front

Compile a Python function's configuration into a runnable UI (web app, CLI, GUI...) without writing framework glue by hand.

To install: pip install front

Quick example

front itself is not a UI framework: it's the core library concrete front frameworks (e.g. streamlitfront) build on. A minimal in-memory framework, whose "app" is a container rendering each function's docstring:

from collections.abc import Callable
from front import SpecMakerBase, APP_KEY, OBJ_KEY, RENDERING_KEY, ELEMENT_KEY, AppMaker
from front.elements import FrontContainerBase, FrontComponentBase
from front.util import dflt_trans


class App(FrontContainerBase):
    def render(self):
        return {child.name: child() for child in self.children}


class Doc(FrontComponentBase):
    def render(self):
        return self.obj.__doc__


class SpecMaker(SpecMakerBase):
    @property
    def _dflt_convention(self):
        return {
            APP_KEY: {"title": "Untitled"},
            OBJ_KEY: {"trans": dflt_trans},
            RENDERING_KEY: {ELEMENT_KEY: App, Callable: {ELEMENT_KEY: Doc}},
        }


def foo(a, b):
    "Adds a and b."
    return a + b


app_maker = AppMaker(spec_maker_factory=SpecMaker)
app = app_maker.mk_app([foo], config={APP_KEY: {"title": "My App"}})
app.name
# 'My App'
app()
# {'foo': 'Adds a and b.'}

The three-step workflow

SpecMakerBase.mk_spec compiles a short-language configuration (plus a convention of defaults) into a long-language FrontSpec (app_spec, obj_spec, rendering_spec).
ElementTreeMaker.mk_tree builds a composite tree of FrontElementBase elements from the rendering spec: a root container (e.g. FrontContainerBase) with one child per object, built from FrontComponentBase/InputBase/OutputBase subclasses.
AppMaker.mk_app chains the two and returns the root element, callable as the app.

To implement a concrete front framework, subclass SpecMakerBase to supply the concrete element classes as the default convention, and hand it to AppMaker (see the example above, and streamlitfront for a real one).

Crudifying functions

Crudifier/prepare_for_crude_dispatch (in front.crude) let functions with complex arguments (objects that don't fit in a text box or URL) be dispatched through string keys into stores instead — the "CRUD-Execution" pattern. front.dag applies the same crudification to the variable nodes of a meshed DAG.

Docs

Rendered documentation · flat front.md for a single-file view.

For AI agents

front publishes its documentation in forms made for coding agents. If you are one, start here.

The documentation, machine-readable: llms.txt indexes every page; front.md is the whole documentation in one file; every page has a .md twin; objects.inv maps symbols to URLs.

If you are a control freak, the rest of this README is written for you, starting at the top of the page.

Metadata

Release files for front 0.1.103

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution (sdist)

Source distribution for front 0.1.103
File	Size	Uploaded
front-0.1.103.tar.gz	266.8 kB	Sep 22, 2026	Details

Built distribution (wheel)

Table of built distributions (wheels) for front 0.1.103
File	Interpreter	ABI	Platform	Reset
front-0.1.103-py3-none-any.whl 280.2 kB Sep 22, 2026	Python 3	none	any	Details

Total release size: 547.0 kB

Release files / front-0.1.103.tar.gz

Download URL	front-0.1.103.tar.gz
Size	266.8 kB
Tags	Source
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`56c95fb3d69fe3cecd303e92743871a908cc25ced4a596c7ab56f0883a23bcf7`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`2663a5a6fdce6084d16f278261a3607c724b30caa58a115214afa8a3ac3ff080`
Upload date	Sep 22, 2026
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`uv/0.12.17 {"installer":{"name":"uv","version":"0.12.17","subcommand":["publish"]},"python":null,"implementation":{"name":null,"version":null},"distro":{"name":"Ubuntu","version":"24.04","id":"noble","libc":null},"system":{"name":null,"release":null},"cpu":null,"openssl_version":null,"setuptools_version":null,"rustc_version":null,"ci":true}`

Release files / front-0.1.103-py3-none-any.whl

Download URL	front-0.1.103-py3-none-any.whl
Size	280.2 kB
Tags	Python 3
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`b420f39f4b10ebbc6de30db294f8d40c98c9d010c3acb3b4fd28c037ed1b320b`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`6a970ec7f696d14693dc0053c64a9cfe0411cbc45798b3b7f8df370536b43a54`
Upload date	Sep 22, 2026
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`uv/0.12.17 {"installer":{"name":"uv","version":"0.12.17","subcommand":["publish"]},"python":null,"implementation":{"name":null,"version":null},"distro":{"name":"Ubuntu","version":"24.04","id":"noble","libc":null},"system":{"name":null,"release":null},"cpu":null,"openssl_version":null,"setuptools_version":null,"rustc_version":null,"ci":true}`