Tornado

Tornado is a Python web framework and asynchronous networking library, originally developed at FriendFeed. It is known for its non-blocking I/O and ability to handle thousands of concurrent connections, making it ideal for long polling, WebSockets, and other applications requiring a long-lived…

Key facts

First appeared
2009
Category
web_framework
Problem solved
Tornado was created to address the scalability challenges faced by traditional blocking web servers when dealing with a large number of concurrent, long-lived connections, especially prevalent in real-time applications like social media feeds. It offered a non-blocking alternative in Python, allowing a single server process to manage many connections efficiently without a separate thread for each.
Platforms
Windows, macOS, Linux

Related technologies

Notable users

  • FriendFeed (historically)
  • Reddit (parts of their infrastructure, historically)
  • Quora