artless-core 0.4.0

The artless and ultralight web framework for building minimal APIs and apps.

artless-core

The artless and ultralight web framework for building minimal APIs and apps.

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 building simple APIs and apps.

Why artless-core?

• 🪶 Tiny: Single module, no dependencies, less then 500 LOC
• ⚡ Fast: Optimized pure Python with async support
• 🧩 Simple: Intuitive API with type hints
• ✅ Tested: 100% coverage
• 🐍 Modern: Python 3.11+ only

Quickstart

Installation

$ pip install artless-core

WSGI Example

from artless_core 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 with Gunicorn:

$ 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 wsgi examples.

ASGI Example

from artless_core 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 with Uvicorn:

$ 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 asgi examples.

Limitations

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

Benchmarks results

See more details in benchmarks/README.md.

WSGI application

Single worker:

Framework	RPS (mean)
Falcon	1839.46
Artless	1803.65
Bottle	1516.69
Flask	1549.90
Django	1386.77

Multiple workers:

Framework	RPS (mean)
Artless	3461.03
Falcon	3458.39
Bottle	3331.41
Flask	3018.25
Django	2240.39

ASGI application

Single worker:

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

Multiple workers:

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

Memory usage

WSGI application:

Patient	RSS Mem (MB)
Artless	10.668
Bottle	14.8164
Falcon	26.9219
Flask	31.6406
Django	43.5742

ASGI application:

Patient	RSS Mem (MB)
Artless	25.6797
Flask	34.1367
Falcon	35.2461
Blacksheep	40.4883
Django	47.0352
Fastapi	53.1992

Roadmap

• Add benchmarks.
• Add Async/ASGI support.
• Add plugins support.
• Add middlewares support.
• Add more complex examples.
• Add test clients (for WSGI and ASGI).

Related projects

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