Christopher Pitt - The Definitive Guide to Masonite: Building Web Applications with Python

By writing this book, we hope to teach you how to build great applications, using the Masonite framework ( https://github.com/masoniteframework/masonite ). Masonite is a modern Python framework, which includes tools and conventions aimed at making that task easier.

Its ok if youre new to Python. Its ok if youre new to Masonite . The book is written so that you can still get the most out of it. There may be some more advanced topics, along the way, but well do our best to make them additional and not essential to your experience.

If youve never used Python, we recommend this short course to get you familiar with the basics: https://teamtreehouse.com/library/python-basics-3 .

The things youll need are a computer on which to install Python , some time to read, and some time to experiment. It doesnt need to be a fancy computer, and it doesnt need to be a huge amount of time.

Weve arranged the chapters so that you can learn about core concepts of the framework and build toward a functional application. You can read this book as a reference guide. You can read it as a series of tutorials. You can read it one chapter at a time, or altogether.

Thank you for taking the first step toward becoming a Masonite pro.

There are many different kinds of programming. The one youre probably most familiar with is application programming, which is where you install an application (or use an installed application) on a phone, tablet, or computer.

Come to think of it, youre also probably familiar with another kind: web site programming. These kinds of programs are used through a web browser like Chrome, Safari, or Firefox.

Masonite sits somewhere in the middle of these two kinds of programs. Let me explain why.

Python was originally designed as a system programming language. That means it was intended to be used in short server administration scripts, to configure other software and to perform batch operations.

Over time it has become a powerful, multi-paradigm programming language. Some programming languages are mainly used for web programming, and they are used through web servers, like Apache and Nginx. Other languages take more complete control over how a web server behaves. Python is one of the latter languages.

Python web applications, and Masonite applications in particular, are usually responsible for everything from listening on a port to interpreting an HTTP request to sending an HTTP response. If somethings wrong with a Masonite application, somethings wrong with the whole server. With this increase in risk comes an increase in flexibility.

In addition, controlling the whole server gives us the ability to do more advanced things, like serving web sockets and interacting with external devices (like printers and assembly lines).