Tornado: A Powerful Python Web Framework and Asynchronous Library

Introduction

Tornado is a Python web framework and asynchronous networking library, originally developed at FriendFeed. It stands out for its use of non-blocking network I/O, enabling it to scale efficiently to tens of thousands of open connections. This makes Tornado an excellent choice for applications that require persistent connections, such as long polling, WebSockets, and real-time services.

Installation

Getting started with Tornado is straightforward. You can install it using pip:

pip install tornado

Examples

This simple "Hello, world" example demonstrates a basic web application with Tornado:

import asyncio
import tornado

class MainHandler(tornado.web.RequestHandler):
    def get(self):
        self.write("Hello, world")

def make_app():
    return tornado.web.Application([
        (r"/", MainHandler),
    ])

async def main():
    app = make_app()
    app.listen(8888)
    await asyncio.Event().wait()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    asyncio.run(main())

This example does not use any of Tornado's asynchronous features. For more advanced asynchronous features and real-time applications, explore the simple chat room demo.

Why Use Tornado

Tornado's non-blocking architecture provides significant advantages for specific types of applications. It excels in scenarios requiring high concurrency and persistent connections, offering superior performance for services like real-time dashboards, chat applications, and APIs that leverage long polling or WebSockets. Its lightweight nature and direct control over network operations also appeal to developers seeking fine-grained performance tuning.

Links

• Official Documentation: https://www.tornadoweb.org
• GitHub Repository: https://github.com/tornadoweb/tornado