spiderweb-framework 2.2.0

A small web framework, just big enough for a spider.

spiderweb

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-framework

Create 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()

View the docs here!

Development (using uv)

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 . and uv run black .

My goal with this framework was to do three things:

1. Learn a lot
2. Create an unholy blend of Django and Flask
3. 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)