python frameworks for a real time website

Question

I'm trying to learn web programming in python, and have the following project in mind: mine the yahoo finance api for instrument data, and display it in real time, as well as plot charts based on instrument data.

I already did something similar using wxpython, and I'm interested in how I would accomplish this in a web application.

My first thought was to use django and matplotlib on the server, and have the client request updated chart images through jquery at a certain time interval, but after a bit of research I came upon libraries like twisted and tornado...and now I'm confused. Would they work better for this web app than django ?

After the above rambling, my question is: what library should I use for writing the web app i have in mind ? I'm also thinking that I should abandon matplotlib, and generate the chart on client side, but I'm not sure what javascript library would allow me to do that, if any.

Answer 1

Few tips:

1/ Do not plot your data at backend . Instead use the browsers to generate charts.I would recommend using jqplot, or highcharts.

2/ Yes, you can use tornado or twisted instead of django, as they are asynchronous servers, and would provide faster handling of requests.

3/ You should create a REST interface of your application, with server side only sending JSON data, and do all the UI templating and charting on client side.

4/ Backbone.js (recommended, but you can use some other MVC framework), would also prove to be helpful if your app grows too complex.