Question: I need to create a Python REST/JSON web service for an iOS app to interact with. There will be no front end on the web.

What will be the fastest, most lightweight framework to use for this? Learning curve to implement also considered?

From the research I've done Django-Tastypie or Djanjo-Piston look like the best options, with Tastypie winning because the codebase is being maintained actively?

Answer: 
In general, I think you'll find [web2py](http://www.web2py.com) to be one of the easiest frameworks to set up, learn, and use. web2py makes it very easy to [generate JSON](http://web2py.com/book/default/chapter/09#HTML,-XML,-and-JSON) (just add a .json extension), and it now includes new functionality to automatically create [RESTful web services](http://web2py.com/book/default/chapter/09#RESTful-Web-Services) to access database models. In particular, check out the [parse\_as\_rest](http://web2py.com/book/default/chapter/09#parse_as_rest-(experimental)) and [smart\_query](http://web2py.com/book/default/chapter/09#smart_query-(experimental)) functionality.

If you need any help, ask on the [mailing list](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/web2py).
If I were you I would use [web.py](http://webpy.org/) that is really convenient to do that kind of rapid prototyping of **lightweight REST applications**.
Check out this snippet from the home page:

```
import web

urls = (
    '/(.*)', 'hello'
)
app = web.application(urls, globals())

class hello:        
    def GET(self, name):
        if not name: 
            name = 'World'
        return 'Hello, ' + name + '!'

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app.run()

```