Django vs Flask: Which is the best for your Web Application?

If you are into Python Web development, then you certainly might have heard of two frameworks such as Django and Flask. But if you are confused about which one to choose for your web application, then your confusion will surely end after reading this blog on Django Vs Flask. The pointers that I am going to cover here are as follows:

• What is Django?
• What is Flask?
• Django Vs Flask
• Conclusion

Alright then, let us get started with our first topic.

Django

Django is a full-stack and a high-level Python-based Web framework. It encourages rapid development and clean and pragmatic design. Django has been built by experienced developers and it elegantly handles much of the hassle of Web development. This is done so that you can focus on writing your app without needing to reinvent the wheel. On top of that it’s free and an open-source framework.

Flask

Flask is a lightweight WSGI (Web Server Gateway Interface) web application micro-framework. It has been designed to help you get started quickly and easily with web development. Also, it provides the ability to scale up to complex applications. Initially, it started as a simple wrapper around Werkzeug and Jinja and now it has become one of the most popular Python web application frameworks.

Django Vs Flask

Type of Framework

Django is a type of Full Stack framework whereas Flask falls under the category of Micro framework.

Database

If your application needs SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL, or Oracle, you should prefer using Django. On the other hand, if you’re using NoSQL or no database at all, then Flask is a better choice.

Project Size

Flask is convenient for smaller, less-complicated projects that have well-defined scopes and shorter anticipated lifetimes. Since Django forces a consistent application structure irrespective of the size of the project nearly all Django projects have a similar structure. Thus, Django is better suited for handling larger projects with larger teams that have longer lifetimes and potential for a lot of growth.

Project layout

Django uses a conventional project structure whereas Flask uses arbitrary project structure.

Application Type 

Django is too good at creating full-featured web applications with server-side templating. If you just want a static web site or RESTful web service that feeds your SPA or mobile application, Flask is a preferred choice. Django along with Django REST Framework works well in the latter case too.

RESTful API

Django REST Framework (DRF), one of the most popular third-party Django packages, is a framework used to expose Django models through a RESTful interface. It includes everything you need (views, serializers, validation, auth) and more (browsable API, versioning, caching) for building APIs quickly and easily. Flask has a number of great extensions as well such as Flask-RESTful, Flask-Classful, Flask-RESTPlus for Views, Flask-Marshmallow for Serialization, Flask-JWT, Flask-JWT-Extended for Authentication.

Performance

Flask performs slightly better than Django because it has smaller and has fewer layers. The difference is negligible though, especially when you take I/O into account.

Companies using them

Following are the Companies that use Django:

Following are the Companies that use Flask:

Conclusion

So, which framework should you use? Well to be precise, it depends. The decision to go with a particular framework or language or tool over another depends almost entirely on the context and problem at hand.

Django is full-featured and hence it requires fewer decisions to be made by you or your team. You can probably move faster that way. However, if you are not satisfied with one of the choices that Django makes for you or you have unique application requirements that limit the number of features you can take advantage of, you may have a look at Flask as well.

There’s always going to be tradeoffs and compromises. Finally, both frameworks have lowered the barrier to entry for building web applications, making them much easier and quicker to develop.

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