Skip to content

Furl and Yarl

“Furl” and “yarl” are both Python libraries that provide convenient and powerful APIs for working with URLs, but they have some differences in terms of features, design choices, and their respective goals:

  1. API Design:

    • “Furl” aims to provide a simple and straightforward API for working with URLs. It offers a chainable API, similar to method chaining, allowing you to build and modify URLs fluently.
    • “Yarl” aims to provide a more comprehensive and flexible API for URL manipulation. It offers a more object-oriented approach, with separate objects for URLs, schemes, query strings, etc., allowing for more fine-grained control and customization.

  2. URL Parsing and Construction:

    • “Furl” provides comprehensive parsing and construction capabilities for URLs. It can parse URLs, modify their components (scheme, host, path, query parameters, etc.), and construct valid URLs from scratch.
    • “Yarl” also offers URL parsing and construction features, but with additional flexibility and fine-grained control. It provides separate objects for different URL components, allowing for more granular manipulation.

  3. Immutability:

    • The “furl” library provides mutable URL objects by default. It allows you to modify various components of a URL, such as scheme, host, path, and query parameters, in-place using its chainable API. This means that when you modify a URL object, the changes are applied directly to the object itself.
    • On the other hand, the “yarl” library follows an immutable approach for URL manipulation. It treats URLs as immutable objects, meaning that any modification operations return a new URL object with the desired changes. This design ensures that the original URL object remains unchanged, preserving immutability.

  4. Unicode Handling:

    • “Furl” has limited support for Unicode handling in URLs. It assumes that the URLs are already properly encoded and doesn’t perform any encoding or decoding internally.
    • “Yarl” provides robust Unicode handling for URLs. It automatically encodes and decodes URL components as needed, ensuring correct and consistent handling of Unicode characters.

  5. Query Parameter Handling:

    • “Furl” offers convenient methods for working with query parameters, such as adding, updating, or removing individual parameters. It also supports parsing and formatting query strings.
    • “Yarl” provides advanced query parameter handling with rich support for multi-valued parameters, nested parameters, and complex data structures. It offers methods for adding, updating, removing, and iterating over query parameters.

  6. Dependencies:

    • “Furl” has minimal external dependencies, making it lightweight and easy to integrate into projects with limited dependencies.
    • “Yarl” has dependencies on more extensive libraries, such as “multidict” and “idna”, which provide additional functionality and support for complex URL manipulation scenarios.

  7. Maturity and Popularity:

    • “Furl” has been around for a longer time and has gained popularity as a lightweight and easy-to-use URL manipulation library.
    • “Yarl” is a newer library and has gained popularity for its more comprehensive API and Unicode support.

→ We choose to use Yarl when given the choice.

Other alternatives

Page last modified: 2024-11-13 14:01:29