Welcome to Flask¶

Welcome to Flask’s documentation. Get started with Installation and then get an overview with the Quickstart. There is also a more detailed Tutorial that shows how to create a small but complete application with Flask. Common patterns are described in the Patterns for Flask section. The rest of the docs describe each component of Flask in detail, with a full reference in the API section.
Flask depends on the Jinja template engine and the Werkzeug WSGI toolkit. The documentation for these libraries can be found at:
User’s Guide¶
This part of the documentation, which is mostly prose, begins with some background information about Flask, then focuses on step-by-step instructions for web development with Flask.
Foreword¶
Read this before you get started with Flask. This hopefully answers some questions about the purpose and goals of the project, and when you should or should not be using it.
What does “micro” mean?¶
“Micro” does not mean that your whole web application has to fit into a single Python file (although it certainly can), nor does it mean that Flask is lacking in functionality. The “micro” in microframework means Flask aims to keep the core simple but extensible. Flask won’t make many decisions for you, such as what database to use. Those decisions that it does make, such as what templating engine to use, are easy to change. Everything else is up to you, so that Flask can be everything you need and nothing you don’t.
By default, Flask does not include a database abstraction layer, form validation or anything else where different libraries already exist that can handle that. Instead, Flask supports extensions to add such functionality to your application as if it was implemented in Flask itself. Numerous extensions provide database integration, form validation, upload handling, various open authentication technologies, and more. Flask may be “micro”, but it’s ready for production use on a variety of needs.
Configuration and Conventions¶
Flask has many configuration values, with sensible defaults, and a few
conventions when getting started. By convention, templates and static
files are stored in subdirectories within the application’s Python
source tree, with the names templates
and static
respectively. While this can be changed, you usually don’t have to,
especially when getting started.
Growing with Flask¶
Once you have Flask up and running, you’ll find a variety of extensions available in the community to integrate your project for production. The Flask core team reviews extensions and ensures approved extensions do not break with future releases.
As your codebase grows, you are free to make the design decisions appropriate for your project. Flask will continue to provide a very simple glue layer to the best that Python has to offer. You can implement advanced patterns in SQLAlchemy or another database tool, introduce non-relational data persistence as appropriate, and take advantage of framework-agnostic tools built for WSGI, the Python web interface.
Flask includes many hooks to customize its behavior. Should you need more customization, the Flask class is built for subclassing. If you are interested in that, check out the Becoming Big chapter. If you are curious about the Flask design principles, head over to the section about Design Decisions in Flask.
Continue to Installation, the Quickstart, or the Foreword for Experienced Programmers.
Foreword for Experienced Programmers¶
Thread-Locals in Flask¶
One of the design decisions in Flask was that simple tasks should be simple; they should not take a lot of code and yet they should not limit you. Because of that, Flask has a few design choices that some people might find surprising or unorthodox. For example, Flask uses thread-local objects internally so that you don’t have to pass objects around from function to function within a request in order to stay threadsafe. This approach is convenient, but requires a valid request context for dependency injection or when attempting to reuse code which uses a value pegged to the request. The Flask project is honest about thread-locals, does not hide them, and calls out in the code and documentation where they are used.
Develop for the Web with Caution¶
Always keep security in mind when building web applications.
If you write a web application, you are probably allowing users to register and leave their data on your server. The users are entrusting you with data. And even if you are the only user that might leave data in your application, you still want that data to be stored securely.
Unfortunately, there are many ways the security of a web application can be compromised. Flask protects you against one of the most common security problems of modern web applications: cross-site scripting (XSS). Unless you deliberately mark insecure HTML as secure, Flask and the underlying Jinja2 template engine have you covered. But there are many more ways to cause security problems.
The documentation will warn you about aspects of web development that require attention to security. Some of these security concerns are far more complex than one might think, and we all sometimes underestimate the likelihood that a vulnerability will be exploited - until a clever attacker figures out a way to exploit our applications. And don’t think that your application is not important enough to attract an attacker. Depending on the kind of attack, chances are that automated bots are probing for ways to fill your database with spam, links to malicious software, and the like.
Flask is no different from any other framework in that you the developer must build with caution, watching for exploits when building to your requirements.
Installation¶
Python Version¶
We recommend using the latest version of Python 3. Flask supports Python 3.5 and newer, Python 2.7, and PyPy.
Dependencies¶
These distributions will be installed automatically when installing Flask.
Werkzeug implements WSGI, the standard Python interface between applications and servers.
Jinja is a template language that renders the pages your application serves.
MarkupSafe comes with Jinja. It escapes untrusted input when rendering templates to avoid injection attacks.
ItsDangerous securely signs data to ensure its integrity. This is used to protect Flask’s session cookie.
Click is a framework for writing command line applications. It provides the
flask
command and allows adding custom management commands.
Optional dependencies¶
These distributions will not be installed automatically. Flask will detect and use them if you install them.
SimpleJSON is a fast JSON implementation that is compatible with Python’s
json
module. It is preferred for JSON operations if it is installed.python-dotenv enables support for Environment Variables From dotenv when running
flask
commands.Watchdog provides a faster, more efficient reloader for the development server.
Virtual environments¶
Use a virtual environment to manage the dependencies for your project, both in development and in production.
What problem does a virtual environment solve? The more Python projects you have, the more likely it is that you need to work with different versions of Python libraries, or even Python itself. Newer versions of libraries for one project can break compatibility in another project.
