Exploring Real Web Apps

'Real' web applications are different from the applications you've worked with in this course. They follow the same principles, but they tend to be much larger, much longer-lived, and have much larger teams working on them. They also have users! All of those factors change the way the code tends to look.

These large open-source projects illustrate the similarities and differences between the web apps you've worked with in this course and applications that have been around for a long time with lots of users.

Explore the applications below.

Real Flask Apps

  • FlaskBB is a forum-hosting application built using Flask.
  • Apache Airflow is a workflow tool, for creating and monitoring automated tasks. The web interface is built in flask: airflow/www.

Real companies use Flask internally: Companies that use Flask and more.

Real Express Apps

  • JSBin is a code snippet hosting platform. It lets users create and share snippets of code.
  • Strapi is a browser tool for creating APIs.

Real companies use Express too! See this list of companies using Express.

Other frameworks

There are lots of web frameworks. If you are curious to explore real web applications in other languages or frameworks, you can take a look at:

If you find another large, long-lived open source application to add to this list, share it!