Web Development Services

 

The previous articles showed you what communication between a web client and server looks like, the nature of HTTP requests and responses, and what a server-side application needs to do in order to respond to requests from a web browser. Armed with this knowledge, it's time to explore how a web framework simplifies these tasks, and tells you how to choose a framework for your first server-side application.

 

Pre-requirements: Basic computer literacy. Have a solid understanding of how server-side code processes and responds to HTTP requests. (see Client-Server overview)

Goals: To understand how web frameworks simplify the development and maintenance of server-side code, and to help readers think about how to choose a framework for their own Web Development projects.

The following sections illustrate some points by using some code snippets from web frameworks. Don't worry too much if you can't fully understand the code. Our "Framework Explained" module will help you fully understand.

 

Overview

Server-side frameworks (also known as "web application frameworks") make it easier to write, maintain, and extend web applications. They provide tools and libraries for simple, common development tasks, including routing processing, database interaction, session support and user authentication, formatted output (e.g. HTML, JSON, XML), and improved security against network attacks.

 

The next section will detail how web frameworks simplify web application development. Then, I'll explain some criteria for choosing a web framework and give you some options.

 

What can a web framework do for you?

You don't have to use a server-side web framework, but we strongly recommend you use one - frameworks make your life better.

 

In this section we talk about the features that web frameworks usually provide (not to say that every framework will provide all the features below!)

 

Directly handle HTTP requests and responses

We know from the previous article that web servers and browsers communicate via the HTTP protocol - the server waits for an HTTP request from the browser and returns relevant information in the HTTP response. Web frameworks allow you to write simple syntax code to generate code that handles these requests and responses. This means your work becomes easier, your interactions become easier, and you use abstract code instead of low-level code.