Virtual environments are independent groups of Python libraries, one for each project. Packages installed for one project will not affect other projects or the operating system’s packages.
Python 3 comes bundled with the venv
module to create virtual
environments. If you’re using a modern version of Python, you can continue on
to the next section.
If you’re using Python 2, see Install virtualenv first.
Create an environment¶
Create a project folder and a venv
folder within:
$ mkdir myproject
$ cd myproject
$ python3 -m venv venv
On Windows:
$ py -3 -m venv venv
If you needed to install virtualenv because you are using Python 2, use the following command instead:
$ python2 -m virtualenv venv
On Windows:
> \Python27\Scripts\virtualenv.exe venv
Activate the environment¶
Before you work on your project, activate the corresponding environment:
$ . venv/bin/activate
On Windows:
> venv\Scripts\activate
Your shell prompt will change to show the name of the activated environment.
Install Flask¶
Within the activated environment, use the following command to install Flask:
$ pip install Flask
Flask is now installed. Check out the Quickstart or go to the Documentation Overview.
Living on the edge¶
If you want to work with the latest Flask code before it’s released, install or update the code from the master branch:
$ pip install -U https://github.com/pallets/flask/archive/master.tar.gz
Install virtualenv¶
If you are using Python 2, the venv module is not available. Instead, install virtualenv.
On Linux, virtualenv is provided by your package manager:
# Debian, Ubuntu
$ sudo apt-get install python-virtualenv
# CentOS, Fedora
$ sudo yum install python-virtualenv
# Arch
$ sudo pacman -S python-virtualenv
If you are on Mac OS X or Windows, download get-pip.py, then:
$ sudo python2 Downloads/get-pip.py
$ sudo python2 -m pip install virtualenv
On Windows, as an administrator:
> \Python27\python.exe Downloads\get-pip.py
> \Python27\python.exe -m pip install virtualenv
Now you can return above and Create an environment.
Quickstart¶
Eager to get started? This page gives a good introduction to Flask. It assumes you already have Flask installed. If you do not, head over to the Installation section.
A Minimal Application¶
A minimal Flask application looks something like this:
from flask import Flask
app = Flask(__name__)
@app.route('/')
def hello_world():
return 'Hello, World!'
So what did that code do?
First we imported the
Flask
class. An instance of this class will be our WSGI application.Next we create an instance of this class. The first argument is the name of the application’s module or package. If you are using a single module (as in this example), you should use
__name__
because depending on if it’s started as application or imported as module the name will be different ('__main__'
versus the actual import name). This is needed so that Flask knows where to look for templates, static files, and so on. For more information have a look at theFlask
documentation.We then use the
route()
decorator to tell Flask what URL should trigger our function.The function is given a name which is also used to generate URLs for that particular function, and returns the message we want to display in the user’s browser.
Just save it as hello.py
or something similar. Make sure to not call
your application flask.py
because this would conflict with Flask
itself.
To run the application you can either use the flask command or
python’s -m
switch with Flask. Before you can do that you need
to tell your terminal the application to work with by exporting the
FLASK_APP
environment variable:
$ export FLASK_APP=hello.py
$ flask run
* Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/
If you are on Windows, the environment variable syntax depends on command line interpreter. On Command Prompt:
C:\path\to\app>set FLASK_APP=hello.py
And on PowerShell:
PS C:\path\to\app> $env:FLASK_APP = "hello.py"
Alternatively you can use python -m flask:
$ export FLASK_APP=hello.py
$ python -m flask run
* Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/
This launches a very simple builtin server, which is good enough for testing but probably not what you want to use in production. For deployment options see Deployment Options.
Now head over to http://127.0.0.1:5000/, and you should see your hello world greeting.
Externally Visible Server
If you run the server you will notice that the server is only accessible from your own computer, not from any other in the network. This is the default because in debugging mode a user of the application can execute arbitrary Python code on your computer.
If you have the debugger disabled or trust the users on your network,
you can make the server publicly available simply by adding
--host=0.0.0.0
to the command line:
$ flask run --host=0.0.0.0
This tells your operating system to listen on all public IPs.
What to do if the Server does not Start¶
In case the python -m flask fails or flask does not exist, there are multiple reasons this might be the case. First of all you need to look at the error message.
Old Version of Flask¶
Versions of Flask older than 0.11 used to have different ways to start the application. In short, the flask command did not exist, and neither did python -m flask. In that case you have two options: either upgrade to newer Flask versions or have a look at the Development Server docs to see the alternative method for running a server.
Invalid Import Name¶
The FLASK_APP
environment variable is the name of the module to import at
flask run. In case that module is incorrectly named you will get an
import error upon start (or if debug is enabled when you navigate to the
application). It will tell you what it tried to import and why it failed.
The most common reason is a typo or because you did not actually create an
app
object.
Debug Mode¶
(Want to just log errors and stack traces? See Application Errors)
The flask script is nice to start a local development server, but you would have to restart it manually after each change to your code. That is not very nice and Flask can do better. If you enable debug support the server will reload itself on code changes, and it will also provide you with a helpful debugger if things go wrong.
To enable all development features (including debug mode) you can export
the FLASK_ENV
environment variable and set it to development
before running the server:
$ export FLASK_ENV=development
$ flask run
(On Windows you need to use set
instead of export
.)
This does the following things:
it activates the debugger
it activates the automatic reloader
it enables the debug mode on the Flask application.
You can also control debug mode separately from the environment by
exporting FLASK_DEBUG=1
.
There are more parameters that are explained in the Development Server docs.
