A web framework, also known as a web application framework, is a software framework designed to support the development of web applications, web services, web resources, and web APIs. Web frameworks provide a standard way to build and deploy web applications on the World Wide Web, and they aim to automate the overhead associated with common activities performed in web development. They offer a set of resources and tools for software developers to build and manage web applications, web services, and websites.
Web development frameworks provide a wide range of features and functionality that help streamline application development. For example, they might include application templates for presenting information within a browser, programming environments for scripting the flow of information, APIs for accessing back-end data resources, code libraries with prebuilt components and code snippets, and support for debugging, quality assurance (QA) testing, and code reusability.
Web frameworks are built to support the construction of internet applications based on a single programming language, ranging in focus from general-purpose tools such as Zend Framework and Ruby on Rails, which augment the capabilities of a specific language, to native-language programmable packages built around a specific language.
In summary, web frameworks are comprehensive software frameworks that offer a way to create and run web applications, providing a standardized set of design and development conventions that can be applied and modified for a website. They help developers build applications faster and more efficiently because they write less code, reuse code, and contend with fewer errors and bugs.