A framework for WebProgramming.

Masthead

URL

http://aquarium.sourceforge.net

version

2.2.1 (Date(2005-04-21T00:00:00))

licence

Aquarium is open source software available under a BSD-style license.

platforms

Unix and probably Windows too

Python versions

Deployment Platforms

CGI, ModPython and custom python-based web servers are supported via Web Server Adaptor classes, as is its own Web server, Glass.

Suitability

Development Interfaces

Environment Access

Session, Identification and Authentication

Classes for session management are provided

Persistence Support

Provides a [http://aquarium.sourceforge.net/api/public/aquarium.database.DatabaseAssistant.DatabaseAssistant-class.html DatabaseAssistant] class that abstracts and assists in database connectivity using DBAPI modules

Presentation Support

Uses and tightly integrates [http://www.cheetahtemplate.org Cheetah] templating engine

InTheirOwnWords

Aquarium is a Web application framework, written in Python. It provides an approach to producing a Web application without duplication of effort by reducing the amount of code you need to write. It offers convenient libraries and extensible APIs for items such as session management and Web server integration (including CGI, mod_python, FastCGI, or its own Web server, Glass). It provides tight integration with Cheetah, including autocompilation of Cheetah templates. Last of all, it offers a convenient approach to Web development. As a developer, you just "plug in" modules; Aquarium ties them all together.

Aquarium's features were inspired by a broad range of Web technologies (such as PHP's [http://share.whichever.com/index.php?SCREEN=freetrade FreeTrade], Java's Struts, Perl's Mason, and Python's Zope). It is Open Source software, available under a BSD-style license. Aquarium is compact--just a few thousand lines of code--and extremely well documented. It's a useful tool for creating any highly-dynamic, custom Web application written in Python.

Aquarium is based around these ideas:

• Web applications can be thought of as a combination of a bunch of different types of modules. Aquarium serves as the framework for dynamically tying all of these modules together.
• The main request flow of an application involves a controller that does work and produces data. That data is passed off to a view that displays that data. See aquarium.screen.ScreenAPI for more on this.
• A view's superclass should take care of layout details automatically. In fact, a view should not need to do anything other than declare who it is subclassing (who you subclass and how many layers there are in the class hiearchy should not require you to change the name of your main method). See aquarium.layout.LayoutAPI for more on this.

Comments

As an MVC-based web framework, Aquarium bears at least a superficial resemblance to the [http://actionpack.rubyonrails.org/show/HomePage Action Pack] part of the [http://www.rubyonrails.org/show/HomePage Rails] framework. Aquarium's Screens correspond to Rails' Action Controllers and Aquarium has Cheetah templates where Rails' has Action Views.

Aquarium doesn't possess the equivalent of [http://activerecord.rubyonrails.org/show/HomePage Active Record]. Interestingly though, Ian Bicking has a [http://blog.colorstudy.com/ianb/weblog/2004/09/06.html#P154 blog post showing a SQLObject implementation] of this [http://www.loudthinking.com/arc/000297.html Active Record example].

The Aquarium/SQLObject combo seems to be comparable to Rails but has had neither the same level of documentation, integration and publicity as its Ruby-based rival. Aquarium is little known in the Python web programming world, it has always had a low profile and a 2 year hiatus prior to development restarting earlier this year didn't help. Also it has been overshadowed by Zope and to a lesser degree, other web frameworks.

On the upside, there have been 5 releases this year, including improved documentation and a switch to using Cheetah for templating instead of a homegrown template engine

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