CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2014/ch1a 7 kz
Background
“Web2py is an open source web application framework written in the Python programming language.” Web2py originally started as an educational tool when, in October 2007, Massimo Di Pierro developed web2py as a way to introduce his students to web programming. From this, it quickly grew through user adoption to become a strong competitor to Django, another python based web framework. Web2py is described as a “full-stack framework” which means that everything to necessary to build a functioning web application is contained in the framework.
Key Features
Security
Web2py addresses many issues related to security vulnerabilities.
- Validates all input to prevent database injections
- Escapes all output to prevent cross-site scripting
- Renames uploaded files to prevent directory traversal attacks
By following established web security practices, web2py helps prevent some of the most popular security attack, “so developers have less chances of introducing vulnerabilities”.
Database Abstraction Layer
Web2py includes, by default, a Database Abstraction Layer (DAL) that is capable of dynamically writing SQL for the most popular database management systems (DBMS) including, among others:
- SQLite
- MySqL
- Oracle
Web 2.0
According to web2py’s own documentation, it is the only web framework to fully embrace the Web 2.0 paradigm. Web 2.0 describes changes to the way that web pages are created and used rather than an update to any technical specification. Web2py accomplishes this by not requiring any installation or configuration and running on any architecture that can run python.