Attention
Even though the interactive debugger does not work in forking environments (which makes it nearly impossible to use on production servers), it still allows the execution of arbitrary code. This makes it a major security risk and therefore it must never be used on production machines.
Screenshot of the debugger in action:

More information on using the debugger can be found in the Werkzeug documentation.
Have another debugger in mind? See Working with Debuggers.
Routing¶
Modern web applications use meaningful URLs to help users. Users are more likely to like a page and come back if the page uses a meaningful URL they can remember and use to directly visit a page.
Use the route()
decorator to bind a function to a URL.
@app.route('/')
def index():
return 'Index Page'
@app.route('/hello')
def hello():
return 'Hello, World'
You can do more! You can make parts of the URL dynamic and attach multiple rules to a function.
Variable Rules¶
You can add variable sections to a URL by marking sections with
<variable_name>
. Your function then receives the <variable_name>
as a keyword argument. Optionally, you can use a converter to specify the type
of the argument like <converter:variable_name>
.
from markupsafe import escape
@app.route('/user/<username>')
def show_user_profile(username):
# show the user profile for that user
return 'User %s' % escape(username)
@app.route('/post/<int:post_id>')
def show_post(post_id):
# show the post with the given id, the id is an integer
return 'Post %d' % post_id
@app.route('/path/<path:subpath>')
def show_subpath(subpath):
# show the subpath after /path/
return 'Subpath %s' % escape(subpath)
Converter types:
|
(default) accepts any text without a slash |
|
accepts positive integers |
|
accepts positive floating point values |
|
like |
|
accepts UUID strings |
Unique URLs / Redirection Behavior¶
The following two rules differ in their use of a trailing slash.
@app.route('/projects/')
def projects():
return 'The project page'
@app.route('/about')
def about():
return 'The about page'
The canonical URL for the projects
endpoint has a trailing slash.
It’s similar to a folder in a file system. If you access the URL without
a trailing slash, Flask redirects you to the canonical URL with the
trailing slash.
The canonical URL for the about
endpoint does not have a trailing
slash. It’s similar to the pathname of a file. Accessing the URL with a
trailing slash produces a 404 “Not Found” error. This helps keep URLs
unique for these resources, which helps search engines avoid indexing
the same page twice.
URL Building¶
To build a URL to a specific function, use the url_for()
function.
It accepts the name of the function as its first argument and any number of
keyword arguments, each corresponding to a variable part of the URL rule.
Unknown variable parts are appended to the URL as query parameters.
Why would you want to build URLs using the URL reversing function
url_for()
instead of hard-coding them into your templates?
Reversing is often more descriptive than hard-coding the URLs.
You can change your URLs in one go instead of needing to remember to manually change hard-coded URLs.
URL building handles escaping of special characters and Unicode data transparently.
The generated paths are always absolute, avoiding unexpected behavior of relative paths in browsers.
If your application is placed outside the URL root, for example, in
/myapplication
instead of/
,url_for()
properly handles that for you.
For example, here we use the test_request_context()
method
to try out url_for()
. test_request_context()
tells Flask to behave as though it’s handling a request even while we use a
Python shell. See Context Locals.
from flask import Flask, url_for
from markupsafe import escape
app = Flask(__name__)
@app.route('/')
def index():
return 'index'
@app.route('/login')
def login():
return 'login'
@app.route('/user/<username>')
def profile(username):
return '{}\'s profile'.format(escape(username))
with app.test_request_context():
print(url_for('index'))
print(url_for('login'))
print(url_for('login', next='/'))
print(url_for('profile', username='John Doe'))
/
/login
/login?next=/
/user/John%20Doe
HTTP Methods¶
Web applications use different HTTP methods when accessing URLs. You should
familiarize yourself with the HTTP methods as you work with Flask. By default,
a route only answers to GET
requests. You can use the methods
argument
of the route()
decorator to handle different HTTP methods.
from flask import request
@app.route('/login', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def login():
if request.method == 'POST':
return do_the_login()
else:
return show_the_login_form()
If GET
is present, Flask automatically adds support for the HEAD
method
and handles HEAD
requests according to the HTTP RFC. Likewise,
OPTIONS
is automatically implemented for you.
Static Files¶
Dynamic web applications also need static files. That’s usually where
the CSS and JavaScript files are coming from. Ideally your web server is
configured to serve them for you, but during development Flask can do that
as well. Just create a folder called static
in your package or next to
your module and it will be available at /static
on the application.
To generate URLs for static files, use the special 'static'
endpoint name:
url_for('static', filename='style.css')
The file has to be stored on the filesystem as static/style.css
.
Rendering Templates¶
Generating HTML from within Python is not fun, and actually pretty cumbersome because you have to do the HTML escaping on your own to keep the application secure. Because of that Flask configures the Jinja2 template engine for you automatically.
To render a template you can use the render_template()
method. All you have to do is provide the name of the template and the
variables you want to pass to the template engine as keyword arguments.
Here’s a simple example of how to render a template:
from flask import render_template
@app.route('/hello/')
@app.route('/hello/<name>')
def hello(name=None):
return render_template('hello.html', name=name)
Flask will look for templates in the templates
folder. So if your
application is a module, this folder is next to that module, if it’s a
package it’s actually inside your package:
Case 1: a module:
/application.py
/templates
/hello.html
Case 2: a package:
/application
/__init__.py
/templates
/hello.html
For templates you can use the full power of Jinja2 templates. Head over to the official Jinja2 Template Documentation for more information.
