Django vs Flask: Which Framework to choose?

Haris Bin Nasir Avatar

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Do you want to know which framework, Flask or Django, is superior for web development? Many Python-based web frameworks make it easy for developers to quickly create scalable apps. These frameworks can handle everything from simple to sophisticated websites. Django versus Flask is the most talked-about of the numerous popular options, and for good reason: they’re similar in some respects and different in others! This leads to a comparison of the two, and while each of these web development frameworks has its own set of characteristics, there are a number of things to consider before selecting one for your apps.

On the one hand, Django is a full-featured web framework, whereas Flask is a lightweight and extensible framework. Flask helps you understand how each component from the back-end works to get a small web application up and running if you want to dive deeper into coding and master core principles. Django follows a lot of design patterns, so you’ll pick up a lot of new ideas. Furthermore, both frameworks have extensive community support and documentation, so if you ever come into a problem, it’s likely that it’s previously been addressed and resolved — making your job easier.

Django is bulky, whereas Flask requires you to construct everything from scratch. Django has been around since 2010, around 5 years before Flask. In today’s Python environment, both frameworks are leading contenders. The quantity of inquiries regarding both frameworks in various tech forums demonstrates their rising popularity.

If you have some experience with Python, you can work on any of the frameworks. We’ve provided a brief review of both Django and Flask for your convenience, so you can better understand the differences and applications of each.

Django

Django is a web application framework that handles many of the common features needed to create secure and maintained websites. All you have to do as a developer is create your business logic. Django is a free and open-source web development framework with a thriving community and extensive documentation. The name Django was given to the project in July 2005. The majority of things come ‘out-of-the-box’ with Django as a single product. As a result, there are no concerns with integration.

Features of Django

  • It’s a flexible framework that can be used to build any website (social network, news site, content management system, and so on) with data in HTML, XML, JSON, and other formats. It can be used in conjunction with any client-side framework.
  • It’s a secure framework that takes care of things like user account management, transaction management, cross-site request forgery, clickjacking, and other security concerns.
  • It’s scalable and easy to maintain. To reuse and maintain the code, Django follows design patterns and principles. There are no duplications because the basic principle of ‘Don’t Repeat Yourself’ is followed. Because Django is a component-based framework, each layer is self-contained, allowing the application to scale at any level.
  • Django is a feature rich Python web development framework. Python is now the most popular cross-platform programming language, this means that Django has a big developer community.

Flask

Flask is a lightweight framework that is commonly referred to as a micro framework. Flask comes with several basic features and lets developers to add as many libraries or plugins as they like to an extension. Flask should be your first pick if you have a simple, novel use case that needs to be added to an existing application. Flask offers with a modest collection of easy-to-learn APIs, as well as comprehensive documentation. Start your web development with Flask if you’re new to Python, so you can acquire a feel for both the backend and frontend, as well as grasp the essential ideas.

Features of Flask

  • Gives you (the developer) complete control over how the program is built during the development (implementation) stage.
  • API that is well-organized and consistent
  • It has a built-in development server as well as a quick debugger.
  • Configurations that are simple and adaptable
  • Support for integrated unit testing
  • Handling RESTful and HTTP requests
  • Werkzeug and Jinja2 are Flask’s two key dependencies, providing powerful WSGI support and templates, respectively.

Django vs Flask: Head to Head Comparison

Django gives you a complete feature-rich web development framework, while Flask allows you to tailor your web project as per your needs and only include stuff you require as a developer. But this isn’t the only distinction; there are several more that can assist you decide which one to use for your web application. Here’s where you can learn about the differences between Flask and Django–

Django Flask
Full-stack web framework that follows the batteries-included approach. Light-weight framework with minimalistic features. 
Developers already have access to the most common features that makes development faster. Developers can explore and keep control of the core of the application.
Django comes with a ready-to-use admin framework that can be customized. Flask doesn’t have any such feature to handle administration tasks.
It comes with a built-in template engine that saves a lot of development time. Flask’s template engine Jinja2 is based on Django’s template engine.
It allows users to divide a single project into multiple small applications which makes them easy to develop and maintain. Each project can be a single application, however, multiple models and views can be added to the single application. 
The Django-admin tool is a built-in bootstrapping tool with which developers can build web applications without any external input. Admin features are not as prominent as in Django.
The built-in ORM system enables developers to use any database and perform common DB tasks without having to write long queries. With Flask, developers have to work with different databases by using ORM systems for Python and SQLAlchemy as the SQL toolkit. SQL queries have to be written for common tasks.
Django is a production-ready framework. Though some people claim so, Flask is single-threaded and may not perform too well under heavy load. Check out this link to know more.
Django is considered to be more popular because it provides many out of box features and reduces time to build complex applications. Flask is a good start if you are getting into web development. There are many websites built on the flask and gain heavy traffic, but not as much compared to the ones in Django.
Django is not suitable for projects where requirements change dynamically. With Flask, a simple application can be later changed to add more functionality and make it complex. It provides flexibility to expand the application quickly.
Developers can not afford changeless flexibility as the modules provided by Django.  Developers are free to use any plugins and libraries and build functionalities in a flexible way.
Django is suited for more significant projects that need much functionality. For more straightforward projects, the features might be an overdose. Flask is a simple, unopinionated framework; it doesn’t decide what your application should look like – developers do.
Django is suited for bigger projects that need a lot of functionality. For simpler projects, the features might be an overdose. Simple applications can be built with ease and do not require too much coding. 
Django framework ensures developers use best practices as everything has a template. Flask is more open-ended and developers may or may not follow the best practices.
For the same functionality, Django needs more than 2 times more lines of code than Flask. Flask application requires much fewer lines of code for a simple task.

Summary

A popular question among developers is which framework is superior. By now, you should have a good concept of how each framework works and what the best ways to use each one are. However, many high-traffic websites developed using Flask function admirably and are equivalent to those produced with Django. Although Django and Flask share many basic concepts, Django is more difficult and large, requiring a steep learning curve. If you want to gain a feel for a web framework, start with Flask and then move on to Django for more sophisticated applications. Alternatively, rather than learning everything at once, you can master one and then switch when your job requires it.

You can start with some basic programming abilities with Flask, but Django requires some preparation before you can develop even a Hello World program. However, as your project structure expands, you’ll notice that adding new functions in Flask becomes more difficult, whereas adding new functionalities in Django appears to be a breeze.

To summarize, both Django and Flask are enjoyable to work with and provide a wealth of fresh information.

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