Tina4 Python — This is not a framework

Laravel joy. Python speed. 10x less code.

Quickstart

pip install tina4-python
tina4 init my_project
cd my_project
python app.py

You've just built your first Tina4 app — zero configuration, zero classes, zero boilerplate!

Prefer uv? Replace pip install tina4-python with uv add tina4-python, then use uv run tina4 start to launch the dev server.

Features

• ASGI compliant — works with any ASGI server (uvicorn, hypercorn, daphne)
• Full async — every route handler is async by default
• Routing — decorator-based with path parameters, type hints, and auto-discovery
• Twig/Jinja2 templates — with inheritance, partials, custom filters, and globals
• ORM — define models with typed fields, save/load/select/delete with one line
• Database — SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MSSQL, Firebird
• Migrations — versioned SQL files, CLI scaffolding
• Sessions — file, Redis, Valkey, or MongoDB backends
• JWT authentication — auto-generated RSA keys, bearer tokens, form tokens
• Swagger/OpenAPI — auto-generated docs at /swagger
• CRUD scaffolding — instant admin UI with one line of code
• Middleware — before/after hooks per route or globally
• Queues — background processing with litequeue, RabbitMQ, Kafka, or MongoDB
• WebSockets — built-in support via simple-websocket
• WSDL/SOAP — auto-generated WSDL from Python classes
• REST client — built-in Api class for external HTTP calls
• SCSS compilation — auto-compiled to CSS on save
• Live reload — browser auto-refreshes during development
• Inline testing — decorator-based test cases with @tests
• Localization — i18n via gettext (English, French, Afrikaans)

Install

pip install tina4-python

Or with uv (recommended for dependency management):

uv add tina4-python

Routing

Routes live in src/routes/ and are auto-discovered on startup.

# src/routes/hello.py
from tina4_python import get

@get("/hello")
async def get_hello(request, response):
    return response("Hello, Tina4 Python!")

@get("/hello/{name}")
async def get_hello_name(name, request, response):
    return response(f"Hello, {name}")

@get("/hello/json")
async def get_hello_json(request, response):
    return response([{"brand": "BMW"}, {"brand": "Toyota"}])

@get("/hello/template")
async def get_hello_template(request, response):
    return response.render("index.twig", {"data": request.params})

@get("/hello/redirect")
async def get_hello_redirect(request, response):
    return response.redirect("/hello/world")

ORM

# src/orm/User.py
from tina4_python import ORM, IntegerField, StringField

class User(ORM):
    id    = IntegerField(primary_key=True, auto_increment=True)
    name  = StringField()
    email = StringField()

User({"name": "Alice", "email": "alice@example.com"}).save()

Database

from tina4_python.Database import Database

db = Database("sqlite3:app.db")
result = db.fetch("SELECT * FROM users WHERE age > ?", [18])

Works with SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MSSQL, and Firebird.

Migrations

tina4 migrate:create "create users table"
# Edit the generated SQL file in migrations/
tina4 migrate

Sessions

Built-in session management with pluggable backends:

Handler	Backend	Package
SessionFileHandler (default)	File system	—
SessionRedisHandler	Redis	redis
SessionValkeyHandler	Valkey	valkey
SessionMongoHandler	MongoDB	pymongo

request.session.set("name", "Joe")
name = request.session.get("name")

Queues

Background processing with litequeue (default), RabbitMQ, Kafka, or MongoDB.

from tina4_python.Queue import Queue, Producer, Consumer

Producer(Queue(topic="emails")).produce({"to": "alice@example.com"})

for msg in Consumer(Queue(topic="emails")).messages():
    print(msg.data)

Middleware

from tina4_python.Router import get, middleware

class AuthCheck:
    @staticmethod
    def before_auth(request, response):
        if "authorization" not in request.headers:
            return request, response("Unauthorized", 401)
        return request, response

@middleware(AuthCheck)
@get("/protected")
async def protected(request, response):
    return response({"secret": True})

Swagger / OpenAPI

Auto-generated at /swagger. Add metadata with decorators:

from tina4_python import description, tags

@get("/users")
@description("Get all users")
@tags(["users"])
async def users(request, response):
    return response(User().select("*"))

REST Client

from tina4_python import Api

api = Api("https://api.example.com", auth_header="Bearer xyz")
result = api.get("/users/42")

WSDL / SOAP

from tina4_python.WSDL import WSDL, wsdl_operation

class Calculator(WSDL):
    SERVICE_URL = "http://localhost:7145/calculator"

    def Add(self, a: int, b: int):
        return {"Result": a + b}

Testing

from tina4_python import tests

@tests(
    assert_equal((7, 7), 1),
    assert_raises(ZeroDivisionError, (5, 0)),
)
def divide(a: int, b: int) -> float:
    if b == 0:
        raise ZeroDivisionError("division by zero")
    return a / b

Run with tina4 test or uv run pytest --verbose.

Environment

Key .env settings:

SECRET=your-jwt-secret
API_KEY=your-api-key
DATABASE_NAME=sqlite3:app.db
TINA4_DEBUG_LEVEL=ALL
TINA4_LANGUAGE=en
TINA4_SESSION_HANDLER=SessionFileHandler
SWAGGER_TITLE=My API

Further Documentation

https://tina4.com/python

Community

• GitHub: https://github.com/tina4stack/tina4-python

License

MIT (c) 2007-2025 Tina4 Stack https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT

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Tina4 — The framework that keeps out of the way of your coding.