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 0.1.105

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 0.1.105
File	Size	Uploaded
front-0.1.105.tar.gz	268.8 kB	Oct 13, 2026	Details

Built distribution (wheel)

Table of built distributions (wheels) for front 0.1.105
File	Interpreter	ABI	Platform	Reset
front-0.1.105-py3-none-any.whl 280.8 kB Oct 13, 2026	Python 3	none	any	Details

Total release size: 549.6 kB

Release files / front-0.1.105.tar.gz

Download URL	front-0.1.105.tar.gz
Size	268.8 kB
Tags	Source
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`91f1c0e9c3028e87877d170984dfdc5cb6fb3d947a764f3ac547451e9d5d8c5b`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`090d4beccc24a926635c7d4ba50e4ec035af700f7cc80122b0a2d96460f331ea`
Upload date	Oct 13, 2026
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`uv/0.13.0 {"installer":{"name":"uv","version":"0.13.0","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-0.1.105-py3-none-any.whl

Download URL	front-0.1.105-py3-none-any.whl
Size	280.8 kB
Tags	Python 3
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`d8b7f9f5cba53901bf15dd1a50db577974c054e1516de6bd586d424d5c4e195f`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`9ebecdf751b350723b1d86ac5eb2c31b49b317e53f43524c741f6064d47e5f0b`
Upload date	Oct 13, 2026
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`uv/0.13.0 {"installer":{"name":"uv","version":"0.13.0","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}`