CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2010/ch3 3a SN

Web Frameworks in Object Oriented Languages

An Introduction To Web Frameworks

We, like many others, came to this topic with merely a fuzzy notion of what constitutes a “web framework.” We were not alone. We are confident a framework is not a language with which to write a web site, or a tool to help generate website content. Combing a number of comments from [1], we offer the following:

“A framework is a supplementary, extendable and tested layer built atop a programming language. It implements common design patterns (oft recurring procedures) thereby allowing programmers to focus on higher-level tasks.”

The balance of this page explores some common, and not so common instantiations of this concept.The advantage of web frameworks is that the developer does not have to handle the low level details like protocols, sockets or process and thread management. Frameworks primarily provide libraries for database access, templates for frameworks and also session management. They also focus on code reuse.

Previously, web frameworks were mostly server side technology. But nowadays, with the introduction of interrelated web developement techniques like AJAX, web frameworks have increased their domain to the client side development also. As an example of this new trend, web frameworks can now use the browser at the client side as a full blown execution environment.

Web Framework Architecture:

Before we move on to the web frameworks in different languages, it is imperative for us to understand the basic structure of a web framework.