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Word of the Week: Anvil

npetrele
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Anvil boasts:

Build web apps with nothing but Python.

Build seriously powerful web apps with all the flexibility of Python.
No web development experience required

Fair warning: I haven't had a chance to drench myself in Anvil yet, and I'm staring like a deer in headlights at my trial of a sample web app. You see, yesterday was a holiday, and I had way too much to drink. I know what you're thinking but, no, it wasn't any kind of alcoholic beverage. Yesterday was game day from morning to night. We played Sorry, Sequence, Liar's Dice, Jinx, Mille Bornes, Mexican Train, Chicken Foot, and other games. And to stay alert, I drank coffee. Endless cups of coffee. And so I barely got a wink of sleep last night. 

Anyway, I'm impressed with Anvil so far. You can download and install the Anvil runtime and code a web app yourself, but the main attraction is the Anvil graphical design tool. You paint your web app pretty much the same way you'd do it in any of a dozen or more "Visual <insert language here>" tool. For that, you need a subscription to the Anvil cloud. For a business app, that's 299 clams. Per month. It's $699/mo for a dedicated server, and you need a quote for enterprise level. 

Is it worth it? In my sleep deprived opinion, yes, if you are targeting a browser for your application and you're a Python devotee. Everything is subscription based these days, which I personally find disappointing. I understand the profit motive, but I miss the days when you could buy something and choose whether or not you want to upgrade it in the future. In this particular case, though, a subscription model makes perfect sense, since the Anvil folks are providing their cloud services, not just the graphical designer.

Anyway, I recommend all my Python friends to check it out here. Try your hand at building a web app with the designer and you might get hooked. Or just download the runtime and code an app for fun. 

2 Replies 2

davidn#
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Interesting. I'll check out the "free" version, probably the generated app will have the intrusive Anvil banner on top. I was looking at a cool python GUI development tool call NiceGUI, which doesn't have drag/drop capabilities but it's pretty close.

npetrele
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Thanks for that! I'll check out NiceGUI now.