artless-core 0.3.1

The artless and minimalistic web library for creating small applications or APIs.

artless-core

The artless and minimalistic library for creating small web applications or APIs.

Motivation

An extremely minimalistic framework was needed to create the same minimalistic applications. Those "micro" frameworks like Flask, Pyramid, CherryPie, etc - turned out to be not micro at all). Even a single-module Bottle turned out to be a "monster" of 4 thousand LOC and supporting compatibility with version 2.7.

Therefore, it was decided to sketch out our own simple, minimally necessary implementation of the WSGI and ASGI library for creating small/simple web app.

Main principles

1. Artless, fast and small (less then 500 LOC) single-module package.
2. No third party dependencies (standart library only).
3. Support only modern versions of Python (>=3.11).
4. Mostly pure functions without side effects.
5. Interfaces with type annotations.
6. Comprehensive documentation with examples of use.
7. Full test coverage.

Limitations

• No WebSocket support.
• No Cookies support.
• No multipart/form-data support.
• No builtin models, ORM, template engine, form serialisation and other.
• No built-in protections, such as: CSRF, XSS, clickjacking and other.

Installation

$ pip install artless-core

Getting Started

WSGI application

from artless import WSGIApp, Request, Response, plain


def say_hello(request: Request, name: str) -> Response:
    return plain(f"Hello, {name}!")


def create_application() -> WSGIApp:
    app = WSGIApp()
    app.set_routes([("GET", r"^/hello/(?P<name>\w+)$", say_hello)])
    return app


application = create_application()

Run it with eny asgi server, uvicorn for example:

$ gunicorn app
[2025-01-11 16:34:19 +0300] [62111] [INFO] Starting gunicorn 23.0.0
[2025-01-11 16:34:19 +0300] [62111] [INFO] Listening at: http://127.0.0.1:8000 (62111)
[2025-01-11 16:34:19 +0300] [62111] [INFO] Using worker: sync
[2025-01-11 16:34:19 +0300] [62155] [INFO] Booting worker with pid: 62155

Check it:

$ curl http://127.0.0.1:8000/hello/Bro
Hello, Bro!

Need more? See documentation and wsgi examples.

ASGI application

from artless import ASGIApp, Request, Response, plain


async def say_hello(request: Request, name: str) -> Response:
    return plain(f"Hello, {name}!")


def create_application() -> ASGIApp:
    app = ASGIApp()
    app.set_routes([("GET", r"^/hello/(?P<name>\w+)$", say_hello)])
    return app


application = create_application()

Run it:

$ uvicorn app:application
INFO:     Started server process [62683]
INFO:     Waiting for application startup.
INFO:     ASGI 'lifespan' protocol appears unsupported.
INFO:     Application startup complete.
INFO:     Uvicorn running on http://127.0.0.1:8000 (Press CTRL+C to quit)

Check it:

$ curl http://127.0.0.1:8000/hello/Bro
Hello, Bro!

Need more? See documentation and asgi examples.

Benchmarks results

See more details in benchmarks/README.md.

WSGI (single worker)

Framework	RPS (mean)
Falcon	1794.59
Artless	1782.67
Bottle	1646.37
Flask	1468.70
Django	1359.61

WSGI (multiple workers)

Framework	RPS (mean)
Falcon	3437.07
Artless	3414.04
Bottle	3331.41
Flask	2974.08
Django	1701.12

ASGI (single worker)

Framework	RPS (mean)
Blacksheep	3456.86
Falcon	3338.41
Artless	3320.35
FastAPI	2191.76
Django	1160.94
Flask	777.81

ASGI multiple workers plaintext response

Framework	RPS (mean)
Falcon	5393.27
Blacksheep	5382.32
Artless	5332.50
FastAPI	3594.12
Django	2050.55
Flask	1627.59

Roadmap

• Add Async/ASGI support.
• Add plugins support.
• Add test client.
• Add benchmarks.
• Add more examples.
• Add Sphinx doc.

Related projects

• artless-template - the artless and small template library for server-side rendering.