/README.md

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Uliweb Introduction
=====================

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Limodou <limodou@gmail.com>

## About Uliweb

Uliweb is a full-stacked Python based web framework. It has three main design 
goals, they are: reusability, configurability, and replaceability. All the 
functionalities revolve around these goals. 

This project was created and lead by Limodou <mailto:limodou@gmail.com>. 


## License

Uliweb is released under BSD license.

## Infrastructure

Uliweb was not created totally from scratch. It uses some modules created by
other developers, for example:


* [Werkzeug](http://werkzeug.pocoo.org/) Used to handle core processes in the framework.
    For example: URL Mapping, Debug, Request, Response, etc.
* [SqlAlchemy](http://www.sqlalchemy.org) The ORM based on it. Developers can access
    databases, or use the module separately.

I also referenced some code from other web frameworks, for example:


* The Templating system is modified from [tornado](http://www.tornadoweb.org/).
* Some code inspired from Django.

I also constructed a few new "wheels" myself. For example:

* Form processing module. Developers can use it to create HTML code, validate submitted data and
    convert submitted data to Python data types.
* I18n processing including template support, language lazy process.
* Cache & Session modules.
* Uliorm, which is an ORM module, was built on top of SqlAlchemy. I also referenced from
    GAE datastore module.
* Framework runtime process.
* Plugin mechanism, styled after the one used in the [UliPad](http://code.google.com/p/ulipad) project.

## Features

* Project Organization

    * MVT(Model View Template) development model.
    * Distributed development but unified management. Uliweb organizes a project with
        small apps. Each app can have its own configuration file(settings.ini), template
        directory, and static directory. Existing apps can be easily reused, but are treated as a compound.
        web application project if configured as such. Developers can also
        reference static files and templates between apps, thus easing inter-application data exchange.
        All apps in a project are loaded by default if INSTALLED_APPS is not configured in
        the configuration file. All separate app configuration files are automatically processed at
        project startup.

* URL Mapping

    * Flexiable and powerful URL mapping. Uliweb uses werkzeug's routing module.
        User can easily define a URL, which in turn can be easily bound with a view function.
        URLs can also be created reversely according to the view function name. It supports
        argument definitions in URLs and default URL mapping to a
        view function.

* View and Template

    * View templates can be automatically applied. If you return a dict variable from
        view function, Uliweb will automatically try to match and apply a template according
        to the view function name.
    * Environment execution mode. Each view function will be run in an environment,
        which eliminates the need to write many import statements. Plus there are already many
        objects that can be used directly, for example: request, response, etc. This is DRY and saves a lot of coding
    * Developers can directly use Python code in a template, the Python code does not neede to be indented
        as long as a pass statement is added at the end of each code block.
        Uliweb also supports child template inclusion and inheritance.

* ORM

    * Uliorm is based on SQLAlchemy package, so you can use Model layer and SQL
        expression layer both.
    * Uliorm integrates with alembic package, you can use it to migirate database
        automatically.

* I18n

    * Can be used in python and template files.
    * Browser language and cookie settings are supported including automatic language switching.
    * Provides a command line tool that developers can use to extract .po files.
        This can happen either at the app level or project level process. It can automatically merge .pot files to existing
        .po files.

* Extension

    * Dispatch extension. This is a dispatch processing mechanism that utilizes different
        types of dispatch points. So you can write procedures to carry out
        special processes and bind them to these dispatch points. For example, database
        initicalization, I18n process initialization, etc.
    * middleware extension. It's similar to Djangos. You can configure it in configuration
        files. Each middleware can process the request and response objets.
    * Special function calls in the views module initial process. If you write a special
        function named `__begin__`, it'll be processed before any view function can be processed,
        this allows developers to do some module level processing at that point, for example:
        check the user authentication, etc.

* Command Line Tools

    * Creates project, creates apps, and include the basic essential directory 
        structure, files and code.
    * Export static files, you can export all available apps' static files to a
        special directory. Also supports css and js combinition and compress process.
    * Startup a development web server thats supports debugging and autoreload.
    * Apps can also have its own command line tools. For example: orm, auth, etc.

* Deployment

    * Supports mod_wsgi in Apache.
    * Supports uwsgi.

* Development

    * Provide a development server, and can be automatically reload when some
        module files are modified.
    * Enhanced debugging, you can check the error traceback, template debugging is also supported.


## Commuity

* Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/uliweb

## Links

* **Uliweb** Project Homepage https://github.com/limodou/uliweb
* **Uliweb-doc** Documentation Project http://github.com/limodou/uliweb-doc
* **Uliweb-doc Online** Document http://limodou.github.com/uliweb-doc/
* **plugs** Uliweb Apps Collection Project https://github.com/limodou/plugs

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