Python Web Frameworks Overview: SkunkWeb

URL

http://skunkweb.sf.net

Licence

GPL - SkunkWeb is open source (more specifically "free software").

Deployment Platforms

• Integrated with the Apache Web server using the mod_skunkweb adapter or a CGI program which communicates with the SkunkWeb environment.
• SkunkWeb can be run as a standalone server instead, removing the need for Apache.
• The SkunkWeb environment is provided by long-running processes.

Operating Systems

SkunkWeb only works on UNIX platforms due to the use of "process forking".

Suitability

The requirement for Web server adapter integration, and then only with Apache, or the running of a standalone server, rules SkunkWeb out for more limited hosting environments. However, where such deployment is possible, the performance should be satisfactory, given that this is clearly a priority of the developers.

Development Interfaces

• Presentation-oriented - one of the stated benefits of SkunkWeb is the STML template language, which is extendable with Python-based service components (or "hooks").

Environment Access

• SkunkWeb uses plain text configuration files to specify resource locations.
• Additional functionality could be included in SkunkWeb applications using the Python module system - service components could import modules to access such functionality.

Session, Identification and Authentication

• SkunkWeb seems to support sessions, with both filesystem and SQL-based database system stores being provided.
• Some support seems to be present for obtaining HTTP basic authentication information from incoming HTTP requests.

Persistence Support

• SkunkWeb supports the PyDO object-relational mapper.
• Database connection pooling support appears to be implemented.

Presentation Support

• STML - a template language which uses special tags in order to control the final Web page output.

In the documentation, it is noted that other presentation systems could be developed for SkunkWeb.

Comments

The SkunkWeb archive package seems to contain documentation, but it exists principally in LaTeX format and does not seem to be built by default. The installation process is somewhat more involved than with other packages, but should be straightforward enough to anyone used to installing GNU autoconf-based packages.

The SkunkWeb developers emphasise performance and give caching, process forking and template precompilation as features which differentiate SkunkWeb from other frameworks and application servers; internationalisation using message catalogues is another feature which other frameworks do not provide or emphasise highly. Unlike many Python-based frameworks, SkunkWeb is licensed under the GPL and this may influence community participation in the enhancement of the framework - it is not appropriate to judge the licence choice in this document, however.