Here is an example template:
<!doctype html>
<title>Hello from Flask</title>
{% if name %}
<h1>Hello {{ name }}!</h1>
{% else %}
<h1>Hello, World!</h1>
{% endif %}
Inside templates you also have access to the request
,
session
and g
1 objects
as well as the get_flashed_messages()
function.
Templates are especially useful if inheritance is used. If you want to know how that works, head over to the Template Inheritance pattern documentation. Basically template inheritance makes it possible to keep certain elements on each page (like header, navigation and footer).
Automatic escaping is enabled, so if name
contains HTML it will be escaped
automatically. If you can trust a variable and you know that it will be
safe HTML (for example because it came from a module that converts wiki
markup to HTML) you can mark it as safe by using the
Markup
class or by using the |safe
filter in the
template. Head over to the Jinja 2 documentation for more examples.
Here is a basic introduction to how the Markup
class works:
>>> from markupsafe import Markup
>>> Markup('<strong>Hello %s!</strong>') % '<blink>hacker</blink>'
Markup(u'<strong>Hello <blink>hacker</blink>!</strong>')
>>> Markup.escape('<blink>hacker</blink>')
Markup(u'<blink>hacker</blink>')
>>> Markup('<em>Marked up</em> » HTML').striptags()
u'Marked up \xbb HTML'
Changelog
Changed in version 0.5: Autoescaping is no longer enabled for all templates. The following
extensions for templates trigger autoescaping: .html
, .htm
,
.xml
, .xhtml
. Templates loaded from a string will have
autoescaping disabled.
- 1
Unsure what that
g
object is? It’s something in which you can store information for your own needs, check the documentation of that object (g
) and the Using SQLite 3 with Flask for more information.
Accessing Request Data¶
For web applications it’s crucial to react to the data a client sends to
the server. In Flask this information is provided by the global
request
object. If you have some experience with Python
you might be wondering how that object can be global and how Flask
manages to still be threadsafe. The answer is context locals:
Context Locals¶
Insider Information
If you want to understand how that works and how you can implement tests with context locals, read this section, otherwise just skip it.
Certain objects in Flask are global objects, but not of the usual kind. These objects are actually proxies to objects that are local to a specific context. What a mouthful. But that is actually quite easy to understand.
Imagine the context being the handling thread. A request comes in and the web server decides to spawn a new thread (or something else, the underlying object is capable of dealing with concurrency systems other than threads). When Flask starts its internal request handling it figures out that the current thread is the active context and binds the current application and the WSGI environments to that context (thread). It does that in an intelligent way so that one application can invoke another application without breaking.
So what does this mean to you? Basically you can completely ignore that
this is the case unless you are doing something like unit testing. You
will notice that code which depends on a request object will suddenly break
because there is no request object. The solution is creating a request
object yourself and binding it to the context. The easiest solution for
unit testing is to use the test_request_context()
context manager. In combination with the with
statement it will bind a
test request so that you can interact with it. Here is an example:
from flask import request
with app.test_request_context('/hello', method='POST'):
# now you can do something with the request until the
# end of the with block, such as basic assertions:
assert request.path == '/hello'
assert request.method == 'POST'
The other possibility is passing a whole WSGI environment to the
request_context()
method:
from flask import request
with app.request_context(environ):
assert request.method == 'POST'
The Request Object¶
The request object is documented in the API section and we will not cover
it here in detail (see Request
). Here is a broad overview of
some of the most common operations. First of all you have to import it from
the flask
module:
from flask import request
The current request method is available by using the
method
attribute. To access form data (data
transmitted in a POST
or PUT
request) you can use the
form
attribute. Here is a full example of the two
attributes mentioned above:
@app.route('/login', methods=['POST', 'GET'])
def login():
error = None
if request.method == 'POST':
if valid_login(request.form['username'],
request.form['password']):
return log_the_user_in(request.form['username'])
else:
error = 'Invalid username/password'
# the code below is executed if the request method
# was GET or the credentials were invalid
return render_template('login.html', error=error)
What happens if the key does not exist in the form
attribute? In that
case a special KeyError
is raised. You can catch it like a
standard KeyError
but if you don’t do that, a HTTP 400 Bad Request
error page is shown instead. So for many situations you don’t have to
deal with that problem.
To access parameters submitted in the URL (?key=value
) you can use the
args
attribute:
searchword = request.args.get('key', '')
We recommend accessing URL parameters with get or by catching the
KeyError
because users might change the URL and presenting them a 400
bad request page in that case is not user friendly.
For a full list of methods and attributes of the request object, head over
to the Request
documentation.
File Uploads¶
You can handle uploaded files with Flask easily. Just make sure not to
forget to set the enctype="multipart/form-data"
attribute on your HTML
form, otherwise the browser will not transmit your files at all.
Uploaded files are stored in memory or at a temporary location on the
filesystem. You can access those files by looking at the
files
attribute on the request object. Each
uploaded file is stored in that dictionary. It behaves just like a
standard Python file
object, but it also has a
save()
method that
allows you to store that file on the filesystem of the server.
Here is a simple example showing how that works:
from flask import request
@app.route('/upload', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def upload_file():
if request.method == 'POST':
f = request.files['the_file']
f.save('/var/www/uploads/uploaded_file.txt')
...
If you want to know how the file was named on the client before it was
uploaded to your application, you can access the
filename
attribute.
