Starlette

Rationale

Starlette  is the backend framework we use for our platform .

The main reasons why we chose it over other alternatives are the following:

• It is open source .
• It is a high-level framework that reduces cognitive complexity for developers by providing things like routes, responses, validations, etc.
• It is one of the most reliable Python backend frameworks out there.
• It fully supports async programming , which is critical for our application performance.
• It has full static typing support.

Alternatives

These alternatives were considered but not chosen for the following reasons:

Django

• Django  was replaced by Starlette.
• It only supported synchronous backends.
• It supported DB models for SQL databases, which were useless for us as we use DynamoDB .
• It supported templates for serving frontends, which were useless for us as we use a SPA .

FastAPI

• FastAPI  uses Starlette underneath.
• Its main value comes from its endpoint validations and API documentation autogeneration. Such features are only available for REST APIs. This is not important to us as we use GraphQL .

Falcon

Falcon  had a low-level approach compared to Starlette, meaning that cognitive complexity for developers was higher.

Usage

We use Starlette  as the backend framework for our platform .