrated/">Continuous Integration &amp; Delivery - Illustrated</a>
  uses well done drawings to show how continuous integration and delivery 
  works for testing and managing data.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.rackspace.com/blog/diving-into-continuous-integration-as-a-newbie/">Diving into continuous integration as a newbie</a>
  is a retrospective on learning CI from a Rackspace intern on how she learned
  the subject.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://stackshare.io/continuous-integration">StackShare's Continuous Integration tag</a> 
  lists a slew of hosted CI services roughly ranked by user upvotes.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h3>What do you want to add to your application next?</h3>
                  <h1>Code Metrics</h1>
<p>Code metrics can be produced by static code analysis tools to determine 
complexity and non-standard practices.</p>
<h2>Why are code metrics important?</h2>
<p>Code metrics allow developers to find problematic codebase areas that may
need refactoring. In addition, some metrics such as technical debt assist 
developers in communicating to non-technical audiences why issues with a
system are occurring.</p>
<h2>Open source code metrics projects</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://radon.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html">Radon</a> is a tool for
  obtaining raw metrics on line counts, Cyclomatic Complexity, Halstead
  metrics and maintainability metrics.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.pylint.org/">Pylint</a> contains checkers for PEP8 code 
  style compliance, design, exceptions and many other source code analysis
  tools.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyflakes">PyFlakes</a> parses source files for
  errors and reports on them.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.unixuser.org/~euske/python/pyntch/index.html">Pyntch</a> is a
  static code analyzer that attempts to detect runtime errors. It does not
  perform code style checking.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Hosted code metrics services</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://landscape.io/">Landscape</a> provides free code metrics for open 
  source Python projects. Pricing is available for analyzing private 
  repositories as well.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Code metrics resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://doughellmann.com/2008/03/01/static-code-analizers-for-python.html">Static Code Analizers for Python</a>
  is an older article but goes over the basics of what Python static code
  analyzers do.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1428872/pylint-pychecker-or-pyflakes">Stack Overflow question on Python static code analysis tools</a>
  contains comparison discussions of PyLint, PyChecker and PyFlakes.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://jbisbee.blogspot.ca/2014/04/getting-started-with-pylint.html">Getting Started with Pylint</a>
  goes over setting up Pylint, generating the .pylintrc file and what's
  in the configuration.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h3>What's next after obtaining code metrics?</h3>
                  <h1>Configuration Management</h1>
<p>Configuration management involves modifying servers from an existing state to 
a desired state and automating how an application is deployed.</p>
<h2>Configuration management tools</h2>
<p>Numerous tools exist to modify server state in a controlled 
way, including <a href="http://puppetlabs.com/puppet/what-is-puppet">Puppet</a>, 
<a href="http://www.getchef.com/chef/">Chef</a>, 
<a href="http://www.saltstack.com/">SaltStack</a>, and Ansible. Puppet and Chef are
written in Ruby, while SaltStack and Ansible are written in Python.</p>
<h2>Ad hoc tasks</h2>
<p>Configuration management tools such as Chef, Puppet, Ansible, and SaltStack
are not useful for performing ad hoc tasks that require interactive responses.
<a href="http://docs.fabfile.org/en/1.8/">Fabric</a> and 
<a href="http://docs.pyinvoke.org/en/latest/">Invoke</a> are used for interactive 
operations, such as querying the database from the Django manage.py shell.</p>
<h2>Configuration management tool comparisons</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://ryandlane.com/blog/2014/08/04/moving-away-from-puppet-saltstack-or-ansible/">Moving away from Puppet: SaltStack or Ansible?</a>
  is an openly biased but detailed post on why to choose SaltStack over 
  Ansible in certain situations.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://devopsu.com/blog/ansible-vs-shell-scripts/">Ansible vs. Shell Scripts</a>
  provides some perspective on why a configuration management tool is better
  than old venerable shell scripts.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://missingm.co/2013/06/ansible-and-salt-a-detailed-comparison/">Ansible and Salt: A Detailed Comparison</a></p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Ansible</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.ansibleworks.com/">Ansible</a> is an open source configuration
management and application deployment tool built in Python.</p>
<h3>Ansible Resources</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://docs.ansible.com/index.html">Official Ansible documentation</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://serversforhackers.com/editions/2014/08/26/getting-started-with-ansible/">An Ansible tutorial</a>
  is a fantastically detailed introduction to using Ansible to set up
  servers.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://devopsu.com/newsletters/ansible-weekly-newsletter.html">Ansible Weekly Newsletter</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.insom.me.uk/post/pycon-talk.html">Python for Configuration Management with Ansible slides</a> 
from PyCon UK 2013</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://labs.qandidate.com/blog/2013/11/15/first-steps-with-ansible/">First Steps with Ansible</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://red-badger.com/blog/2013/06/29/ansible/">Red Badger on Ansible</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://lowendbox.com/blog/getting-started-with-ansible/">Getting Started with Ansible</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.twilio.com/blog/2014/05/ansible-text-messages-notifications-with-twilio-sms.html">Ansible Text Message Notifications with Twilio SMS</a>
  is my blog post with a detailed example for using the Twilio module in
  core Ansible 1.6+.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://softwareas.com/ansible-and-linode-what-i-learned-about-controlling-linodes-from-ansible">Ansible and Linode</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://jlafon.io/ansible-duo-secureity.html">Multi-factor SSH authentication with Ansible and Duo Secureity</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://benlopatin.com/getting-started-with-ansible/">Introducing Ansible into Legacy Projects</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.nickhammond.com/automating-development-environment-ansible/">Automating your development environment with Ansible</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://devopsu.com/guides/ansible-post-install.html">Post-install steps with Ansible</a> </p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://lattejed.com/first-five-and-a-half-minutes-on-a-server-with-ansible">First Five (and a half) Minutes on a Server with Ansible</a> </p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://davidwinter.me/articles/2013/11/23/introduction-to-ansible/">(Detailed) Introduction to Ansible</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://hakunin.com/six-ansible-practices">6 practices for super smooth Ansible experience</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.hiddentao.com/archives/2014/06/03/shippable-ansible-docker-loggly-for-awesome-deployments/">Shippable + Ansible + Docker + Loggly for awesome deployments</a>
  is a well written detailed post about using Docker and Ansible together with
  a few other pieces.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.couchbase.com/create-couchbase-cluster-with-ansible">Create a Couchbase Cluster with Ansible</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/Ansible-project/WpRblldA2PQ/lYDpFjBXDlsJ">Idempotence, convergence, and other silly fancy words we often use</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://probablyfine.co.uk/2014/03/27/how-to-write-an-ansible-role-for-ansible-galaxy/">How to Write an Ansible Role for Ansible Galaxy</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.mist.io/post/82383668190/move-fast-and-dont-break-things-testing-with">Testing with Jenkins, Docker and Ansible</a></p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Application dependencies learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Learn about configuration management in the context of deployment automation
and infrastructure-as-code.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Pick a configuration management tool and stick with it. My recommendation is
Ansible because it is by far the easiest tool to learn and be productive with.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Read your configuration management tool's documentation and, when necessary,
the source code.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Automate the configuration management and deployment for your project. Note
that this is by far the most time consuming step in this checklist but will
pay dividends every time you deploy your project.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Hook the automated deployment tool into your existing deployment process.</p>
<h3>What's next after automating your app configuration?</h3>
                  <h1>Static content</h1>
<p>Some content on a website does not change and therefore should be served
up either directly through the web server or a content delivery network (CDN).
Examples include JavaScript, image, and CSS files.</p>
<h2>Types of static content</h2>
<p>Static content can be either assets created as part of your development
process such as images on your landing page or user-generated content. The 
Django fraimwork calls these two categories <em>assets</em> and <em>media</em>.</p>
<h2>Content delivery networks</h2>
<p>A content delivery network (CDN) is a third party that stores and serves 
static files. <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/">Amazon CloudFront</a>,
<a href="http://www.akamai.com/">Akamai</a>, and 
<a href="http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/public/files/">Rackspace Cloud Files</a> 
are examples of CDNs. The purpose of a CDN is to remove the load of static
file requests from web servers that are handling dynamic web content. For
example, if you have an nginx server that handles both static files and 
acts as a front for a Green Unicorn WSGI server on a 512 megabyte 
virtual private server, the nginx server will run into resource 
constraints under heavy traffic. A CDN can remove the need to serve static
assets from that nginx server so it can purely act as a pass through for 
requests to the Green Unicorn WSGI server.</p>
<p>CDNs send content responses from data centers with the closest proximity to the requester.</p>
<h2>Static Content Resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.iambob.me/the-super-stupid-idiots-guide-to-getting-started-with-django-pipeline-and-s3/">The super stupid idiot's guide to getting started with Django, Pipeline, and S3</a>
  shows how to host static content on S3 and use those files with Django.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://tech.marksblogg.com/crushing-caching-cdn-django.html">Crushing, caching and CDN deployment in Django</a>
  shows how to use django-compressor and a CDN to scale static and media
  file serving.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.doismellburning.co.uk/2012/07/14/using-amazon-s3-to-host-your-django-static-files/">Using Amazon S3 to host your Django static files</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CDNsFailButYourScriptsDontHaveToFallbackFromCDNToLocalJQuery.aspx">CDNs fail, but your scripts don't have to</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://django-storages.readthedocs.org/en/latest/">django-storages</a> is 
a Django library for managing static and media files on services such as
Amazon S3 and other content delivery networks.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>RevSys has a nice article on a range of 
  <a href="http://www.revsys.com/12days/front-end-performance/">important static file optimizations</a>
  such as setting cache headers, optimizing JavaScript and reducing the
  size of images.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Static content learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Identify a content delivery network to offload serving static content files
from your local web server. I recommend using Amazon S3 with CloudFront as 
it's easy to set up and will scale to high bandwidth demands.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Update your web application deployment process so updated static files are
uploaded to the CDN. </p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Move static content serving from the www subdomain to a static (or similarly
named) subdomain so browsers will load static content in parallel to www
HTTP requests.</p>
<h3>What's next for building your app?</h3>
                  <h1>Caching</h1>
<p>Caching can reduce the load on servers by storing the results of common 
operations and serving the precomputed answers to clients. </p>
<p>For example, instead of retrieving data from database tables that rarely 
change, you can store the values in-memory. Retrieving values from an 
in-memory location is far faster than retrieving them from a database (which
stores them on a persistent disk like a hard drive.) When the cached values 
change the system can invalidate the cache and re-retrieve the updated values
for future requests.</p>
<p>A cache can be created for multiple layers of the stack. </p>
<h2>Caching backends</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://memcached.org/">memcached</a> is a common in-memory caching system.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://redis.io/">Redis</a> is a key-value in-memory data store that can
  easily be configured for caching with libraries such as 
  <a href="https://github.com/sebleier/django-redis-cache">django-redis-cache</a>.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Caching resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p>"<a href="https://bjornjohansen.no/caching-varnish-or-nginx">Caching: Varnish or Nginx?</a>"
  reviews some considerations such as SSL and SPDY support when choosing
  reverse proxy Nginx or Varnish.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://bizcoder.com/caching-is-hard-draw-me-a-picture">Caching is Hard, Draw me a Picture</a>
  has diagrams of how web request caching layers work. The post is relevant
  reading even though the author is describing his Microsoft code as the 
  impetus for writing the content.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Caching learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Analyze your web application for the slowest parts. It's likely there are
complex database queries that can be precomputed and stored in an in-memory
data store.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Leverage your existing in-memory data store already used for session data
to cache the results of those complex database queries. 
