Diving deep into Django vs FastAPI. What's your favorite Python Web Framework?

Introduction

If you’re new to web development and have only recently heard of “Frameworks” as a method of speeding up your application development, then you’re in the right place. Today, we’ll explore the two most popular web frameworks in the Python ecosystem currently, namely Django and FastAPI.

In this blog post, we’ll help you understand which framework is best for you in terms of business requirements, learning curve, complexity, speed, support, and more.

Django

Django is a high-level web framework for building web applications in Python. It follows the model-view-controller (MVC) architectural pattern, emphasizing reusability, pluggability, and rapid development. Django provides a range of built-in features, such as an object-relational mapping (ORM) system for database interactions, an admin panel for managing content, and a templating engine for designing user interfaces. It aims to simplify the development process by promoting a clean and pragmatic coding style, allowing developers to focus on building robust and scalable web applications.
For a more comprehensive understanding of Django, see this dedicated blog post.

Architecture

Django follows the MVT pattern, which stands for model, view, and template.

Model: A model is defined as the exclusive and authoritative repository of knowledge pertaining to your data. Models, in essence, are Python entities that offer functionalities for administering (creating, reading, updating, and deleting) and querying records within the database. Each attribute from the model represents a database field.

An example from the official Django documentation:

Reference: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.2/topics/db/models/

View: A view serves as a request-handling function that takes an HTTP request, processes it by executing business logic, accesses data models directly or through ORMs, and ultimately sends the resulting HTTP response to be rendered in the user interface via templates.

Template: Django templates help you to design the structure and layout of your website by combining HTML with special tags and variables. These tags and variables are placeholders that Django fills in with actual content when a user views your web page. As such, a Django template makes creating dynamic and personalized web pages easier by allowing you to reuse and customize the overall design.

URLs: While processing requests from every single URL via a single function is possible, it is much more efficient to write a separate view function to handle each resource. A URL mapper is used to redirect HTTP requests to the appropriate view based on the request URL. The URL mapper can also match particular patterns of strings or digits that appear in a URL and pass these to a view function as data.

Benefits of Django

Velocity in action

Django was created to enable rapid application prototyping and facilitate a fast feedback loop.

Packed to perfection

Django provides out-of-the-box support for everything, offering a rich set of built-in features for handling development operations. The most powerful part of Django is the Admin interface, which automatically generates production-ready UIs from database models.

Ironclad confidence

Django offers built-in, fortified security measures, including safeguards against SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), CSRF forgery, and a robust authentication system.

Trusted by titans

It may come as a surprise, but industry giants like Instagram, Spotify, Mozilla, National Geographic, and numerous others place their trust in Django.

Crafting a myriad of apps, from social to commerce and beyond

Django is an excellent choice for building applications like content management systems (CMS), e-commerce platforms, or social media applications. Many developers have also leveraged Django to create multi-tenant applications as well.

Django’s design philosophies

These fundamental philosophies have served as guiding principles throughout the framework’s development process.

Loose coupling

One of the core principles underlying Django’s architecture is maintaining a balance between minimal interdependence and strong internal unity. The different components within the framework should only have knowledge of each other when this is absolutely essential. 

Less code

Django applications promote code simplicity by minimizing unnecessary code and eliminating boilerplate whenever possible. Django is designed to harness Python’s dynamic features, including introspection, to their fullest extent.

Quick development

Django enables swift web development by expediting laborious tasks. Django facilitates rapid development through its high-level abstractions and built-in features, streamlining common web development tasks.

“Don’t repeat yourself” (DRY)

Each unique concept or piece of data should exist in a single, exclusive location. Redundancy is undesirable, while normalization is favorable.

To a reasonable extent, the framework should extract as much information as it can from minimal input.

Explicit is better than implicit

In Python, there’s a basic idea mentioned in PEP 20. It advises that when using Django, a tool for making web apps, we should keep “magic” to a minimum. Magic in programming means making things work automatically without showing how they work. We should only use this kind of magic for simplifying our work. However, we need to ensure that this magic doesn’t make Django confusing for those beginners trying to learn the framwork.

Consistency

Consistency within the framework should be maintained across all levels, encompassing aspects ranging from the low level, such as adhering to a consistent Python coding style, to the high level, including the overall user experience when working with Django.

How to install Django

1. First, we are going to create a virtual environment. For our example, we are going to create a Python virtual environment and name it DjangoEnv.

Once successfully created, we will activate the virtual environment.

2. Run the following command to install the Django

pip install Django

3. We are going to create a new Django project and name it mysite.

4. Once the project is created successfully, move inside the project directory and run the following command:

python manage.py runserver

5. Visit http://localhost:8000, where you will see the Django landing page.