However please keep in mind that this value can be forged
so never ever trust that value. If you want to use the filename
of the client to store the file on the server, pass it through the
secure_filename()
function that
Werkzeug provides for you:
from flask import request
from werkzeug.utils import secure_filename
@app.route('/upload', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def upload_file():
if request.method == 'POST':
f = request.files['the_file']
f.save('/var/www/uploads/' + secure_filename(f.filename))
...
For some better examples, checkout the Uploading Files pattern.
Cookies¶
To access cookies you can use the cookies
attribute. To set cookies you can use the
set_cookie
method of response objects. The
cookies
attribute of request objects is a
dictionary with all the cookies the client transmits. If you want to use
sessions, do not use the cookies directly but instead use the
Sessions in Flask that add some security on top of cookies for you.
Reading cookies:
from flask import request
@app.route('/')
def index():
username = request.cookies.get('username')
# use cookies.get(key) instead of cookies[key] to not get a
# KeyError if the cookie is missing.
Storing cookies:
from flask import make_response
@app.route('/')
def index():
resp = make_response(render_template(...))
resp.set_cookie('username', 'the username')
return resp
Note that cookies are set on response objects. Since you normally
just return strings from the view functions Flask will convert them into
response objects for you. If you explicitly want to do that you can use
the make_response()
function and then modify it.
Sometimes you might want to set a cookie at a point where the response object does not exist yet. This is possible by utilizing the Deferred Request Callbacks pattern.
For this also see About Responses.
Redirects and Errors¶
To redirect a user to another endpoint, use the redirect()
function; to abort a request early with an error code, use the
abort()
function:
from flask import abort, redirect, url_for
@app.route('/')
def index():
return redirect(url_for('login'))
@app.route('/login')
def login():
abort(401)
this_is_never_executed()
This is a rather pointless example because a user will be redirected from the index to a page they cannot access (401 means access denied) but it shows how that works.
By default a black and white error page is shown for each error code. If
you want to customize the error page, you can use the
errorhandler()
decorator:
from flask import render_template
@app.errorhandler(404)
def page_not_found(error):
return render_template('page_not_found.html'), 404
Note the 404
after the render_template()
call. This
tells Flask that the status code of that page should be 404 which means
not found. By default 200 is assumed which translates to: all went well.
See Error handlers for more details.
About Responses¶
The return value from a view function is automatically converted into
a response object for you. If the return value is a string it’s
converted into a response object with the string as response body, a
200 OK
status code and a text/html mimetype. If the
return value is a dict, jsonify()
is called to produce a response.
The logic that Flask applies to converting return values into response
objects is as follows:
If a response object of the correct type is returned it’s directly returned from the view.
If it’s a string, a response object is created with that data and the default parameters.
If it’s a dict, a response object is created using
jsonify
.If a tuple is returned the items in the tuple can provide extra information. Such tuples have to be in the form
(response, status)
,(response, headers)
, or(response, status, headers)
. Thestatus
value will override the status code andheaders
can be a list or dictionary of additional header values.If none of that works, Flask will assume the return value is a valid WSGI application and convert that into a response object.
If you want to get hold of the resulting response object inside the view
you can use the make_response()
function.
Imagine you have a view like this:
@app.errorhandler(404)
def not_found(error):
return render_template('error.html'), 404
You just need to wrap the return expression with
make_response()
and get the response object to modify it, then
return it:
@app.errorhandler(404)
def not_found(error):
resp = make_response(render_template('error.html'), 404)
resp.headers['X-Something'] = 'A value'
return resp
APIs with JSON¶
A common response format when writing an API is JSON. It’s easy to get
started writing such an API with Flask. If you return a dict
from a
view, it will be converted to a JSON response.
@app.route("/me")
def me_api():
user = get_current_user()
return {
"username": user.username,
"theme": user.theme,
"image": url_for("user_image", filename=user.image),
}
Depending on your API design, you may want to create JSON responses for
types other than dict
. In that case, use the
jsonify()
function, which will serialize any supported
JSON data type. Or look into Flask community extensions that support
more complex applications.
@app.route("/users")
def users_api():
users = get_all_users()
return jsonify([user.to_json() for user in users])
Sessions¶
In addition to the request object there is also a second object called
session
which allows you to store information specific to a
user from one request to the next. This is implemented on top of cookies
for you and signs the cookies cryptographically. What this means is that
the user could look at the contents of your cookie but not modify it,
unless they know the secret key used for signing.
In order to use sessions you have to set a secret key. Here is how sessions work:
from flask import Flask, session, redirect, url_for, request
from markupsafe import escape
app = Flask(__name__)
# Set the secret key to some random bytes. Keep this really secret!
app.secret_key = b'_5#y2L"F4Q8z\n\xec]/'
@app.route('/')
def index():
if 'username' in session:
return 'Logged in as %s' % escape(session['username'])
return 'You are not logged in'
@app.route('/login', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def login():
if request.method == 'POST':
session['username'] = request.form['username']
return redirect(url_for('index'))
return '''
<form method="post">
<p><input type=text name=username>
<p><input type=submit value=Login>
</form>
'''
@app.route('/logout')
def logout():
# remove the username from the session if it's there
session.pop('username', None)
return redirect(url_for('index'))
The escape()
mentioned here does escaping for you if you are
not using the template engine (as in this example).