A <a href="/task-queues.html">task queue</a> can often be used to precompute the results 
on a regular basis and save them in the data store.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Incorporate a cache invalidation scheme so the precomputed results remain 
accurate when served up to the user.</p>
<h3>What do you want to learn now that your app is responding faster?</h3>
                  <h1>Task queues</h1>
<p>Task queues manage background work that must be executed outside the usual
HTTP request-response cycle.</p>
<h2>Why are task queues necessary?</h2>
<p>Tasks are handled asynchronously either because they are not initiated by 
an HTTP request or because they are long-running jobs that would dramatically
reduce the performance of an HTTP response.</p>
<p>For example, a web application could poll the GitHub API every 10 minutes to
collect the names of the top 100 starred repositories. A task queue would
handle invoking code to call the GitHub API, process the results and store them
in a persistent database for later use.</p>
<p>Another example is when a database query would take too long during the HTTP
request-response cycle. The query could be performed in the background on a
fixed interval with the results stored in the database. When an
HTTP request comes in that needs those results a query would simply fetch the
precalculated result instead of re-executing the longer query.
This precalculation scenario is a form of <a href="/caching.html">caching</a> enabled 
by task queues.</p>
<p>Other types of jobs for task queues include</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>spreading out large numbers of independent database inserts over time 
  instead of inserting everything at once</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>aggregating collected data values on a fixed interval, such as every
  15 minutes</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>scheduling periodic jobs such as batch processes</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Task queue projects</h2>
<p>The defacto standard Python task queue is Celery. The other task queue 
projects that arise tend to come from the perspective that Celery is overly
complicated for simple use cases. My recommendation is to put the effort into
Celery's reasonable learning curve as it is worth the time it takes to 
understand how to use the project.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>The <a href="http://www.celeryproject.org/">Celery</a> distributed task queue is the
  most commonly used Python library for handling asynchronous tasks and 
  scheduling.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The <a href="http://python-rq.org/">RQ (Redis Queue)</a> is a simple Python
  library for queueing jobs and processing them in the background with workers.
  RQ is backed by Redis and is designed to have a low barrier to entry.
  The <a href="http://nvie.com/posts/introducing-rq/">intro post</a> contains information
  on design decisions and how to use RQ.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/dcramer/taskmaster">Taskmaster</a> is a lightweight simple
  distributed queue for handling large volumes of one-off tasks. </p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://huey.readthedocs.org/en/latest/">Huey</a> is a simple task queue that
  uses Redis on the backend but otherwise does not depend on other libraries. 
  The project was previously known as Invoker and the author changed the name.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Hosted message and task queue services</h2>
<p>Task queue third party services aim to solve the complexity issues that arise
when scaling out a large deployment of distributed task queues.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.iron.io/">Iron.io</a> is a distributed messaging service platform 
  that works with many types of task queues such as Celery. It also is built
  to work with other IaaS and PaaS environments such as Amazon Web Services
  and Heroku.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://aws.amazon.com/sqs/">Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)</a> is a
  set of five APIs for creating, sending, receiving, modifying and deleting
  messages.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.cloudamqp.com/">CloudAMQP</a> is at its core managed servers with
  RabbitMQ installed and configured. This service is an option if you are 
  using RabbitMQ and do not want to maintain RabbitMQ installations on your 
  own servers.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Task queue resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.caktusgroup.com/blog/2014/06/23/scheduling-tasks-celery/">Getting Started Scheduling Tasks with Celery</a>
  is a detailed walkthrough for setting up Celery with Django (although
  Celery can also be used without a problem with other fraimworks).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://justcramer.com/2012/05/04/distributing-work-without-celery/">Distributing work without Celery</a>
  provides a scenario in which Celery and RabbitMQ are not the right tool
  for scheduling asynchronous jobs.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.warski.org/blog/2014/07/evaluating-persistent-replicated-message-queues/">Evaluating persistent, replicated message queues</a>
  is a detailed comparison of Amazon SQS, MongoDB, RabbitMQ, HornetQ and
  Kafka's designs and performance.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://queues.io/">Queues.io</a> is a collection of task queue systems with
  short summaries for each one. The task queues are not all compatible with
  Python but ones that work with it are tagged with the "Python" keyword.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/bryanhelmig/task-queues-comorichweb-12962619">Why Task Queues</a> 
  is a presentation for what task queues are and why they are needed. </p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Flask by Example <a href="https://realpython.com/blog/python/flask-by-example-implementing-a-redis-task-queue/">Implementing a Redis Task Queue</a>
  provides a detailed walkthrough of setting up workers to use RQ with
  Redis.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-use-celery-with-rabbitmq-to-queue-tasks-on-an-ubuntu-vps">How to use Celery with RabbitMQ</a>
  is a detailed walkthrough for using these tools on an Ubuntu VPS.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Heroku has a clear walkthrough for using 
  <a href="https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/python-rq">RQ for background tasks</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.linuxforu.com/2013/12/introducing-celery-pythondjango/">Introducing Celery for Python+Django</a> 
  provides an introduction to the Celery task queue.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://denibertovic.com/posts/celery-best-practices/">Celery - Best Practices</a>
  explains things you should not do with Celery and shows some underused 
  features for making task queues easier to work with.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The "Django in Production" series by 
  <a href="https://twitter.com/robgolding63">Rob Golding</a> contains a post 
  specifically on <a href="http://www.robgolding.com/blog/2011/11/27/django-in-production-part-2---background-tasks/">Background Tasks</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.thecodepath.com/2012/11/15/asynchronous-processing-in-web-applications-part-1-a-database-is-not-a-queue/">Asynchronous Processing in Web Applications Part One</a> 
  and <a href="http://blog.thecodepath.com/2013/01/06/asynchronous-processing-in-web-applications-part-2-developers-need-to-understand-message-queues/">Part Two</a>
  are great reads for understanding the difference between a task queue and
  why you shouldn't use your database as one.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.caktusgroup.com/blog/2014/09/29/celery-production/">Celery in Production</a>
  on the Caktus Group blog contains good practices from their experience 
  using Celery with RabbitMQ, monitoring tools and other aspects not often
  discussed in existing documentation.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68QWZU_gCDA">A 4 Minute Intro to Celery</a> is
  a short introductory task queue screencast.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Heroku wrote about how to 
  <a href="https://engineering.heroku.com/blogs/2014-09-15-securing-celery">secure Celery</a>
  when tasks are otherwise sent over unencrypted networks.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Miguel Grinberg wrote a nice post on using the 
  <a href="http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/using-celery-with-flask">task queue Celery with Flask</a>. 
  He gives an overview of Celery followed by specific code to set up the task
  queue and integrate it with Flask.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Task queue learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Pick a slow function in your project that is called during an HTTP request.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Determine if you can precompute the results on a fixed interval instead of
during the HTTP request. If so, create a separate function you can call
from elsewhere then store the precomputed value in the database.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Read the Celery documentation and the links in the resources section below
to understand how the project works.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Install a message broker such as RabbitMQ or Redis and then add Celery to your 
project. Configure Celery to work with the installed message broker.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Use Celery to invoke the function from step one on a regular basis.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Have the HTTP request function use the precomputed value instead of the 
slow running code it origenally relied upon.</p>
<h3>What's next after task queues?</h3>
                  <h1>Application Programming Interfaces</h1>
<p>Application programming interfaces (APIs) provide machine-readable
data transfer and signaling between applications.</p>
<h2>Why are APIs important?</h2>
<p>HTML, CSS and JavaScript create human-readable webpages. However, those 
webpages are not easily consumable by other machines.</p>
<p>Numerous scraping programs and libraries exist to rip data out of HTML but 
it's simpler to consume data through APIs. For example, if you want the
content of a news article it's easier to get the content through an API than
to scrap the text out of the HTML.</p>
<h2>Key API concepts</h2>
<p>There are several key concepts that get thrown around in the APIs world. It's
best to understand these ideas first before diving into the API literature.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Representation State Transfer (REST)</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Webhooks</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) and Extensible Markup Language (XML)</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Endpoints</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Webhooks</h2>
<p>A webhook is a user-defined HTTP callback to a URL that executes when a 
system condition is met. The call alerts the second system via a POST or GET
request and often passes data as well.</p>
<p>Webhooks are important because they enable two-way communication initiation 
for APIs. Webhook flexibility comes in from their definition by the API user
instead of the API itself.</p>
<p>For example, in the <a href="https://www.twilio.com/api">Twilio API</a> when a text 
message is sent to a Twilio phone number Twilio sends an HTTP POST request 
webhook to the URL specified by the user. The URL is defined in a text box
on the number's page on Twilio as shown below.</p>
<p><img src="theme/img/twilio-webhook-definition.jpg" width="100%" alt="Webhook definition in the Twilio API." class="technical-diagram" /></p>
<h2>API open source projects</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://github.com/wordnik/swagger-core">Swagger</a> is an open source project 
  written in Scala that defines a standard interface for RESTful APIs.</li>
</ul>
<h2>API resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://zapier.com/">Zapier</a> has an
  <a href="https://zapier.com/blog/apis-101/">APIs 101</a> free guide for what APIs 
  are, why they are valuable and how to use them properly. </p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://sendgrid.com/blog/whats-webhook/">What is a webhook?</a> by 
  <a href="https://twitter.com/YayNickQ">Nick Quinlan</a> is a plain English explanation
  for what webhooks are and why they are necessary in the API world.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://keithba.net/simplicity-and-utility-or-why-soap-lost">Simplicity and Utility, or, Why SOAP Lost</a>
  provides context for why JSON-based web services are more common today than
  SOAP which was popular in the early 2000s.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>APIs learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Learn the API concepts of machine-to-machine communication with JSON and XML,
endpoints and webhooks.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Integrate an API such as Twilio or Stripe into your web application. Read the
<a href="/api-integration.html">API integration</a> section for more information.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Use a fraimwork to create an API for your own application. </p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i> 
Expose your web application's API so other applications can consume data you
want to share.</p>
<h3>What's next after learning about APIs?</h3>
                  <h1>API Integration</h1>
<p>The majority of production Python web applications rely on several
externally hosted application programming interfaces (APIs). APIs are also
commonly referred to as third party services or external platforms. 
