chapter one

1 Introduction to Streamlit

 

This chapter covers

  • What you need to build web apps and where Streamlit fits in
  • How Streamlit's ease-of-use, LLM-friendliness, and other factors make it popular
  • How Streamlit is different from other similar technologies
  • What you can (and can't) build with Streamlit

Welcome to the world of Streamlit! By picking up this book, you've joined the ranks of thousands of developers who have discovered Streamlit in recent years. These developers appreciate what Streamlit enables: web apps built entirely in Python in just minutes!

Consider why you chose this book. Maybe you have an idea for an app that will save your coworkers hours of repetitive, automatable work, and you want the fastest way to turn it into reality. Perhaps you’re aiming for a tech job and want to add frontend development to your skillset. Maybe you're a data analyst or scientist who needs to present findings in interactive dashboards for management. Or you’re a software engineer looking for a quick way to prototype apps. You might have heard about the buzz about Streamlit and AI and want to learn more.

Whatever your motivation, Streamlit can bring your ideas to life quickly and easily. This book will guide you step-by-step through creating powerful, interactive web applications. You'll learn to use Python’s simplicity to build and deploy apps that can impress your audience, solve real problems, and advance your career.

1.1 Building web apps

1.1.1 What do you need to build a web app?

1.2 What is Streamlit?

1.3 Ten reasons Streamlit is so popular

1.3.1 Streamlit is pure Python

1.3.2 Streamlit lets you go from idea to app in minutes

1.3.3 Streamlit makes beautiful apps

1.3.4 Streamlit lets you focus on your app, not UI details

1.3.5 Streamlit's syntax is simple, concise, and intuitive

1.3.6 Streamlit is great with LLMs

1.3.7 Streamlit has excellent support for data science and visualizations

1.3.8 You can share your Streamlit apps for free, in record time

1.3.9 Streamlit has a huge, friendly community

1.3.10 You can extend Streamlit with third-party components or build your own

1.4 What can you build with Streamlit?

1.4.1 Data applications

1.4.2 Apps that use Generative AI like LLMs

1.4.3 Internal tools for your workplace

1.4.4 Prototypes for large apps

1.4.5 Anything else you can imagine

1.5 When not to use Streamlit

1.5.1 Complex, large-scale applications

1.5.2 Apps that require a high degree of UI customization

1.5.3 Native desktop or mobile apps

1.6 How is Streamlit different from other technologies?

1.6.1 Jupyter notebooks

1.6.2 HTML, CSS, and JavaScript