How to generate good secret keys
A secret key should be as random as possible. Your operating system has
ways to generate pretty random data based on a cryptographic random
generator. Use the following command to quickly generate a value for
Flask.secret_key
(or SECRET_KEY
):
$ python -c 'import os; print(os.urandom(16))'
b'_5#y2L"F4Q8z\n\xec]/'
A note on cookie-based sessions: Flask will take the values you put into the session object and serialize them into a cookie. If you are finding some values do not persist across requests, cookies are indeed enabled, and you are not getting a clear error message, check the size of the cookie in your page responses compared to the size supported by web browsers.
Besides the default client-side based sessions, if you want to handle sessions on the server-side instead, there are several Flask extensions that support this.
Message Flashing¶
Good applications and user interfaces are all about feedback. If the user does not get enough feedback they will probably end up hating the application. Flask provides a really simple way to give feedback to a user with the flashing system. The flashing system basically makes it possible to record a message at the end of a request and access it on the next (and only the next) request. This is usually combined with a layout template to expose the message.
To flash a message use the flash()
method, to get hold of the
messages you can use get_flashed_messages()
which is also
available in the templates. Check out the Message Flashing
for a full example.
Logging¶
Changelog
New in version 0.3.
Sometimes you might be in a situation where you deal with data that
should be correct, but actually is not. For example you may have
some client-side code that sends an HTTP request to the server
but it’s obviously malformed. This might be caused by a user tampering
with the data, or the client code failing. Most of the time it’s okay
to reply with 400 Bad Request
in that situation, but sometimes
that won’t do and the code has to continue working.
You may still want to log that something fishy happened. This is where loggers come in handy. As of Flask 0.3 a logger is preconfigured for you to use.
Here are some example log calls:
app.logger.debug('A value for debugging')
app.logger.warning('A warning occurred (%d apples)', 42)
app.logger.error('An error occurred')
The attached logger
is a standard logging
Logger
, so head over to the official logging
docs for more information.
Read more on Application Errors.
Hooking in WSGI Middleware¶
To add WSGI middleware to your Flask application, wrap the application’s
wsgi_app
attribute. For example, to apply Werkzeug’s
ProxyFix
middleware for running
behind Nginx:
from werkzeug.middleware.proxy_fix import ProxyFix
app.wsgi_app = ProxyFix(app.wsgi_app)
Wrapping app.wsgi_app
instead of app
means that app
still
points at your Flask application, not at the middleware, so you can
continue to use and configure app
directly.
Using Flask Extensions¶
Extensions are packages that help you accomplish common tasks. For example, Flask-SQLAlchemy provides SQLAlchemy support that makes it simple and easy to use with Flask.
For more on Flask extensions, have a look at Extensions.
Deploying to a Web Server¶
Ready to deploy your new Flask app? Go to Deployment Options.
Tutorial¶
Project Layout¶
Create a project directory and enter it:
$ mkdir flask-tutorial
$ cd flask-tutorial
Then follow the installation instructions to set up a Python virtual environment and install Flask for your project.
The tutorial will assume you’re working from the flask-tutorial
directory from now on. The file names at the top of each code block are
relative to this directory.
A Flask application can be as simple as a single file.
hello.py
¶from flask import Flask
app = Flask(__name__)
@app.route('/')
def hello():
return 'Hello, World!'
However, as a project gets bigger, it becomes overwhelming to keep all the code in one file. Python projects use packages to organize code into multiple modules that can be imported where needed, and the tutorial will do this as well.
The project directory will contain:
flaskr/
, a Python package containing your application code and files.tests/
, a directory containing test modules.venv/
, a Python virtual environment where Flask and other dependencies are installed.Installation files telling Python how to install your project.
Version control config, such as git. You should make a habit of using some type of version control for all your projects, no matter the size.
Any other project files you might add in the future.
By the end, your project layout will look like this:
/home/user/Projects/flask-tutorial
├── flaskr/
│ ├── __init__.py
│ ├── db.py
│ ├── schema.sql
│ ├── auth.py
│ ├── blog.py
│ ├── templates/
│ │ ├── base.html
│ │ ├── auth/
│ │ │ ├── login.html
│ │ │ └── register.html
│ │ └── blog/
│ │ ├── create.html
│ │ ├── index.html
│ │ └── update.html
│ └── static/
│ └── style.css
├── tests/
│ ├── conftest.py
│ ├── data.sql
│ ├── test_factory.py
│ ├── test_db.py
│ ├── test_auth.py
│ └── test_blog.py
├── venv/
├── setup.py
└── MANIFEST.in
If you’re using version control, the following files that are generated while running your project should be ignored. There may be other files based on the editor you use. In general, ignore files that you didn’t write. For example, with git:
.gitignore
¶venv/
*.pyc
__pycache__/
instance/
.pytest_cache/
.coverage
htmlcov/
dist/
build/
*.egg-info/
Continue to Application Setup.
Application Setup¶
A Flask application is an instance of the Flask
class.
Everything about the application, such as configuration and URLs, will
be registered with this class.
The most straightforward way to create a Flask application is to create
a global Flask
instance directly at the top of your code, like
how the “Hello, World!” example did on the previous page. While this is
simple and useful in some cases, it can cause some tricky issues as the
project grows.
Instead of creating a Flask
instance globally, you will create
it inside a function. This function is known as the application
factory. Any configuration, registration, and other setup the
application needs will happen inside the function, then the application
will be returned.
The Application Factory¶
It’s time to start coding! Create the flaskr
directory and add the
__init__.py
file. The __init__.py
serves double duty: it will
contain the application factory, and it tells Python that the flaskr
directory should be treated as a package.