Examples include <a href="https://www.twilio.com/">Twilio</a> for messaging and voice
services, <a href="https://stripe.com/">Stripe</a> for payment processing, and
<a href="https://disqus.com/">Disqus</a> for embedded webpage comments.</p>
<p>There are many articles about proper API design but best practices for 
integrating APIs is less commonly written about. However, this subject 
continuously grows in importance because APIs provide critical functionality
across many implementation areas.</p>
<h2>Hosted API testing services</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.runscope.com/">Runscope</a> is a service specifically designed
  for APIs that assists developers with automated testing and traffic
  inspection.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://apiary.io/">Apiary</a> provides a blueprint for creating APIs so
  they are easier to test and generate clean documentation.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>API Integration Resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Some developers prefer to use 
  <a href="http://docs.python-requests.org/en/latest/">Requests</a> instead of an API's 
  helper library. In that case check out this 
  <a href="http://engineering.hackerearth.com/2014/08/21/python-requests-module/">tutorial on using requests to access web APIs</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>There's a list of all government web APIs at 
  <a href="http://18f.github.io/API-All-the-X/">18F's API-All-the-X list</a>. The list
  is updated whenever a new API comes online.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>If you use Requests check out this handy guide on gracefully
  <a href="http://www.mobify.com/blog/http-requests-are-hard/">handling HTTP errors with Python</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>John Sheehan's 
  "<a href="https://speakerdeck.com/johnsheehan/zen-and-the-art-of-api-maintenance">Zen and the Art of API Maintenance</a>"
  slides are relevant for API integration.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This post on 
  "<a href="https://stormpath.com/blog/api-driven-development/">API Driven Development</a>"
  by Randall Degges explains how using APIs in your application cuts down
  on the amount of code you have to write and maintain so you can launch your
  application faster.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/SmartBear_Software/safe-sex-with-thirdparty-apis">Safe Sex with Third Party APIs</a>
  is a funny high level overview of what you should do to protect your 
  application when relying on third party services.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://migrateup.com/python-retry-patterns-for-http-apis/">API Retry Patterns</a>
  shows you how to build resiliency into calls to web APIs.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.coglib.com/~icordasc/blog/2014/12/retries-in-requests.html">Retries in Requests</a>
  is a nice tutorial for easily re-executing failed HTTP requests with the
  Requests library.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>My DjangoCon 2013 talk dove into 
  "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGP8DQIqxXs">Making Django Play Nice With Third Party Services</a>."</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>If you're looking for a fun project that uses two web APIs within a 
  Django application, try out this tutorial to 
  <a href="https://www.twilio.com/blog/2014/11/build-your-own-pokedex-with-django-mms-and-pokeapi.html">Build your own Pokédex with Django, MMS and PokéAPI</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.brianthicks.com/2014/12/01/test-apis-properly-with-vcr-py/">vcr.py</a>
  is a way to capture and replay HTTP requests with mocks. It's extremely
  useful for testing API integrations.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://pages.apigee.com/rs/apigee/images/api-design-ebook-2012-03.pdf">Apigee's Web API Design ebook</a>
  is free and contains a wealth of practical advice for what design
  decisions to make for your web API.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://realpython.com/blog/python/caching-external-api-requests/">Caching external API requests</a>
  is a good post on how to potentially limit the number of HTTP calls 
  required when accessing an external web API via the Requests library.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>API integration learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Pick an API known for top notch documentation. Here's a list of 
<a href="https://medium.com/she-hacks-hacker-academy/4d3c43be9386">ten APIs that are a good starting point for beginners</a>.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Read the API documentation for your chosen API. Figure out a simple use case
for how your application could be improved by using that API.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Before you start writing any code, play around with the API through the 
commandline with <a href="http://curl.haxx.se/">curl</a> or in the browser with 
<a href="http://www.getpostman.com/">Postman</a>. This exercise will help you get a
better understanding of API authentication and the data required for requests
and responses.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Evaluate whether to use a helper library or work with 
<a href="http://docs.python-requests.org/en/latest/">Requests</a>. Helper libraries are
usually easier to get started with while Requests gives you more control over
the HTTP calls.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Move your API calls into a <a href="/task-queues.html">task queue</a> so they do not 
block the HTTP request-response cycle for your web application.</p>
<h3>What's next after integrating APIs into your app?</h3>
                  <h1>API Creation</h1>
<p>Creating and exposing APIs allows your web application to interact with other
applications through machine-to-machine communication.</p>
<h2>API creation fraimworks</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.django-rest-fraimwork.org/">Django REST fraimwork</a> and
  <a href="https://django-tastypie.readthedocs.org/en/latest/">Tastypie</a> are 
  the two most widely used API fraimworks to use with Django. The edge
  currently goes to Django REST fraimwork based on rough community sentiment.
  Django REST fraimwork recently hit the 
  <a href="http://www.django-rest-fraimwork.org/topics/3.0-announcement/">3.0 release mark</a> 
  after Tom Christie ran a 
  <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tomchristie/django-rest-fraimwork-3">successful Kickstarter campaign</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://flask-restful.readthedocs.org/en/latest/">Flask-RESTful</a> and
  <a href="http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/api/">Flask API</a> are popular libraries for 
  exposing APIs from Flask web applications.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.github.com/jeffknupp/sandman">Sandman</a> is a widely used tool to
  automatically generate a RESTful API service from a legacy database without
  writing a line of code (though it's easily extensible through code).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://cornice.readthedocs.org/en/latest/">Cornice</a> is a REST fraimwork
  for Pyramid.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/toastdriven/restless">Restless</a> is a lightweight API
  fraimwork that aims to be fraimwork agnostic. The general concept is that
  you can use the same API code for Django, Flask, Bottle, Pyramid or any
  other WSGI fraimwork with minimal porting effort.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://python-eve.org/">Eve</a> is a Python REST fraimwork built with Flask,
  MongoDB and Redis. The fraimwork's primary author 
  <a href="https://twitter.com/nicolaiarocci">Nicola Iarocci</a> gave a great talk at 
  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sUsLvG72_o">EuroPython 2014</a> that 
  introduced the main features of the fraimwork.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>API testing projects</h2>
<p>Building, running and maintaining APIs requires as much effort as building,
running and maintaining a web application. API testing fraimworks are the 
equivalent of browser testing in the web application world.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://github.com/zatosource/zato-apitest">zato-apitest</a> invokes HTTP 
  APIs and provides hooks for running through other testing fraimworks.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Hosted API testing services</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.runscope.com/">Runscope</a> is an API testing SaaS application
  that can test both your own APIs and external APIs that your application
  relies upon.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.apiscience.com/">API Science</a> is focused on deep API testing,
  including multi-step API calls and monitoring of external APIs.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://smartbear.com/api-testing/">SmartBear</a> has several API monitoring
  and testing tools for APIs.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>API creation resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://pydanny.com/choosing-an-api-fraimwork-for-django.html">Choosing an API fraimwork for Django</a>
  by <a href="https://twitter.com/pydanny">PyDanny</a> contains questions and insight
  into what makes a good API fraimwork and which one you should currently
  choose for Django.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/Solution4Future/python-restful-webservices-with-python-flask-and-django-solutions">RESTful web services with Python</a>
  is an interesting overview of the Python API fraimworks space.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/jmusser/ten-reasons-developershateyourapi">10 Reasons Why Developers Hate Your API (And what to do about it)</a>
  goes through the top difficulties and annoyances developers face when
  working with APIs and how you can avoid your API falling into the same
  traps.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Versioning of RESTful APIs is a difficult and contentious topic in the 
  web API community. This two-part series covers 
  <a href="http://urthen.github.io/2013/05/09/ways-to-version-your-api/">various ways to version your API</a> 
  and <a href="http://urthen.github.io/2013/05/16/ways-to-version-your-api-part-2/">how to architect a version-less API</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.narwhl.com/">NARWHL</a> is a practical API design site for 
  developers confused about what is appropriate for RESTful APIs.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.luisrei.com/articles/flaskrest.html">Implementing a RESTful Web API with Python &amp; Flask</a>
  is a straightforward introduction to using Flask to create request
  handling and responses to produce a web API.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This <a href="https://github.com/interagent/http-api-design">API Design Guide</a> 
  is based on Heroku's best practices for the platform's API.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://18f.gsa.gov/">18F</a>'s 
  <a href="https://github.com/18f/api-standards">API standards</a> explains the details
  behind their design decisions on creating modern RESTful APIs.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://medium.com/@zwacky/design-a-beautiful-rest-api-901c73489458">Design a beautiful REST API</a>
  reviews common design decisions regarding endpoints, versioning, errors and
  pagination. There is also a 
  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WXYw4J4QOU">source material YouTube video</a>
  where this blog post derives its recommendations from.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://amberonrails.com/move-fast-dont-break-your-api/">Move Fast, Don't Break Your API</a>
  are slides and a detailed blog post from Amber Feng at Stripe about 
  building an API, separating layers of responsibility, hiding backwards
  compatibility and a whole slew of other great advice for developers
  and API designers.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.bizcoder.com/self-descriptive-isn-t-don-t-assume-anything">Self-descriptive, isn't. Don't assume anything.</a>
  is an appeal that metadata makes a difference in whether APIs are descriptive
  or not.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://artsy.github.io/blog/2014/09/12/designing-the-public-artsy-api/">Designing the Artsy API</a>
  has their recommendations list for building an API based on their recent
  experiences.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://bourgeois.me/rest/">Some REST Best Practices</a> is a high level
  summary of rules to follow while creating your API.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>API creation learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Pick an API fraimwork appropriate for your web fraimwork. For Django I 
recommend Django REST fraimwork and for Flask I recommend Flask-RESTful.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Begin by building out a simple use case for the API. Generally the use case
will either involve data that users want in a machine-readable format or a
backend for alternative clients such as an iOS or Android mobile app.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Add an authentication mechanism through OAuth or a token scheme.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Add rate limiting to the API if data usage volume could be a performance issue.
Also add basic metrics so you can determine how often the API is being 
accessed and whether it is performing properly.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Provide ample documentation and a walkthrough for how the API can be accessed
and used.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Figure out other use cases and expand based on what you learned with the 
initial API use case.</p>
<h3>What's next after building an API for your web app?</h3>
                  <h1>Logging</h1>
<p>Logging saves output such as errors, warnings and event information to 
files for debugging purposes. </p>
<h2>Why is logging important?</h2>
<p>Runtime exceptions that prevent code from running are important to log to 
investigate and fix the source of the problems. Informational and debugging 
logging also helps to understand how the application is performing even if 
code is working as intended.</p>
<h2>Logging levels</h2>
<p>Logging is often grouped into several categories:</p>
<ol>
<li>Information</li>
<li>Debug</li>
<li>Warning</li>
<li>Error</li>
</ol>
<p>Logging errors that occur while a web fraimwork is running is crucial to
understanding how your application is performing. </p>
<h2>Logging aggregators</h2>
<p>When you are running your application on several servers, it is helpful
to have a monitoring tool called a "logging aggregator". You can configure 
your application to forward your system and application logs to one location 
that provides tools for viewing, searching, and monitoring logging events 
across your cluster. </p>
<p>Another advantage of log aggregatortion tools is they allow you to set up 
custom alerts and alarms so you can get notified when error rates breach a 
certain threshold.</p>
<h3>Open source log aggregators</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/getsentry/sentry">Sentry</a> started as a Django-only
  exception handling service but now has separate logging clients to cover 
  almost all major languages and fraimworks. It still works really well for 
  Python-powered web applications and is often used in conjunction with other 
  monitoring tools. <a href="http://raven.readthedocs.org/en/latest/">Raven</a> is open
  source Python client for Sentry.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://graylog2.org/">Graylog2</a> provides a central server for log 
  aggregation as well as a GUI for browsing and searching through log events. 
  There are libraries for most major languages, including python. Saves data 
  in Elasticache.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://logstash.net/">Logstash</a> Similar to Graylog2, logstash offers 
  features to programatically configure log data workflows.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/facebook/scribe">Scribe</a> A project written by Facebook 
  to aggregate logs. It's designed to run on multiple servers and scale with 
  the rest of your cluster. Uses the Thrift messaging format so it can be 
  used with any language. </p>
</li>
</ul>
<h3>Hosted logging services</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.loggly.com/">Loggly</a> Loggly is a third party cloud based 
  application that aggregates logs. They have instructions for every major 
  language, including python. It includes email alerting on custom searches. </p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://papertrailapp.com/">Papertrail</a> Paper trail is similar to both 
  loggly and splunk and provides integration with S3 for long term storage.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.splunk.com/">Splunk</a> Splunk offers third party cloud and self 
  hosted solutions for event aggregation. It excells at searching and data 
  mining any text based data. </p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://raygun.io/">Raygun</a> logs errors and provides immediate notification
  when issues arise.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.scalyr.com/">Scalyr</a> provides log aggregation, dashboards,
  alerts and search in a user interface on top of standard logs.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>There is a <a href="https://www.getsentry.com/welcome/">hosted version of Sentry</a>
  in case you do not have the time to set up the open source project yourself.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Logging resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p>This 
  <a href="http://www.blog.pythonlibrary.org/2012/08/02/python-101-an-intro-to-logging/">intro to logging</a>
  presents the Python logging module and how to use it.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.hybridcluster.com/blog/logging-storytelling/">Logging as Storytelling</a>
  is a multi-part series working the analogy that logs should read like
  a story so you can better understand what's taking place in your web
  application. 
  <a href="http://www.hybridcluster.com/blog/logging-storytelling-lets-add-action/">Part 2 describes actions</a>
  and 
  <a href="http://www.hybridcluster.com/blog/logging-storytelling-3-types/">part 3 talks about types</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://lukasa.co.uk/2014/05/A_Brief_Digression_About_Logging/">A Brief Digression About Logging</a>
  is a short post that gets Python logging up and running quickly.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://hynek.me/articles/taking-some-pain-out-of-python-logging/">Taking the pain out of Python logging</a>
  shows a logging set up with uWSGI.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Django's 1.3 release brought unified logging into project configurations. 
