Albatross is a session-based web templating application framework written in Python for Python web applications. It is intentionally simple but is readily deployed to support complex applications using the model-view-controller design pattern.

This tutorial is intended as a source of examples that developers can cut and paste from to develop their applications. The Albatross Reference Manual is thorough but leaves a lot unsaid (necessarily) about strategies for structuring your application to best take advantage of Albatross's features and to deliver a reliable and maintainable app. The Albatross Reference Manual will be the reference that fully explains the application framework.

This is not a thorough coverage of everything that Albatross offers the developer, it focuses on the most useful of the application types and features.

Albatross was developed following after experience Dave Cole of Object Craft had gained while developing an earlier application framework for a customer which was called Python Fusion. When another customer wanted a similar web application, he redeveloped it as an open source product called Albatross and it has matured since then.

Assumptions

This tutorial assumes a fair amount of knowledge and doesn't try to explain HTML, how web applications work or how to program in Python; there are excellent introductions to those topics elsewhere.