$ mkdir flaskr
flaskr/__init__.py
¶import os
from flask import Flask
def create_app(test_config=None):
# create and configure the app
app = Flask(__name__, instance_relative_config=True)
app.config.from_mapping(
SECRET_KEY='dev',
DATABASE=os.path.join(app.instance_path, 'flaskr.sqlite'),
)
if test_config is None:
# load the instance config, if it exists, when not testing
app.config.from_pyfile('config.py', silent=True)
else:
# load the test config if passed in
app.config.from_mapping(test_config)
# ensure the instance folder exists
try:
os.makedirs(app.instance_path)
except OSError:
pass
# a simple page that says hello
@app.route('/hello')
def hello():
return 'Hello, World!'
return app
create_app
is the application factory function. You’ll add to it
later in the tutorial, but it already does a lot.
app = Flask(__name__, instance_relative_config=True)
creates theFlask
instance.__name__
is the name of the current Python module. The app needs to know where it’s located to set up some paths, and__name__
is a convenient way to tell it that.instance_relative_config=True
tells the app that configuration files are relative to the instance folder. The instance folder is located outside theflaskr
package and can hold local data that shouldn’t be committed to version control, such as configuration secrets and the database file.
app.config.from_mapping()
sets some default configuration that the app will use:SECRET_KEY
is used by Flask and extensions to keep data safe. It’s set to'dev'
to provide a convenient value during development, but it should be overridden with a random value when deploying.DATABASE
is the path where the SQLite database file will be saved. It’s underapp.instance_path
, which is the path that Flask has chosen for the instance folder. You’ll learn more about the database in the next section.
app.config.from_pyfile()
overrides the default configuration with values taken from theconfig.py
file in the instance folder if it exists. For example, when deploying, this can be used to set a realSECRET_KEY
.test_config
can also be passed to the factory, and will be used instead of the instance configuration. This is so the tests you’ll write later in the tutorial can be configured independently of any development values you have configured.
os.makedirs()
ensures thatapp.instance_path
exists. Flask doesn’t create the instance folder automatically, but it needs to be created because your project will create the SQLite database file there.@app.route()
creates a simple route so you can see the application working before getting into the rest of the tutorial. It creates a connection between the URL/hello
and a function that returns a response, the string'Hello, World!'
in this case.
Run The Application¶
Now you can run your application using the flask
command. From the
terminal, tell Flask where to find your application, then run it in
development mode. Remember, you should still be in the top-level
flask-tutorial
directory, not the flaskr
package.
Development mode shows an interactive debugger whenever a page raises an exception, and restarts the server whenever you make changes to the code. You can leave it running and just reload the browser page as you follow the tutorial.
For Linux and Mac:
$ export FLASK_APP=flaskr
$ export FLASK_ENV=development
$ flask run
For Windows cmd, use set
instead of export
:
> set FLASK_APP=flaskr
> set FLASK_ENV=development
> flask run
For Windows PowerShell, use $env:
instead of export
:
> $env:FLASK_APP = "flaskr"
> $env:FLASK_ENV = "development"
> flask run
You’ll see output similar to this:
* Serving Flask app "flaskr"
* Environment: development
* Debug mode: on
* Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/ (Press CTRL+C to quit)
* Restarting with stat
* Debugger is active!
* Debugger PIN: 855-212-761
Visit http://127.0.0.1:5000/hello in a browser and you should see the “Hello, World!” message. Congratulations, you’re now running your Flask web application!
Continue to Define and Access the Database.
Define and Access the Database¶
The application will use a SQLite database to store users and posts.
Python comes with built-in support for SQLite in the sqlite3
module.
SQLite is convenient because it doesn’t require setting up a separate database server and is built-in to Python. However, if concurrent requests try to write to the database at the same time, they will slow down as each write happens sequentially. Small applications won’t notice this. Once you become big, you may want to switch to a different database.
The tutorial doesn’t go into detail about SQL. If you are not familiar with it, the SQLite docs describe the language.
Connect to the Database¶
The first thing to do when working with a SQLite database (and most other Python database libraries) is to create a connection to it. Any queries and operations are performed using the connection, which is closed after the work is finished.
In web applications this connection is typically tied to the request. It is created at some point when handling a request, and closed before the response is sent.
flaskr/db.py
¶import sqlite3
import click
from flask import current_app, g
from flask.cli import with_appcontext
def get_db():
if 'db' not in g:
g.db = sqlite3.connect(
current_app.config['DATABASE'],
detect_types=sqlite3.PARSE_DECLTYPES
)
g.db.row_factory = sqlite3.Row
return g.db
def close_db(e=None):
db = g.pop('db', None)
if db is not None:
db.close()
g
is a special object that is unique for each request. It is
used to store data that might be accessed by multiple functions during
the request. The connection is stored and reused instead of creating a
new connection if get_db
is called a second time in the same
request.
current_app
is another special object that points to the Flask
application handling the request. Since you used an application factory,
there is no application object when writing the rest of your code.
get_db
will be called when the application has been created and is
handling a request, so current_app
can be used.
sqlite3.connect()
establishes a connection to the file pointed at
by the DATABASE
configuration key. This file doesn’t have to exist
yet, and won’t until you initialize the database later.
sqlite3.Row
tells the connection to return rows that behave
like dicts. This allows accessing the columns by name.
close_db
checks if a connection was created by checking if g.db
was set. If the connection exists, it is closed. Further down you will
tell your application about the close_db
function in the application
factory so that it is called after each request.