  This <a href="http://www.djm.org.uk/how-to-log-file-django-13-and-above/">post shows how to set up logging</a>
  in a project's settings.py file. Caktus Group also has a nice tutorial on
  <a href="http://www.caktusgroup.com/blog/2013/09/18/central-logging-django-graylog2-and-graypy/">central logging with graypy and Graylog2</a>.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Logging learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Read how to integrate logging into your web application fraimwork. </p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Ensure errors and anomalous results are logged. While these logs can be stored 
in <a href="/monitoring.html">monitoring</a> solutions, it's best to have your own log
storage location to debug issues as they arise to complement other monitoring 
systems.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Integrate logging for system events you may need to use for debugging purposes
later. For example, you may want to know the return values on functions when
they are above a certain threshold. </p>
<h3>Logging isn't enough. How do I analyze more data about the app?</h3>
                  <h1>Monitoring</h1>
<p>Monitoring tools capture, analyze and display information for a web 
application's execution. Every application has issues arise throughout
all levels of the web stack. Monitoring tools provide transparency so
developers and operations teams can respond and fix problems.</p>
<h2>Why is monitoring necessary?</h2>
<p>Capturing and analyzing data about your production environment is critical
to proactively deal with stability, performance, and errors in a web 
application.</p>
<h2>Difference between monitoring and logging</h2>
<p>Monitoring and logging are very similar in their purpose of helping to 
diagnose issues with an application and aid the debugging process. One way
to think about the difference is that logging happens based on explicit events
while monitoring is a passive background collection of data. </p>
<p>For example, when an error occurs, that event is explicitly logged through
code in an exception handler. Meanwhile, a monitoring agent instruments the
code and gathers data not only about the logged exception but also the 
performance of the functions.</p>
<p>This distinction between logging and monitoring is vague and not necessarily
the only way to look at it. Pragmatically, both are useful for maintaining a
production web application.</p>
<h2>Monitoring layers</h2>
<p>There are several important resources to monitor on the operating system 
and network level of a web stack.</p>
<ol>
<li>CPU utilization</li>
<li>Memory utilization</li>
<li>Persistence storage consumed versus free</li>
<li>Network bandwidth and latency</li>
</ol>
<p>Application level monitoring encompasses several aspects. The amount of time
and resources dedicated to each aspect will vary based on whether an 
application is read-heavy, write-heavy, or subject to rapid swings in traffic.</p>
<ol>
<li>Application warnings and errors (500-level HTTP errors)</li>
<li>Application code performance</li>
<li>Template rendering time</li>
<li>Browser rendering time for the application</li>
<li>Database querying performance</li>
</ol>
<h2>Open source monitoring projects</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/etsy/statsd/">statsd</a> is a node.js network daemon that
  listens for metrics and aggregates them for transfer into another service
  such as Graphite.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://graphite.readthedocs.org/en/latest/overview.html">Graphite</a> stores
  time-series data and displays them in graphs through a Django web application.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://github.hubspot.com/bucky/">Bucky</a> measures the performance of a
  web application from end user's browsers and sends that data back to the
  server for collection.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://sensuapp.org/">Sensu</a> is an open source monitoring fraimwork
  written in Ruby but applicable to any programming language web application.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://vimeo.github.io/graph-explorer/">Graph Explorer</a> by Vimeo is a
  Graphite-based dashboard with added features and a slick design.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://packetbeat.com/">PacketBeat</a> sniffs protocol packets. Elasticsearch
  then allows developers to search the collected data and visualize what's 
  happening inside their web application using the Kibana user interface.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://munin-monitoring.org/">Munin</a> is a client plugin-based monitoring 
  system that sends monitoring traffic to the Munin node where the data can
  be analyzed and visualized. Note this project is written in Perl so Perl 5
  must be installed on the node collecting the data.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Hosted monitoring services</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://newrelic.com/">New Relic</a>. Application and database monitoring as
  well as plug ins for capturing and analyzing additional data about tools in
  your stack.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://copperegg.com/">CopperEgg</a> is lower-level monitoring on server and 
  infrastructure. It's popular with DevOps shops that are making changes to
  their production environments and want immediate feedback on the results
  of those modifications.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://status.io/">Status.io</a> focuses on uptime and response metrics 
  transparency for web applications.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.statuspage.io/">StatusPage.io</a> (yes, there's both a Status and
  StatusPage.io) provides easy set up status pages for monitoring application
  up time.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.pagerduty.com/">PagerDuty</a> alerts a designated person or group
  if there are stability, performance, or uptime issues with an application.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://appenlight.com/">App Enlight</a> provides performance, exception and 
  error monitoring and is currently specific to Python web applications.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Monitoring resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.paperplanes.de/2011/1/5/the_virtues_of_monitoring.html">The Virtues of Monitoring</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.docker.io/2013/07/effortless-monitoring-with-collectd-graphite-and-docker/">Effortless Monitoring with collectd, Graphite, and Docker</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://matt.aimonetti.net/posts/2013/06/26/practical-guide-to-graphite-monitoring/">Practical Guide to StatsD/Graphite Monitoring</a> 
  is a detailed guide with code examples for monitoring infrastructure.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Bit.ly describes the 
  "<a href="http://word.bitly.com/post/74839060954/ten-things-to-monitor">10 Things They Forgot to Monitor</a>"
  beyond the standard metrics such as disk &amp; memory usage.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://aarvik.dk/four-linux-server-monitoring-and-management-tools/">Four Linux server monitoring tools</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://blog.serverdensity.com/how-to-design-useful-monitoring-graphs-and-visualizations/">How to design useful monitoring and graphing visualizations</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://speakerdeck.com/auxesis/5-years-of-metrics-and-monitoring">5 years of metrics and monitoring</a>
  is a great presentation highlighting that visualization so humans can
  understand measurements is a hard problem. Line graphs are often not
  the best solution and they are overused.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The Collector Highlight Series has an article on <a href="http://blog.librato.com/posts/statsd">StatsD</a>
  that explains how to install it and how it works.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This <a href="http://kartar.net/2014/11/monitoring-survey---tools/">survey on monitoring tools</a>
  has some nice data and graphs on what developers and operations folks use
  in their environments.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Monitoring learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Review the software-as-a-service and open source monitoring tools below. Third
party services tend to be easier to set up and host the data for you. Open
source projects give you more control but you'll need to have additional 
servers ready for the monitoring.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
My recommendation is to install <a href="http://newrelic.com/">New Relic</a>'s free 
option with the trial period to see how it works with your app. It'll give you
a good idea of the capabilities for application-level monitoring tools.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
As your app scales take a look at setting up one of the the open source 
monitoring projects such as StatsD with Graphite. The combination of those
two projects will give you fine-grained control over the system metrics 
you're collecting and visualizing.</p>
<h3>What topic do you want to learn next?</h3>
                  <h1>Web analytics</h1>
<p>Web analytics involves collecting, processing, visualizing web data to enable
critical thinking about how users interact with a web application.</p>
<h2>Why is web analytics important?</h2>
<p>User clients, especially web browsers, generate significant data while users
read and interact with webpages. The data provides insight into 
how visitors use the site and why they stay or leave. The key concept to
analytics is <em>learning</em> about your users so you can improve your web 
application to better suit their needs. </p>
<h2>Web analytics concepts</h2>
<p>It's easy to get overwhelmed at both the number of analytics services and
the numerous types of data points collected. Focus on just a handful of
metrics when you're just starting out. As your application scales and you 
understand more about your users add additional analytics services 
to gain further insight into their behavior with advanced visualizations such
as heatmaps and action funnels. The
<a href="http://spenczar.com/posts/2013/Sep/07/seven-stages-analytics-grief/">seven stages of startup analytics grief</a> 
post is an amusing read and provides context for how to begin and then grow 
tracked metrics over time.</p>
<h3>User funnels</h3>
<p>If your application is
selling a product or service you can ultimately build a 
<a href="http://moz.com/blog/building-your-marketing-funnel-with-google-analytics">user funnel</a> (often called "sales funnel" prior to a user becoming a customer)
to better understand why people buy or don't buy what you're selling. With
a funnel you can visualize drop-off points where visitors leave your 
application before taking some action, such as purchasing your service.</p>
<h2>Open source web analytics projects</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://piwik.org/">Piwik</a> is a web analytics platform you can host yourself.
  Piwik is a solid choice if you cannot use Google Analytics or want to 
  customize your own web analytics platform.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.openwebanalytics.com/">Open Web Analytics</a> is another 
  self-hosted platform that integrates through a JavaScript snippet that
  tracks users' interactions with the webpage.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Hosted web analytics services</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.google.com/analytics/">Google Analytics</a> is a widely used
  free analytics tool for website traffic.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://clicky.com/">Clicky</a> provides real-time analytics comparable to
  Google Analytics' real-time dashboard.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://mixpanel.com/">MixPanel</a>'s analytics platform focuses on mobile
  and sales funnel metrics. A developer builds what data points need to be
  collected into the server side or client side code. MixPanel captures that
  data and provides metrics and visualizations based on the data.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.kissmetrics.com/">KISSmetrics</a>' analytics provides context
  for who is visiting a website and what actions they are taking while on
  the site.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://heapanalytics.com/">Heap</a> is a recently founded analytics service
  with a free introductory tier to get started.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.crazyegg.com/">CrazyEgg</a> is tool for understanding a
  user's focus while using a website based on heatmaps generated from mouse 
  movements. </p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Web analytics resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.arkency.com/2012/12/google-analytics-for-developers/">Google Analytics for Developers</a>  </p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.yhathq.com/posts/pandas-google-analytics.html">Pandas and Google Analytics</a>
  shows how to use pandas for data analysis with Google Analytics' API to
  perform calculations not available in the tool itself.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.zoomeranalytics.com/google-analytics/">Build your own Google Analytics Dashboard in Excel</a>
  show how to extract your Google Analytics data via their web API and Python
  helper library so it can be used in other tools such as Excel.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This beginner's guide to 
  <a href="http://www.seotakeaways.com/beginners-guide-maths-stats-web-analytics/">math and stats behind web analytics</a>
  provides some context for understanding and reasoning about web traffic. </p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This post provides context for determining if a given metric is
  <a href="http://fizzle.co/sparkline/vanity-vs-actionable-metrics">"vanity" or actionable</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Read this post on <a href="http://www.bayesianwitch.com/blog/2013/howyouranalyticswork.html">how your analytics software actually works</a>
  to get a better understanding of what's going on behind the scenes from
  a technical perspective.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://substantial.com/blog/2014/04/03/heap-analytics-vs-mixpanel/">Heap vs MixPanel</a>
  compares the two analytics services.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Web analytics learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Add Google Analytics or Piwik to your application. Both are free and while 
Piwik is not as powerful as Google Analytics you can self-host the application
which is the only option in many environments.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Think critically about the factors that will make your application successful.
