Looking for framework for writing my own web ToDo app

February 2, 2019 5:50 PM

Not being happy with any ToDo app I've tried, I want to write my own web-based one. I have excellent development and database skills, but not a lot experience with the latest web application frameworks. What framework should I use?

I see it with a page with a form to add or modify items in the database, and a page with a database search that can create the SQL queries to bring up the items I want to present. This is only for myself; my initial intentions are not to share it.

• Where should I host it?
  • I don't want to host it on my own computer.
  • I want the host to require minimal setup on my part (that is, have the framework and database options already set up for customers).
  • The hosting cost should be free or low.
• I want the framework simple to write applications for. Sure, I can write complex code, but I want this to be relatively quick and fun side project.
  
• The language the framework uses doesn't matter too much, although I'd prefer Python.
  

All suggestions welcome. Thanks.

posted by ShooBoo to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

As far as I know, in the Python-verse Django is still recommended for this sort of thing. Flask could also do it, but Django has a built in ORM that is really convenient for CRUD apps.
posted by BungaDunga at 6:23 PM on February 2, 2019

I was looking to do the same thing a while back for the same reasons, but with less development / database skills. Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but I was looking at Firebase and Hood.ie
posted by wym at 7:01 PM on February 2, 2019

ToDo lists are the equivalent of “Hello Word” for today’s frameworks — a lot of them use this paradigm for their example code. If your preference is Python, then Flask is a perfectly good choice — just google “Python Flask todo list” for a bunch of tutorials. You probably need a front-end framework as well for the javascript, something like vue or react, but it depends on how interactive you want the app to be.

If it were me i’d probably eschew developing the server side aspect entirely and look at something like React with Firebase, which could then be statically hosted with the free tier of Amazon AWS or perhaps even github pages.
posted by cgg at 8:41 PM on February 2, 2019

Here is a comparison of ToDo apps in many web frameworks.

The Firebase example there is paired with an Angular v1 frontend, which is not great for a project of this size. But Firebase or some other "serverless" backend would be good for any frontend you like, because you can set up an account through the admin panel and do everything you need within the free tier.
posted by Phssthpok at 9:28 PM on February 2, 2019

If you want something simple for personal use, I second Flask. Django has its own ORM, sure, but it's a bit heavy-duty if you're just getting into web frameworks, and Flask has the Flask-SQLAlchemy extension that's pretty easy to work with.

As for hosting, for this kind and size of project you really can't go wrong with PythonAnywhere. You can spin up a basic Flask (or Django, web2py, or Bottle) app and database and start working away within a couple of minutes. Better yet, there's a free tier that only really gets restrictive if you want to scale up to heavy use and/or more users, and the next two tiers are only $5 and $12 per month. Check it out.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 9:29 AM on February 3, 2019

The Intro to Redux tutorial is a ToDo list.

For hosting, I always strongly recommend Digital Ocean, especially because you can ssh into your droplet.
posted by bendy at 5:11 PM on February 3, 2019

Someone I know did this using React for the frontend, and Firebase for the backend.
posted by taltalim at 3:32 PM on February 4, 2019