Web

The threaded model and global interpreter lock has always been in the way of Python handling thousands of concurrent long-lived connections. Modern web frameworks, such as Tornado, use non-blocking network I/O to make Python feasible for implementing WebSocket servers. In this article, Toptal engineer Jongwook Kim walks us through the process of implementing a simple WebSocket-based web application in Python using the Tornado web framework.

Writing code that is easily testable takes some effort and planning. However, some patterns exist that can be used to write simple and functional code, making it easier to test them when the time comes. In this article, Toptal engineer Joshua Mock shares some useful tips and patterns for writing testable code in JavaScript that are both simple to understand and simple to implement.

Modern web browsers offer a number of different APIs and mechanisms to storing data on the client-side. But are all of these options created equal? In this article, Toptal engineer Stephen Villee demystifies the various client-side storage options available in modern web browsers and explains how each of these can play a role in storing session data on the client-side.

Unlike most front-end web frameworks, React's aim is to solve the various challenges of building user interfaces that rely on changing data. Although React is a simple JavaScript library and is easy to get started with, it is still possible to misuse it in ways that deny the web app from reaping the benefits that React has to offer. In this article, Toptal engineer Ivan Rogic demonstrates the synergy of React, Redux and Immutable.js, and shows how these libraries together can solve many performance issues that are often encountered in large web applications.

EhCache is a widely used, pure Java cache that can be easily integrated with most popular Java frameworks, such as Spring and Hibernate. It is often considered to be the most convenient choice for Java applications since it can be integrated into projects easily. EhCache Spring Annotations allows seamless integration into any Spring application by simply adding annotations to cacheable methods without modifying the method implementations. This article focuses on boosting your Spring applications with EhCache Spring Annotations.

Nowadays, almost all Python frameworks use WSGI as a means, if not the only means, to communicate with their web servers. This is how Django, Flask, and many other popular frameworks do it. This article intends to provide readers with a glimpse into how WSGI works and allow them to build a simple WSGI application or server.

In this tutorial, Toptal Engineer Orban Botond demonstrates how to use the Grape gem -- a REST-like API micro-framework for Ruby -- to build backend support in Rails for a JSON API. Grape is designed to run as a mountable rack engine that complements your web applications without interfering with them.

Developers sometimes run into tasks that require access to email mailboxes. In most cases, this is done using the Internet Message Access Protocol, or IMAP. As a PHP developer, I first turned to PHP's built in IMAP library, but this library is buggy and impossible to debug or modify. So today we will create a working IMAP email client from the ground up using PHP. We will also see how to use Gmail's special commands.

Processing makes prototyping visual apps a breeze. With its easy to use programming constructs and some mathematics, building a simple game is a lot easier than one may think. In this article, Toptal engineer Oguz Gelal provides a step-by-step tutorial to building a game using Processing and porting it to the web.