Microsoft has launched a free self paced course on building web applications with Python, addressed to total beginners.

And this is done using the Flask, Django and FastAPI web frameworks. But before jumping into server side Python and the details of the frameworks, the lessons commence by taking us a tour on how the Web actually works. Simple http requests and responses and what the roles of the Clients and the Servers are and what kind of resources are actually returned by the Server to the Client, mainly HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Of course as almost all web applications are data driven, you need a place to store your data. As such in the "Databases and ORMs" chapter you'll find out what Databases are, how to use them from Python and Flask under raw SQL as well as the SQLAlchemy ORM. Finally you get to blend that all together in deploying an actual application.

We now switch to the Django framework which Includes an ORM for the database interaction. To highlight the power of Django some applications that are built with it are referenced:

• Instagram
• Eventbrite
• Coursera (originally, now Scala+Play)
• Pinterest (originally, now Flask)

Similary to the previous Flask and ORM chapters you get to connect to a database and deploy an application but now doing so with Django.

After learning how to build full stack apps, we dive into the world of the RESTful APIs. We first learn how to call them through the urllib3 library and then learning how to go about writing one ourselves using the FastAPI framework.

In the next step we learn why it is better to package our apps in Docker containers than installing everything on bare metal.
Not just learn about it but also doing it.

Finally in "Testing Web Apps" we find out about the different kinds of tests and how to perform them using
the Unittest, Pytest and Playwright frameworks.

As such, the complete overview of the course is as follows:

1. Python Web Apps 101 - Flask, Routing, Templates
2. Databases and ORMs
3. Django
4. FastAPI
5. Containerization
6. Testing Web Apps

Each chapter is accompanied by a video of the instructor walking through the concepts and applying them to practice in building the applications. There's also an accompanying Github repository with the slides and source code of the example applications.

All in all, "Python Web Apps" is a thoughtfully constructed course which takes you from zero to hero by covering the concepts necessary to build web applications in Python, conveying them in an easily understood language. 

More Information

Python Web Apps Youtube playlist
Python Web Apps github

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