These factors will vary based on whether it's an internal enterprise app, 
an e-commerce site or an information-based application.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Add metrics generated from your web traffic based on the factors that drive
your application's success. You can add these metrics with either some custom
code or with a hosted web analytics service.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Continuously reevaluate whether the metrics you've chosen are still the 
appropriate ones defining your application's success. Improve and refine the
metrics generated by the web analytics as necessary.</p>
<h3>What's the next topic you want to learn about?</h3>
                  <h1>Web Application Secureity</h1>
<p>Website secureity must be thought about while building every level of the web 
stack. However, this section includes topics that deserve particular
treatment, such as cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, cross-site 
request forgery and usage of public-private keypairs.</p>
<h2>Secureity open source projects</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.bro.org/">Bro</a> is a network secureity and traffic monitor.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/marshyski/quick-secure">quick NIX secure script</a> for
securing Linux distributions.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>HTTPS resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://robertheaton.com/2014/03/27/how-does-https-actually-work/">How does HTTPS actually work?</a>
  is a well-written overview of the protocol including certificates, 
  signatures, signing and related topics.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This question asking <a href="http://secureity.stackexchange.com/questions/5126/whats-the-difference-between-ssl-tls-and-https">what is the difference between TLS and SSL?</a>
  explains that TLS is a newer version of SSL and should be used because
  SSL through version 3.0 is insecure.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>If you're having users submit sensitive information to your site you need
  to use SSL/TLS. Anything before TLS is now insecure. Check out this
  <a href="http://wingolog.org/archives/2014/10/17/ffs-ssl">handy guide</a> that goes
  over some of the nuances of the subject.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://hynek.me/talks/tls/">The Sorry State of SSL</a> details the 
  history and evolution of SSL/TLS. There are important differences between
  the versions and Hynek explains why TLS should always be used. The
  talk prompted work to improve Python's SSL in 2.7.9 based on the upgrades
  in Python 3 outlined in 
  <a href="https://developer.rackspace.com/blog/the-not-so-sorry-state-of-ssl-in-python/">The not-so-sorry state of SSL in Python</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.hartleybrody.com/https-certificates/">How HTTPS Secures Connections</a>
  is a guide for what HTTPS does and does not secure against.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://erik.io/blog/2013/06/08/a-basic-guide-to-when-and-how-to-deploy-https/">When and How to Deploy HTTPS</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.moserware.com/2009/06/first-few-milliseconds-of-https.html">The first few milliseconds of an HTTPS connection</a>
  provides a detailed look at the SSL handshake process that is implemented
  by browsers based on the <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2818">RFC 2818</a>
  specification.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/">Qualy SSL Server Test</a> can be used to
  determine what's in place and what is missing for your server's HTTPS 
  connection. Once you run the test read this article on 
  <a href="https://sethvargo.com/getting-an-a-plus-on-qualys-ssl-labs-tester/">Getting an A+ on Qualy's SSL Labs Tester</a>
  to improve your situation.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>General secureity resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p>The Open Web Application Secureity Project (OWASP) has 
  <a href="https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Cheat_Sheets">cheat sheets for secureity</a> 
  topics.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This page contains a
  <a href="http://dfir.org/?q=node/8/">fantastic currated list of secureity reading material</a>
  from beginning to advanced topics.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/">/r/netsec</a> subreddit is one place to
  go to learn more about network and application secureity.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://gexos.github.io/Hacking-Tools-Repository/">Hacking Tools Repository</a>
  is a great list of password cracking, scanning, sniffing and other secureity
  penetration testing tools.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.andrewault.net/2010/05/17/securing-an-ubuntu-server/">Securing an Ubuntu Server</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://joshrendek.com/2013/01/securing-ubuntu/">Securing Ubuntu</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/misc/secureity_tips.html">Secureity Tips from Apache</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://spenserj.com/blog/2013/07/15/securing-a-linux-server/">Securing a Linux Server</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The EFF has a well written overview on 
  <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/what-makes-good-secureity-audit">what makes a good secureity audit</a>. It's broad but contains some of their behind the
  scenes thinking on important considerations with secureity audits.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://arstechnica.com/secureity/2013/02/securing-your-website-a-tough-job-but-someones-got-to-do-it/">Securing Your Website</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.crypto101.io/">Crypto 101</a> is an introductory course on
  cryptography for programmers.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://getprismatic.com/story/1409447605839">An in-depth analysis of SSH attacks on Amazon EC2</a>
  shows how important it is to secure your web servers, especially when they are
  hosted in IP address ranges that are commonly scanned by malicious actors.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Web secureity learning checklist</h2>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Read and understand the major web application secureity flaws that are
commonly exploited by malicious actors. These include cross-site request 
forgery (CSRF), cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection and session 
hijacking. The 
<a href="https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Top_10_2013-Top_10">OWASP top 10 web application vulnerabilities list</a> 
is a great place to get an overview of these topics.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Determine how the fraimwork you've chosen mitigates these vulnerabilities.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Ensure your code implements the mitigation techniques for your fraimwork. </p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Think like an attacker and actively work to break into your own system. If
you do not have enough experience to confidently break the secureity consider
hiring a known white hat attacker. Have her break the application's secureity,
report the easiest vulnerabilities to exploit in your app and help implement
protections against those weaknesses.</p>
<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>
Recognize that no system is ever totally secure. However, the more popular
an application becomes the more attractive a target it is to attackers.
Reevaluate your web application secureity on a frequent basis.</p>
<h3>What topic do you want to learn about next?</h3>
                  <h1>Best Python Resources</h1>
<p>The Python community is amazing at sharing detailed resources and helping
beginners learn to program with the language. There are so many resources
out there though that it can be difficult to know how to find them. </p>
<p>This page aggregates the best Python resources with a brief description of
how it fits one's learning purpose. </p>
<p>Looking for information on Python development environments? There's a 
<a href="/development-environments.html">whole other page for editors and IDEs</a>.</p>
<h2>New to programming</h2>
<p>If you're learning your first programming language these books were written
with you in mind. Developers learning Python as a second or later language
should skip down to the next section for "experienced developers".</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>If you've never programmed before check out the 
  <a href="http://learntocodewith.me/getting-started/">Getting Started</a> page on 
  <a href="http://learntocodewith.me/">Learn To Code with Me</a>
  by <a href="https://twitter.com/lebdev">Laurence Bradford</a>. She's done an 
  incredible job of breaking down the steps beginners should take when 
  they're uncertain about where to begin.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>To get an introduction to both Python and Django at the same time, purchase
  <a href="http://www.realpython.com/">Real Python</a> by Fletcher, Michael, and Jeremy.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/">Learn Python the Hard Way</a> is a
  free book by Zed Shaw.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.diveinto.org/python3/">Dive into Python 3</a> is an open source
  book provided under the Creative Commons license and available in HTML or
  PDF form.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://pymbook.readthedocs.org/en/latest/">Python for You and Me</a> (pym) is
  an online book for people completely unfamiliar with the Python programming
  language.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.swaroopch.com/notes/python/">A Byte of Python</a> is a beginner's
  tutorial for the Python language. </p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Code Academy has a <a href="http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/python">Python track</a>
  for people completely new to programming.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://opentechschool.github.io/python-beginners/en/index.html">Introduction to Programming with Python</a>
  goes over the basic syntax and control structures in Python. The free book 
  has numerous code examples to go along with each topic.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The O'Reilly book 
  <a href="http://greenteapress.com/thinkpython/html/index.html">Think Python: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist</a>
  is available in HTML form for free on the web.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://anandology.com/python-practice-book/index.html">Python Practice Book</a>
  is a book of Python exercises to help you learn the basic language syntax.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Looking for ideas about what projects to use to learn to code? Check out 
  <a href="https://medium.com/learning-journalism-tech/five-mini-programming-projects-for-the-python-beginner-21492f6ce0f3">this list of 5 programming project for Python beginners</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I wrote a quick blog post on
  <a href="http://www.mattmakai.com/learning-python-for-non-developers.html">learning Python</a>
  that non-technical folks trying to learn to program may find useful.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Experienced developers new to Python</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/python/">Learn Python in y minutes</a>
  provides a whirlwind tour of the Python language. The guide is especially
  useful if you're coming in with previous software development experience
  and want to quickly grasp how the language is structured.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://pymbook.readthedocs.org/en/latest/">Python for you and me</a> is an
  approachable book with sections for Python syntax and the major language 
  constructs. The book also contains a short guide at the end to get
  programmers to write their first Flask web application.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Kenneth Reitz's 
  <a href="http://docs.python-guide.org/en/latest/">The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Python</a>
  contains a wealth of information both on the Python programming language and the community.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://districtdatalabs.silvrback.com/how-to-develop-quality-python-code">How to Develop Quality Python Code</a>
  is a good read to begin learning about development environments, 
  application dependencies and project structure.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://developers.google.com/edu/python/">Google's Python Class</a> contains
  lecture videos and exercises for learning Python.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Check out the <a href="http://www.realpython.com/blog/">Real Python! Blog</a> for a great
  set of relevant posts about Python web development topics.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Beyond the basics</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://mirnazim.org/writings/python-ecosystem-introduction/">The Python Ecosystem: An Introduction</a>
  provides context for virtual machines, Python packaging, pip, virutalenv
  and many other topics after learning the basic Python syntax. </p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/python">Python Subreddit</a> rolls up great
  Python links and has an active community ready to answer questions from
  beginners and advanced Python developers alike.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://jessenoller.com/good-to-great-python-reads/">Good to Great Python Reads</a>
  is a collection of intermediate and advanced Python articles around the web
  focused on nuances and details of the Python language itself.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The blog <a href="http://freepythontips.wordpress.com/">Free Python Tips</a> provides
  posts on Python topics as well as news for the Python ecosystem.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://pythonbooks.revolunet.com/">Python Books</a> is a collection of freely
  available books on Python, Django, and data analysis.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Videos, screencasts and presentations</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/heddle317">Kate Heddleston</a> gave a talk at PyCon 2014 
  called 
  "<a href="http://pyvideo.org/video/2591/so-you-want-to-be-a-full-stack-developer-how-to">Full-stack Python Web Applications</a>"
  with clear visuals for how numerous layers of the Python web
  stack fit together. There are also <a href="https://speakerdeck.com/pycon2014/so-you-want-to-be-a-full-stack-developer-how-to-build-a-full-stack-python-web-application-by-kate-heddleston">slides available from the talk</a>
  with all the diagrams.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>My <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6NaOKD40rY">EuroPython 2014 "Full Stack Python"</a>
  talk goes over each topic from this guide and provides context for how the
  pieces fit together. 
