Frontend, Backend & Database Using Python: Anvil

Building Web apps by leveraging the power of Anvil

Image by Author, Made in Canva

Introduction

Python is my all-time favorite language. It’s easy to adapt and has a huge community support. Due to this, many people find use cases of Python in every industry and workflow. While working full-time, 60–70% of my work involves Python code debugging. I have also explored a lot of content around using Python to create Android apps, converting the Python KivyMD app into APK, and running Python on the front end using Brython.

I came across Anvil, which provides full-stack Python support including frontend, backend, and database. The concept is similar to Brython, which is aimed at a JavaScript equivalent. Anvil offers drag-and-drop functionality for designing the user interface. We can write Pythonic logic to bind the UI elements to work together or make calls to a dedicated backend module. With Anvil, code is written in an Object-Oriented paradigm with autocoded entries for every new UI element added to the webpage.

By the end of this article, we will be building a GitHub Profile Visualizer. The app will take GitHub username as an input, and then render 3–4 elements on the same page. We will leverage Anvil for web app development and GitHub GraphQL to fetch data.