As a professional web developer focusing on arcane uses of Django for arcane purposes, it occurred to me a little while ago that I didn't actually know how a web framework worked.
So I built one.
spiderweb is a small web framework, just big enough to hold a spider. Getting started is easy:
uv add spiderweb-framework
# or
pip install spiderweb-frameworkCreate a new file and drop this in it:
from spiderweb import SpiderwebRouter
from spiderweb.response import HttpResponse
app = SpiderwebRouter()
@app.route("/")
def index(request):
return HttpResponse("HELLO, WORLD!")
if __name__ == "__main__":
app.start()This repository uses uv for local development and testing.
- Create a virtual environment:
uv venv - Activate it (Windows):
.venv\Scripts\activate - Activate it (POSIX):
source .venv/bin/activate - Install deps (editable + dev):
uv pip install -e .[dev] - Run tests:
uv run python -m pytest - Lint/format:
uv run ruff check .anduv run black .
My goal with this framework was to do three things:
- Learn a lot
- Create an unholy blend of Django and Flask
- Not look at any existing code. Go off of vibes alone and try to solve all the problems I could think of in my own way
And, honestly, I think I got there. Here's a non-exhaustive list of things this can do:
- Function-based views
- Optional Flask-style URL routing
- Optional Django-style URL routing
- URLs with variables in them a lá Django
- Full middleware implementation
- Limit routes by HTTP verbs
- Custom error routes
- Built-in dev server
- Gunicorn support
- HTML templates with Jinja2
- Static files support
- Cookies (reading and setting)
- Optional append_slash (with automatic redirects!)
- CSRF middleware
- CORS middleware
- Optional POST data validation middleware with Pydantic
- Session middleware with built-in session store
- Database support (using SQLAlchemy, but you can use whatever you want as long as there's a SQLAlchemy driver for it)
- Tests (currently roughly 89% coverage)