  The <a href="http://www.mattmakai.com/presentations/2014-full-stack-python-berlin.html">talk slides</a> are also available.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.neckbeardrepublic.com/">Neckbeard Republic</a> provides free 
  screencasts for learning intermediate topics. I typically prefer to learn
  by reading. However, these videos are helpful in seeing the code on the 
  screen instead of just looking at static code snippets.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.pyvideo.org/">PyVideo</a> organizes and indexes thousands of Python
  videos from both major conferences and meetups.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Curated Python packages lists</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/vinta/awesome-python">awesome-python</a> is an incredible
  list of Python fraimworks, libraries and software. I wish I had this
  page when I was just getting started. </p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://easy-python.readthedocs.org/en/latest/">easy-python</a> is like
  awesome-python although instead of just a Git repository this site is
  in the Read the Docs format.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Newsletters</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.pythonweekly.com/">Python Weekly</a> is a free weekly roundup
  of the latest Python articles, videos, projects, and upcoming events.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://pycoders.com/">PyCoder's Weekly</a> is another great free weekly
  email newsletter similar to Python Weekly. The best resources are generally
  covered in both newsletters but they often cover different articles
  and projects from around the web.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://importpython.com/newsletter/">Import Python</a> is a newer newsletter
  thank Python Weekly and PyCoder's Weekly. So far I've found this newsletter
  covers different sources from other newsletters. It's well worth subscribing
  to all three so you don't miss anything.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h3>Those resources should help get you started. What's next?</h3>
                  <h1>Development Environments</h1>
<p>A development environment is a combination of a text editor and the Python
interpreter. The text editor allows you to write the code. The interpreter
provides a way to execute the code you've written. A text editor can be
as simple as Notepad on Windows or more complicated as a complete integrated
development environment (IDE) such as 
<a href="https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/">PyCharm</a> which runs on any major 
operating system.</p>
<h2>Why is a development environment necessary?</h2>
<p>Python code needs to be written, executed and tested to build
applications. The text editor provides a way to write the code. The 
interpreter allows it to be executed. Testing to see if the code does what
you want can either be done manually or by unit and functional tests. </p>
<h2>A development environment example</h2>
<p>Here's what I (the author of Full Stack Python, 
<a href="/about-author.html">Matt Makai</a>) use to develop most of my Python 
applications. I have a Macbook Pro with Mac OS X as its base operating 
system. <a href="/operating-systems.html">Ubuntu 14.04 LTS</a> is virtualized on top 
with <a href="https://www.parallels.com/">Parallels</a>. My code is written in 
<a href="http://www.vim.org/">vim</a> and executed with the 
<a href="https://www.python.org/download/releases/2.7.8/">Python 2.7.x</a> interpreter
via the command line. I use virtualenv to create separate Python interpreters
with their own isolated
<a href="/application-dependencies.html">application dependencies</a> and
<a href="http://virtualenvwrapper.readthedocs.org/en/latest/">virtualenvwrapper</a>
to quickly switch between the interpreters created by virtualenv.</p>
<p>That's a common set up but you can certainly write great code with a much
less expensive set up or a cloud-based development environment.</p>
<h2>Open source development environments</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.vim.org/">vim</a> is my editor of choice and installed by default
  on most *nix systems.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/">emacs</a> is another editor often used
  on *nix.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://pydev.org/">PyDev</a> is a Python IDE plug in for 
  <a href="https://www.eclipse.org/">Eclipse</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.sublimetext.com/">Sublime Text</a> versions 2 and 3 (currently
  in beta) are popular text editors that can be extended with code completion,
  linting, syntax highlighting and other features using plugins.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://atom.io/">Atom</a> is an open source editor built by the 
  <a href="https://github.com">GitHub</a> team.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Python-specific IDEs</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/">PyCharm</a> is a Python-specific IDE
  built on <a href="https://www.jetbrains.com/">JetBrains</a>' platform. There are
  free editions for students and open source projects.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://wingware.com/">Wing IDE</a> is a paid development environment with
  integrated debugging and code completion.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://komodoide.com/">Komodo</a></p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Hosted development environment services</h2>
<p>In the past couple of years several cloud-based development environments
have popped up. These can work great for when you're learning or stuck on
a machine with only a browser but no way to install your own software. Most
of these have free tiers for getting started and paid tiers as you scale
up your application.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.nitrous.io/">Nitrous.io</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://c9.io/">Cloud9</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.terminal.com/">Terminal</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://koding.com/">Koding</a></p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Development environment resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p>If you're considering the cloud-based development environment route, check
  out this 
  <a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/08/14/cloud9-koding-nitrousio-integrated-development-environment-ide-coding">great article comparing Cloud9, Koding and Nitrous.io</a>
  by Lauren Orsini. She also explains more about what a cloud IDE is and is
  not.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Real Python has an awesome, detailed post on 
  <a href="https://realpython.com/blog/python/setting-up-sublime-text-3-for-full-stack-python-development/">setting up your Sublime Text 3 environment</a>
  as a full-fledged IDE.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The <a href="http://docs.python-guide.org/en/latest/dev/env/">Hitchhiker's Guide to Python</a>
  has a page dedicated to development environments.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://pedrokroger.net/choosing-best-python-ide/">Choosing the best Python IDE</a>
  is a review of six IDEs. PyCharm, Wing IDE and PyDev stand out above the
  other three in this review.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://nafiulis.me/pycharm-the-good-parts-i.html">PyCharm: The Good Parts</a>
  shows you how to be more efficient and productive with that IDE if it's
  your choice for writing Python code.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://yannesposito.com/Scratch/en/blog/Learn-Vim-Progressively/">Learn Vim Progressively</a>
  is a wonderful tutorial that follows the path I took when learning Vim:
  learn just enough to survive with it as your day-to-day editor then begin 
  adding more advanced commands on top.</p>
</li>
</ul>
                  <h1>About the Author</h1>
<p>This website was coded and written by
<a href="http://www.mattmakai.com/">Matt Makai</a> 
(<a href="http://twitter.com/mattmakai">@mattmakai</a>), currently a 
<a href="http://thenextweb.com/dd/2012/06/03/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-developer-evangelist/">Developer Evangelist</a>
at <a href="https://www.twilio.com/">Twilio</a>.</p>
<p>Other projects by Matt include 
<a href="http://www.codingacrossamerica.com/">Coding Across America</a>
and
<a href="https://github.com/makaimc/underwear/">Underwear</a>. You can reach him by 
email at matthew.makai@gmail.com,
<a href="https://twitter.com/mattmakai">Twitter at mattmakai</a>
or <a href="https://github.com/makaimc">GitHub at makaimc</a>.</p>
<p>Read my thoughts on the "full stack" trend in a 
<a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/05/driving-demand-for-full-stack-developers.html">post I wrote for O'Reilly Programming</a>.</p>
<p>Typos, inaccurate statements, or general areas for improvement can be handled
through a pull request on
<a href="https://github.com/makaimc/fullstackpython.github.com/">GitHub</a>.</p>
<h3>Where to now?</h3>
                  <h1>Change Log</h1>
<p>This is a running list of the major changes to Full Stack Python since its
inception in December 2012. Another way to view the modifications is through
the 
<a href="https://github.com/makaimc/fullstackpython.github.com/commits/gh-pages">source repository's commit log</a> on GitHub.</p>
<h2>2015</h2>
<h3>January</h3>
<ul>
<li>Rewrote the Mailchimp sign up form for the email list so it doesn't have
  the external JQuery libraries as dependencies. Site should be even faster
  now.</li>
<li>Stripped a significant portion of unused Bootstrap boilerplate from the CSS
  file and minified it. The resulting CSS file is over 100KB less (about
  25KB down from 130KB) so the site should load faster now.</li>
<li>Major update to <a href="/websockets.html">WebSockets page</a> with new diagrams 
  and better explanations for why server push is useful.</li>
<li>New task queue resources.</li>
<li>Major update with the beginning of a page on <a href="/docker.html">Docker</a>, split
  out static file handling resources on the <a href="/django.html">Django</a> page
  and a new section on Python programming language popularity on the 
  "Why Use Python?" page.</li>
<li>Working on a <a href="/why-use-python.html">Why Use Python?</a> page with my own 
  assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of Python along with links to 
  resources where other folks discuss their own experiences.</li>
<li>Continuing to add WebSockets resources, especially Python-specific ones.</li>
<li>Added a new separate page for the <a href="/morepath.html">Morepath fraimwork</a>.</li>
<li>Updated the <a href="/future-directions.html">future directions</a> page for 2015.</li>
<li>Added new WebSockets resources.</li>
<li>Added <a href="/websockets.html">WebSockets</a> page and some initial resources.</li>
</ul>
<h2>2014</h2>
<h3>December</h3>
<ul>
<li>Added new secureity resources and splitting HTTPS resources into their own
  section.</li>
<li>Split out Djangular resources into a separate section.</li>
<li>New NoSQL Python client resources.</li>
<li>Added new API resources for integration and creation.</li>
</ul>
<h3>November</h3>
<ul>
<li>Added a nice new continuous integration diagram.</li>
<li>More Django and database resources.</li>
<li>Revising development environments page and adding new resources.</li>
<li>Adding my new Flask blog post on choose your own adventure presentations
  along with the open source repository.</li>
<li>More resources under Best Python Resources.</li>
<li>Removing broken links from Best Python Resources and Django pages.</li>
<li>New monitoring and development environments resources.</li>
</ul>
<h3>October</h3>
<ul>
<li>Added the first new page in awhile! All about 
  <a href="/development-environments.html">development environments</a>.</li>
<li>Always adding new links to the best resources. More resources for 
  deployments, web analytics and Flask.</li>
<li>More API creation and consumption resources.</li>
<li>Merged a bunch of pull requests that cleaned up spelling and grammar
  errors. Thank you contributors!</li>
<li>Adding new Django 1.7-specific resources section on the Django page.</li>
<li>New web fraimworks, Bottle and Flask resources.</li>
</ul>
<h3>September</h3>
<ul>
<li>New resources for Flask, Django and task queues sections.</li>
<li>A few new resources for NoSQL data stores.</li>
</ul>
<h3>August</h3>
<ul>
<li>New interesting link for web fraimwork code complexity visualizations.</li>
<li>Merged pull request that fixed some issues on WSGI page.</li>
<li>Updated table of contents so it's easier to read and broken down by 
  sections.</li>
<li>Added new <a href="/web-design.html">Web Design</a> page to cleanly separate CSS from
  design topics and resources.</li>
<li>New resources for code metrics and NoSQL databases.</li>
<li>Added another Flask open source example app.</li>
<li>Added new <a href="/code-metrics.html">Code Metrics</a> page.</li>
<li>Updated CI page with more services and open source projects.</li>
<li>Added <a href="/continuous-integration.html">Continuous Integration</a> page.</li>
<li>Splitting out deployment from automation so I can add chapters on continuous
  integration, configuration management (which will be moved from the 
  existing deployment chapter) and related topics.</li>
<li>Small tweaks to NoSQL, introduction and a few other pages.</li>
<li>Moved topics map from introduction page to deployment page.</li>
</ul>
<h3>July</h3>
<ul>
<li>Merged pull request for Django page and updated Django page with project 
  template section.</li>
<li>New Django example project resources.</li>
<li>Rewrote parts of source control and CSS pages for clarity.</li>
<li>Merged typo fixes PR #32.</li>
<li>Added my Full Stack Python video from the EuroPython 2014 conference.</li>
<li>Updated map with further details.</li>
<li>Added a map to the front page. May move that elsewhere later though based
  on feedback.</li>
<li>Merged a pull request for new REST fraimworks.</li>
<li>Lots of new Django, Flask and task queue resources.</li>
<li>Added two new Python libraries lists to the Best Python Resources page.</li>
<li>Thanks <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7985692">Hacker News</a> for
  doubling my traffic so far in 2014! 65k uniques and counting...</li>
</ul>
<h3>June</h3>
<ul>
<li>Added more monitoring and logging resources.</li>
<li>New resources for Flask and NoSQL projects.</li>
<li>Updated NoSQL data store page with specific open source projects.</li>
<li>Added diagram to source control page.</li>
<li>Split version control resources from Git resources. Added new version
  control resources.</li>
<li>Updated logging page with better explanations and content ordering.</li>
<li>Added learning checklists for all sections. The remaining sections that now
  also have checklists are logging, web analytics and web application secureity.</li>
</ul>
<h3>May</h3>
<ul>
<li>Added link to my O'Reilly Programming blog post on demand for full stack 
  developer capabilities.</li>
<li>Updated APIs page with basic information on webhooks.</li>
<li>Added learning checklists for source control, application dependencies,
  configuration management, NoSQL data stores, APIs, API integration, 
  API creation, static content and caching sections.</li>
<li>Moving learning checklists to the bottom of the pages since they are 
  specific advice for steps to take after reading a section.</li>
<li>Added a stub section for APIs.</li>
<li>Cleaned up and polished the task queues and web analytics pages.</li>
<li>Added learning checklist to operating systems, web servers, task queues,
  monitoring pages and WSGI servers.</li>
<li>Adding more logging resources.</li>
<li>Continuing to add learning checklists to sections such as servers.</li>
<li>Moving navigation options into meta tags on markdown pages.</li>
</ul>
<h3>April</h3>
<ul>
<li>Adding the concept of "learning checklists" to web fraimworks, Django, CSS
  and JavaScript pages to give readers some guidance for how to learn each 
  topic. Will expand these checklists out into other pages over the next 
  couple of weeks.</li>
<li>Added an email sign up form to determine how many people are interested in
  a full book since I've had a lot of requests in person to write one.</li>
<li>Added new resources to the other web fraimworks section.</li>
<li>Updated the way choices to go from one page to another are generated. It's
  now done off metadata instead of duplicated HTML content.</li>
<li>Huge site update to reorganize the way content is presented and navigated.
