I'm working with two teammates on a local home services website, similar to Urban Company, and we need help deciding on a backend technology. We've got about 34 days until our final project is due, and our features include user sign-up/log-in, browsing and booking services like electricians or cleaners, and a simple admin panel. We're planning to use HTML, CSS, and JS for the frontend and MySQL for the database. For the backend, I'm looking at Python options since I know the basics but I'm not sure whether to go with Flask, Django, FastAPI, or Starlette. We're not looking for something too complicated, but we need something robust enough to handle our requirements. If anyone has suggestions based on their experience, that would be super helpful!
3 Answers
Honestly, any of those frameworks could work for you, but if you're looking to get something up quickly, I’d go with Django. It's got lots of built-in features, so you won't spend ages setting things up and you can focus on development instead. You have enough time to get the basics down!
Between the Python options, Flask is the simplest, but you’ll need to set up things like login and models from scratch using external libraries. Django has all that included, plus an admin panel, which could save you a lot of time. Just keep in mind it's a bit strict in terms of how you structure your code, but it's worth it! FastAPI is great for APIs too, but it might be overkill for your project if you're keeping things simple with HTML and JS. Good luck!
Using Laravel (a PHP framework) could also work if you're willing to learn PHP. It's a bit tougher if you're new to it, but it’s very powerful for projects like yours.
If you're comfortable with JavaScript already, you might want to consider Node.js with Express. It’ll be a smooth learning curve and you can build a solid API that integrates well with your JS frontend. Plus, if you're using Knex.js, interacting with the database gets much easier!
Also, if you’re open to other languages, Node.js could be a good route, especially since you’re already familiar with JS. Just be cautious about building secure login systems, as that can get tricky!