Show HN: Engin – a modular application framework for Python

1 month ago 6

Documentation: https://engin.readthedocs.io/

Source Code: https://github.com/invokermain/engin


Engin is a lightweight application framework powered by dependency injection. It helps you build and maintain everything from large monoliths to hundreds of microservices.

Engin provides:

  • A fully-featured dependency injection system.
  • A robust runtime with lifecycle hooks and supervised background tasks.
  • Zero-boilerplate code reuse across applications.
  • Integrations for popular frameworks like FastAPI.
  • Full asyncio support.
  • A CLI for development utilities.

Engin is available on PyPI, install it using your favourite dependency manager:

  • pip install engin
  • poetry add engin
  • uv add engin

Here’s a minimal example showing how Engin wires dependencies, manages background tasks, and handles graceful shutdown.

import asyncio from httpx import AsyncClient from engin import Engin, Invoke, Lifecycle, OnException, Provide, Supervisor def httpx_client_factory(lifecycle: Lifecycle) -> AsyncClient: client = AsyncClient() lifecycle.append(client) # easily manage the AsyncClient's lifecycle concerns return client async def main(httpx_client: AsyncClient, supervisor: Supervisor) -> None: async def long_running_task(): while True: await httpx_client.get("https://example.org/") await asyncio.sleep(1.0) supervisor.supervise(long_running_task) # let the app run the task in a supervised manner engin = Engin(Provide(httpx_client_factory), Invoke(main)) # define our modular application asyncio.run(engin.run()) # run it!

Expected output (with logging enabled):

[INFO] engin: starting engin [INFO] engin: startup complete [INFO] engin: supervising task: long_running_task [INFO] httpx: HTTP Request: GET https://example.org/ "HTTP/1.1 200 OK" [INFO] httpx: HTTP Request: GET https://example.org/ "HTTP/1.1 200 OK" [INFO] httpx: HTTP Request: GET https://example.org/ "HTTP/1.1 200 OK" [DEBUG] engin: received signal: SIGINT [DEBUG] engin: supervised task 'long_running_task' was cancelled [INFO] engin: stopping engin [INFO] engin: shutdown complete

Engin is heavily inspired by Uber's Fx framework for Go and the Injector framework for Python.

They are both great projects, go check them out.

Automated performance benchmarks for Engin are available here.

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