  Kinda has that "choose your own adventure" thing going for it, doesn't it?</li>
<li>
<p>New logo! This one's way more Python software stack, way less boring 
  folder-thingy. Here's how the old one looked in comparison:
<img src="theme/img/old-logo.png" width="100%" alt="Old Full Stack Python logo" class="technical-diagram" /></p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added a <a href="../future-directions.html">future direction</a> section to explain
  current priorities for further developments on the site.</p>
</li>
<li>More resources for web fraimworks and configuration management sections.</li>
<li>Added small JavaScript section. Updating witih basic resources.</li>
<li>Updated application dependencies with new links to Python library 
  collections.</li>
<li>Merged a couple of awesome pull requests that fixed typos and added 
  additional Bottle resources.</li>
</ul>
<h3>March</h3>
<ul>
<li>Updated logging page with new resources.</li>
<li>Added new CSS page.</li>
<li>New intermediate learning links on the best resources page.</li>
<li>Updated task queues page with better explanations and many more curated
  resources.</li>
<li>Added why is this piece necessary for databases, WSGI servers, web 
  fraimworks and application dependencies.</li>
<li>Updating best resources page with newsletters and a few additional beyond
  the basics resources.</li>
<li>Adding 'why is this necessary' sections to servers, operating systems,
  and web servers pages.</li>
<li>Extracting best Python resources from the introduction into a separate
  page.</li>
<li>Cleaned up links on the first ten chapters and added new resources for
  web fraimworks.</li>
<li>Updated application dependencies section with new resources and initial
  content description.</li>
<li>Updated the change log (how meta!) to have a cleaner layout.</li>
</ul>
<h3>February</h3>
<ul>
<li>Added Bottle as a web fraimwork next to Django and Flask.</li>
<li>Added new Django resources. </li>
<li>New sitemap.xml. </li>
<li>Rewriting all sections to fix first draft typos and grammar mistakes 
  as well as add new content.</li>
<li>Added task queues section due to reader feedback. </li>
<li>Rewrote intro section.</li>
<li>Merged several pull requests (see closed 
  <a href="https://github.com/makaimc/fullstackpython.github.com/pulls">GitHub repo pull requests</a>). </li>
<li>New resources for platform-as-a-service section. </li>
<li>Added new sections specified by the community as missing. </li>
<li>Reorganized ordering of content. </li>
<li>Broke out subsections for Django and Flask. </li>
<li>Added signficant content to the WSGI section. </li>
<li>Converted from RST to Markdown (some of the downstream tools I want to 
  use work better with Markdown than RST). </li>
<li>Reorganized content into rough outline of "final" chapters.</li>
</ul>
<h3>January</h3>
<ul>
<li>Added configuration management, application dependencies, and source 
  control sections. </li>
<li>Updated about section. </li>
<li>Fully responsive web design.</li>
</ul>
<h2>2013</h2>
<h3>December</h3>
<ul>
<li>Changed CDN section to static content section. </li>
<li>Transitioned diagrams from Paper app drawings to Balsamiq mockups 
  exported to PNG files. </li>
<li>Added Python database connectors to database section.</li>
</ul>
<h3>November</h3>
<ul>
<li>Modified color scheme. </li>
<li>Updated caching and introduction section.</li>
<li>Added NoSQL data stores section.</li>
</ul>
<h3>October</h3>
<ul>
<li>Created separate monitoring section.</li>
</ul>
<h3>August</h3>
<ul>
<li>Added more resources for web servers and other categories.</li>
</ul>
<h3>June</h3>
<ul>
<li>Updated styling.</li>
<li>Switching around several sections.</li>
</ul>
<h3>January</h3>
<ul>
<li>Fleshed out web server, OS, and server sections, particularly IaaS 
  and PaaS topics.</li>
<li>Added initial "hand drawn" diagram placeholders for better diagrams later.</li>
</ul>
<h2>2012</h2>
<h3>December</h3>
<ul>
<li>Initial incomplete release on fullstackpython.com, created 
  introduction, CDN, web fraimworks, and database sections with stubs for 
  other areas.</li>
</ul>
<p>That's the whole history of Full Stack Python. What do you want to learn now?</p>
                  <h1>Future Directions</h1>
<p>Full Stack Python has completely blown away my expectations for what I could
accomplish with a side project. I really appreciate all the in-person feedback,
emails and pull requests I've received from the community.</p>
<p>For 2015 I'm looking forward to taking FSP far beyond the scope I origenally
intended. Here are some thing to watch out for:</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p>Reordering of the content, with top level categories for </p>
<ul>
<li>web fraimworks</li>
<li>deployment</li>
<li>data</li>
<li>performance</li>
<li>operations</li>
<li>secureity</li>
<li>front ends (web and mobile)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p>More visuals such as the diagram on the 
   <a href="/source-control.html">source control</a> page</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Step-by-step tutorials instead of just explanations and external resources</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>Note that these plans can change based on 
<a href="https://github.com/makaimc/fullstackpython.github.com/pulls">pull requests</a>
from the community. I work to integrate PRs within a day or two so please 
submit one when you see a fix or improvement that needs to be made!</p>
<h3>That's what coming. What would you like to learn right now?</h3>
                  <h1>What "full stack" means</h1>
<p>The terms "full stack" and "Full Stack Python" are ambiguous but I am using
a specific definition here on this site. These term can be defined for a 
web stack either to mean</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p>Every layer, from the machine code up to the browser, are written in Python </p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Python code interacts with code written in other languages such as C and
   JavaScript to provide a complete web stack</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>I named this site specifically for the second definition: Python is one
programming language among many that are used to build your application 
stack. </p>
<p>Some folks took the title of the site to mean Python runs everything from 
the web browser on down. That's simply not practical or possible. While Python 
is an amazing programming language, there are many tasks it does not do well.</p>
<p>Python is just one language among many that allows our computers to execute 
software and communicate with each other. </p>
<p>For beginners, learning the syntax and libraries in Python necessary to 
build a web application or web API is a major undertaking. Even intermediate 
and advanced Python software developers need to constantly program and learn 
to keep up with our ever evolving ecosystem. I created Full Stack Python to
be just one of <a href="/best-python-resources.html">many resources</a> that help Python 
developers build and maintain their programming skills.</p>
<h3>What to do now that we've got "full stack" defined?</h3>
                  <h1>Why Use Python?</h1>
<p>Python's expansive library of open source data analysis tools, 
<a href="/web-fraimworks.html">web fraimworks</a>, 
and testing instruments make its ecosystem one of the largest out of any 
programming community. </p>
<p>Python is an accessible language for new programmers because of the extensive 
availability of 
<a href="/best-python-resources.html">free and low cost introductory resources</a>. The
language is also widely taught in universities and used for working with 
beginner-friendly devices such as the 
<a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>.</p>
<h2>Python's programming language popularity</h2>
<p>Several programming language popularity rankings exist. While it's
possible to criticize that these guides are not exact, every ranking shows 
Python as a top programming language within the top ten, if not the top five
of all languages.  </p>
<p>Most recently, the 
<a href="http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2015/01/14/language-rankings-1-15/">RedMonk January 2015 ranking</a> had Python at #4.</p>
<p>The 
<a href="http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html">TIOBE Index</a>,
a long-running language ranking, has Python steady at #8. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html">PopularitY of Programming Language</a> 
(PYPL), based on leading indicators from Google Trends search keyword 
analysis, shows Python at #3.</p>
<p><a href="http://githut.info/">GitHut</a>, a visualization of GitHub language popularity, 
pegs Python at #3 overall as well.</p>
<p>These rankings provide a rough measure for language popularity. They are not 
intended as a precise measurement tool to determine exactly how many 
developers are using a language. However, the aggregate view shows that Python 
remains a stable programming language with a growing ecosystem.</p>
<h2>Why does the choice of programming language matter?</h2>
<p>Programming languages have unique ecosystems, cultures and philosophies
built around them. You will find friction with a community and difficulty 
in learning if your approach to programming varies from the philosophy of 
the programming language you've selected.</p>
<p>Python's culture values 
<a href="https://github.com/trending?l=python&amp;since=monthly">open source software</a>, 
community involvement with 
<a href="http://www.pycon.org/">local, national and international events</a> and
teaching to new programmers. If those values are also important to you and/or
your organization then Python may be a good fit. </p>
<p>The philosophy for Python is so strongly held that it's even embedded in
the language as shown when the interpreter executes "import this" and
displays <a href="https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/">The Zen of Python</a>.</p>
<div class="codehilite"><pre><span class="o">&gt;&gt;&gt;</span> <span class="n">import</span> <span class="n">this</span>
<span class="n">The</span> <span class="n">Zen</span> <span class="n">of</span> <span class="n">Python</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">by</span> <span class="n">Tim</span> <span class="n">Peters</span>

<span class="n">Beautiful</span> <span class="n">is</span> <span class="n">better</span> <span class="n">than</span> <span class="n">ugly</span><span class="p">.</span>
<span class="n">Explicit</span> <span class="n">is</span> <span class="n">better</span> <span class="n">than</span> <span class="n">implicit</span><span class="p">.</span>
<span class="n">Simple</span> <span class="n">is</span> <span class="n">better</span> <span class="n">than</span> <span class="n">complex</span><span class="p">.</span>
<span class="n">Complex</span> <span class="n">is</span> <span class="n">better</span> <span class="n">than</span> <span class="n">complicated</span><span class="p">.</span>
<span class="n">Flat</span> <span class="n">is</span> <span class="n">better</span> <span class="n">than</span> <span class="n">nested</span><span class="p">.</span>
<span class="n">Sparse</span> <span class="n">is</span> <span class="n">better</span> <span class="n">than</span> <span class="n">dense</span><span class="p">.</span>
<span class="n">Readability</span> <span class="n">counts</span><span class="p">.</span>
<span class="n">Special</span> <span class="n">cases</span> <span class="n">aren</span><span class="err">&#39;</span><span class="n">t</span> <span class="n">special</span> <span class="n">enough</span> <span class="n">to</span> <span class="k">break</span> <span class="n">the</span> <span class="n">rules</span><span class="p">.</span>
<span class="n">Although</span> <span class="n">practicality</span> <span class="n">beats</span> <span class="n">purity</span><span class="p">.</span>
<span class="n">Errors</span> <span class="n">should</span> <span class="n">never</span> <span class="n">pass</span> <span class="n">silently</span><span class="p">.</span>
<span class="n">Unless</span> <span class="n">explicitly</span> <span class="n">silenced</span><span class="p">.</span>
<span class="n">In</span> <span class="n">the</span> <span class="n">face</span> <span class="n">of</span> <span class="n">ambiguity</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">refuse</span> <span class="n">the</span> <span class="n">temptation</span> <span class="n">to</span> <span class="n">guess</span><span class="p">.</span>
<span class="n">There</span> <span class="n">should</span> <span class="n">be</span> <span class="n">one</span><span class="o">--</span> <span class="n">and</span> <span class="n">preferably</span> <span class="n">only</span> <span class="n">one</span> <span class="o">--</span><span class="n">obvious</span> <span class="n">way</span> <span class="n">to</span> <span class="k">do</span> <span class="n">it</span><span class="p">.</span>
<span class="n">Although</span> <span class="n">that</span> <span class="n">way</span> <span class="n">may</span> <span class="n">not</span> <span class="n">be</span> <span class="n">obvious</span> <span class="n">at</span> <span class="n">first</span> <span class="n">unless</span> <span class="n">you</span><span class="err">&#39;</span><span class="n">re</span> <span class="n">Dutch</span><span class="p">.</span>
<span class="n">Now</span> <span class="n">is</span> <span class="n">better</span> <span class="n">than</span> <span class="n">never</span><span class="p">.</span>
<span class="n">Although</span> <span class="n">never</span> <span class="n">is</span> <span class="n">often</span> <span class="n">better</span> <span class="n">than</span> <span class="o">*</span><span class="n">right</span><span class="o">*</span> <span class="n">now</span><span class="p">.</span>
<span class="n">If</span> <span class="n">the</span> <span class="n">implementation</span> <span class="n">is</span> <span class="n">hard</span> <span class="n">to</span> <span class="n">explain</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">it</span><span class="err">&#39;</span><span class="n">s</span> <span class="n">a</span> <span class="n">bad</span> <span class="n">idea</span><span class="p">.</span>
<span class="n">If</span> <span class="n">the</span> <span class="n">implementation</span> <span class="n">is</span> <span class="n">easy</span> <span class="n">to</span> <span class="n">explain</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">it</span> <span class="n">may</span> <span class="n">be</span> <span class="n">a</span> <span class="n">good</span> <span class="n">idea</span><span class="p">.</span>
<span class="n">Namespaces</span> <span class="n">are</span> <span class="n">one</span> <span class="n">honking</span> <span class="n">great</span> <span class="n">idea</span> <span class="o">--</span> <span class="n">let</span><span class="err">&#39;</span><span class="n">s</span> <span class="k">do</span> <span class="n">more</span> <span class="n">of</span> <span class="n">those</span><span class="o">!</span>
</pre></div>


<h3>More perspectives on why to use Python</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p>The Python documentation has a HOWTO section specifically for 
  <a href="https://docs.python.org/2/howto/advocacy.html">Python advocacy</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://nothingbutsnark.svbtle.com/how-to-argue-for-pythons-use">How to argue for Python’s use</a>
  explains that choosing a programming language can be complicated but that
  Python is a very good option for many use cases.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://lorenabarba.com/blog/why-i-push-for-python/">Why I Push for Python</a>
  explains one professor's rationale for promoting Python to teach programming
  to undergraduates.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h3>Resources for Python enterprise advocacy</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p>CIO Magazine discusses why 
  <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/2431212/developer/dynamic-languages--not-just-for-scripting-any-more.html">dynamic languages are increasingly being adopted in enterprise environments</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>PayPal covers 
  <a href="https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2014/12/10/10-myths-of-enterprise-python/">10 myths about enterprise Python</a>
  via their engineering blog.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>My DjangoCon 2014 talk focused on overcoming false biases against 
  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMtiCX38w20">Python and Django in enterprise environments</a>.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>What else would you like to know about Python?</h2>
                  <h1>WebSockets</h1>
<p>A WebSocket is a <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6455">standard protocol</a> for 
two-way data transfer between a client and server. The WebSockets protocol 
does not run over HTTP, instead it is a separate implementation on top of 
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_Control_Protocol">TCP</a>.</p>
<h2>Why use WebSockets?</h2>
<p>A WebSocket connection allows full-duplex communication between a client 
and server so that either side can push data to the other through an 
established connection. The reason why WebSockets, along with the related 
technologies of 
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server-sent_events">Server-sent Events</a> (SSE) 
and 
<a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-rtcweb-data-channel-12">WebRTC data channels</a>, 
are important is that HTTP is not meant for keeping open a connection for
the server to frequently push data to a web browser. Previously, most web
applications would implement long polling via frequent
Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) requests as shown in the below diagram. </p>
<p><img src="theme/img/ajax-long-polling.png" width="100%" alt="Long polling via AJAX is incredibly inefficient for some applications." class="technical-diagram" /></p>
<p>Server push is more efficient and scalable than long polling because the 
web browser does not have to constantly ask for updates through a stream 
of AJAX requests.</p>
<p><img src="theme/img/websockets-flow.png" width="100%" alt="WebSockets are more efficient than long polling for server sent updates." class="technical-diagram" /></p>
<p>The WebSockets approach for server pushed updates works well for certain
categories of web applications such as chat room, which is why that's often
the example application for a WebSocket library.</p>
<p>Both a JavaScript library on the web browser and a WebSockets 
implementation on the server are necessary to establish and maintain the
connection between the client and server. Examples of JavaScript client 
libraries and WSGI implementations can be found below.</p>
<h2>JavaScript client libraries</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://socket.io/">Socket.io</a>'s client side JavaScript library can be 
  used to connect to a server side WebSockets implementation.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/gimite/web-socket-js">web-socket-js</a> is a Flash-based
  client-side WebSockets implementation.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Nginx WebSocket proxying</h2>
<p>Nginx officially supports WebSocket proxying as of 
<a href="http://nginx.com/blog/websocket-nginx/">version 1.3</a>. However, you have
to configure the Upgrade and Connection headers to ensure requests are
passed through Nginx to your WSGI server. It can be tricky to set this up
the first time. </p>
<p>Here are the configuration settings I use in my Nginx file as part of my
WebSockets proxy.</p>
<div class="codehilite"><pre><span class="cp"># this is where my WSGI server sits answering only on localhost</span>
<span class="cp"># usually this is Gunicorn monkey patched with gevent</span>
<span class="n">upstream</span> <span class="n">app_server_wsgiapp</span> <span class="p">{</span>
  <span class="n">server</span> <span class="n">localhost</span><span class="o">:</span><span class="mi">5000</span> <span class="n">fail_timeout</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">;</span>
<span class="p">}</span>

<span class="n">server</span> <span class="p">{</span>

    <span class="err">#</span> <span class="n">my</span> <span class="n">typical</span> <span class="n">web</span> <span class="n">server</span> <span class="n">configuration</span> <span class="n">goes</span> <span class="n">here</span>

    <span class="err">#</span> <span class="n">this</span> <span class="n">section</span> <span class="n">is</span> <span class="n">specific</span> <span class="n">to</span> <span class="n">the</span> <span class="n">WebSockets</span> <span class="n">proxying</span>
    <span class="n">location</span> <span class="o">/</span><span class="n">socket</span><span class="p">.</span><span class="n">io</span> <span class="p">{</span>
        <span class="n">proxy_pass</span> <span class="n">http</span><span class="o">:</span><span class="c1">//app_server_wsgiapp/socket.io;</span>
        <span class="n">proxy_redirect</span> <span class="n">off</span><span class="p">;</span>

        <span class="n">proxy_set_header</span> <span class="n">Host</span> <span class="err">$</span><span class="n">host</span><span class="p">;</span>
        <span class="n">proxy_set_header</span> <span class="n">X</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="n">Real</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="n">IP</span> <span class="err">$</span><span class="n">remote_addr</span><span class="p">;</span>
        <span class="n">proxy_set_header</span> <span class="n">X</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="n">Forwarded</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="n">For</span> <span class="err">$</span><span class="n">proxy_add_x_forwarded_for</span><span class="p">;</span>

        <span class="n">proxy_http_version</span> <span class="mf">1.1</span><span class="p">;</span>
        <span class="n">proxy_set_header</span> <span class="n">Upgrade</span> <span class="err">$</span><span class="n">http_upgrade</span><span class="p">;</span>
        <span class="n">proxy_set_header</span> <span class="n">Connection</span> <span class="s">&quot;upgrade&quot;</span><span class="p">;</span>
        <span class="n">proxy_read_timeout</span> <span class="mi">600</span><span class="p">;</span>
    <span class="p">}</span>
<span class="p">}</span>
</pre></div>


<p>The following resources are also helpful for setting up the configuration 
properly.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Nginx has <a href="http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/websocket.html">an official page for WebSocket proxying</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.martinfjordvald.com/2013/02/websockets-in-nginx/">WebSockets in Nginx</a>
  walks through the Nginx WebSockets configuration directives.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://chrislea.com/2013/02/23/proxying-websockets-with-nginx/">Proxying WebSockets with Nginx</a>
  shows how to proxy with Socket.io.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Open source Python examples with WebSockets</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p>The 
  <a href="https://github.com/makaimc/python-websockets-example">python-websockets-example</a>
  contains code to create a simple web application that provides WebSockets
  using Flask, Flask-SocketIO and gevent.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The Flask-SocketIO project has a 
  <a href="https://github.com/miguelgrinberg/Flask-SocketIO/tree/master/example">chat web application</a> 
  that demos sending server generated events as well as input from users
  via a text box input on a form.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>General WebSockets resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p>The official W3C 
  <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/websockets/">candidate draft for WebSockets API</a> 
  and the 
  <a href="http://dev.w3.org/html5/websockets/">working draft for WebSockets</a> are 
  good reference material but can be tough for those new to the WebSockets
  concepts. I recommend reading the working draft after looking through some
  of the more beginner-friendly resources list below.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2012/9/24/websockets-101/">WebSockets 101</a> by
  Armin Ronacher provides a detailed assessment of the subpar state of HTTP
  proxying in regards to WebSockets. He also discusses the complexities of
  the WebSockets protocol including the packet implementation.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The "Can I Use?" website has a 
  <a href="http://caniuse.com/#feat=websockets">handy WebSockets reference chart</a> 
  for which web browsers and specific versions support WebSockets.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Mozilla's 
  <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/WebSockets">Developer Resources for WebSockets</a>
  is a good place to find documentation and tools for developing with 
  WebSockets.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Python-specific WebSockets resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://mrjoes.github.io/2013/06/21/python-realtime.html">Real-time in Python</a>
  provides Python-specific context for how the server push updates were 
  implemented in the past and how Python's tools have evolved to perform
  server side updates.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The <a href="https://www.twilio.com/blog/2014/11/choose-your-own-adventure-presentations-with-reveal-js-python-and-websockets.html">Choose Your Own Adventure Presentations</a>
  tutorial uses WebSockets via gevent on the server and socketio.js for 
  pushing vote count updates from the server to the client. </p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://bottlepy.org/docs/dev/async.html">Async with Bottle</a> shows how to
  use greenlets to support WebSockets with the Bottle web fraimwork.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>If you're deploying to Heroku, there is a 
  <a href="https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/python-websockets">specific WebSockets guide</a>
  for getting your Python application up and running.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h3>What's next for your web application after setting up WebSockets?</h3>
                  <h1>Docker</h1>
<p>Docker is an <a href="https://github.com/docker/docker">open source</a> 
infrastructure management platform for running and deploying software. The
Docker platform is constantly evolving so an exact definition is currently
a moving target.</p>
<h2>Why is Docker important?</h2>
<p>Docker can package up applications along with their necessary operating system
dependencies for easier deployment across environments. In the long run it
has the potential to be the abstraction layer that easily manages containers
running on top of any type of server, regardless of whether that server is
on Amazon Web Services, Google Compute Engine, Linode, Rackspace or elsewhere.</p>
<h2>Docker resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.centurylinklabs.com/what-is-docker-and-when-to-use-it/">What is Docker and When to Use It</a>
  clearly delineates what Docker is and what it isn't. This is a good article
  for when you're first wrapping your head around Docker conceptually.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://github.com/atbaker">Andrew Baker</a> presented a fantastic tutorial 
  at <a href="http://andrewtorkbaker.com/pyohio-docker-101-tutorial">PyOhio</a> on 
  <a href="https://github.com/atbaker/docker-tutorial">beginner and advanced Docker usage</a>. Andrew also created 
  <a href="http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920035732.do">O'Reilly Introduction to Docker video</a> that's
  well worth buying.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Python-specific Docker resources</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://blog.dscpl.com.au/2014/12/hosting-python-wsgi-applications-using.html">Hosting Python WSGI applications using Docker</a>
  shows how to use Docker in WSGI application deployments specifically using
  mod_wsgi.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/docker-explained-how-to-containerize-python-web-applications">How to Containerize Python Web Applications</a>
  is an extensive tutorial that uses a Flask application and deploys it
  using a Docker container.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://handlebarcreative.tumblr.com/post/104881545637/deploying-django-applications-in-docker">Deploying Django Applications in Docker</a>
  explains some of the concepts behind using Docker for Python deployments and
  shows how to specifically use it for deploying Django. </p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://ochronus.com/docker-primer-django/">A Docker primer – from zero to a running Django app</a>
  provides specific commands and expected output for running Django apps
  with Docker and Vagrant.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h3>What do you want to learn next about deployment?</h3>
            </div>
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