Create the Tables¶
In SQLite, data is stored in tables and columns. These need to be
created before you can store and retrieve data. Flaskr will store users
in the user
table, and posts in the post
table. Create a file
with the SQL commands needed to create empty tables:
flaskr/schema.sql
¶DROP TABLE IF EXISTS user;
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS post;
CREATE TABLE user (
id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
username TEXT UNIQUE NOT NULL,
password TEXT NOT NULL
);
CREATE TABLE post (
id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
author_id INTEGER NOT NULL,
created TIMESTAMP NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
title TEXT NOT NULL,
body TEXT NOT NULL,
FOREIGN KEY (author_id) REFERENCES user (id)
);
Add the Python functions that will run these SQL commands to the
db.py
file:
flaskr/db.py
¶def init_db():
db = get_db()
with current_app.open_resource('schema.sql') as f:
db.executescript(f.read().decode('utf8'))
@click.command('init-db')
@with_appcontext
def init_db_command():
"""Clear the existing data and create new tables."""
init_db()
click.echo('Initialized the database.')
open_resource()
opens a file relative to
the flaskr
package, which is useful since you won’t necessarily know
where that location is when deploying the application later. get_db
returns a database connection, which is used to execute the commands
read from the file.
click.command()
defines a command line command called init-db
that calls the init_db
function and shows a success message to the
user. You can read Command Line Interface to learn more about writing commands.
Register with the Application¶
The close_db
and init_db_command
functions need to be registered
with the application instance; otherwise, they won’t be used by the
application. However, since you’re using a factory function, that
instance isn’t available when writing the functions. Instead, write a
function that takes an application and does the registration.
flaskr/db.py
¶def init_app(app):
app.teardown_appcontext(close_db)
app.cli.add_command(init_db_command)
app.teardown_appcontext()
tells
Flask to call that function when cleaning up after returning the
response.
app.cli.add_command()
adds a new
command that can be called with the flask
command.
Import and call this function from the factory. Place the new code at the end of the factory function before returning the app.
flaskr/__init__.py
¶def create_app():
app = ...
# existing code omitted
from . import db
db.init_app(app)
return app
Initialize the Database File¶
Now that init-db
has been registered with the app, it can be called
using the flask
command, similar to the run
command from the
previous page.
Note
If you’re still running the server from the previous page, you can
either stop the server, or run this command in a new terminal. If
you use a new terminal, remember to change to your project directory
and activate the env as described in Activate the environment.
You’ll also need to set FLASK_APP
and FLASK_ENV
as shown on
the previous page.
Run the init-db
command:
$ flask init-db
Initialized the database.
There will now be a flaskr.sqlite
file in the instance
folder in
your project.
Continue to Blueprints and Views.
Blueprints and Views¶
A view function is the code you write to respond to requests to your application. Flask uses patterns to match the incoming request URL to the view that should handle it. The view returns data that Flask turns into an outgoing response. Flask can also go the other direction and generate a URL to a view based on its name and arguments.
Create a Blueprint¶
A Blueprint
is a way to organize a group of related views and
other code. Rather than registering views and other code directly with
an application, they are registered with a blueprint. Then the blueprint
is registered with the application when it is available in the factory
function.
Flaskr will have two blueprints, one for authentication functions and one for the blog posts functions. The code for each blueprint will go in a separate module. Since the blog needs to know about authentication, you’ll write the authentication one first.
flaskr/auth.py
¶import functools
from flask import (
Blueprint, flash, g, redirect, render_template, request, session, url_for
)
from werkzeug.security import check_password_hash, generate_password_hash
from flaskr.db import get_db
bp = Blueprint('auth', __name__, url_prefix='/auth')
This creates a Blueprint
named 'auth'
. Like the application
object, the blueprint needs to know where it’s defined, so __name__
is passed as the second argument. The url_prefix
will be prepended
to all the URLs associated with the blueprint.
Import and register the blueprint from the factory using
app.register_blueprint()
. Place the
new code at the end of the factory function before returning the app.
flaskr/__init__.py
¶def create_app():
app = ...
# existing code omitted
from . import auth
app.register_blueprint(auth.bp)
return app
The authentication blueprint will have views to register new users and to log in and log out.
The First View: Register¶
When the user visits the /auth/register
URL, the register
view
will return HTML with a form for them to fill out. When they submit
the form, it will validate their input and either show the form again
with an error message or create the new user and go to the login page.
For now you will just write the view code. On the next page, you’ll write templates to generate the HTML form.
flaskr/auth.py
¶@bp.route('/register', methods=('GET', 'POST'))
def register():
if request.method == 'POST':
username = request.form['username']
password = request.form['password']
db = get_db()
error = None
if not username:
error = 'Username is required.'
elif not password:
error = 'Password is required.'
elif db.execute(
'SELECT id FROM user WHERE username = ?', (username,)
).fetchone() is not None:
error = 'User {} is already registered.'.format(username)
if error is None:
db.execute(
'INSERT INTO user (username, password) VALUES (?, ?)',
(username, generate_password_hash(password))
)
db.commit()
return redirect(url_for('auth.login'))
flash(error)
return render_template('auth/register.html')
Here’s what the register
view function is doing:
@bp.route
associates the URL/register
with theregister
view function. When Flask receives a request to/auth/register
, it will call theregister
view and use the return value as the response.If the user submitted the form,
request.method
will be'POST'
. In this case, start validating the input.request.form
is a special type ofdict
mapping submitted form keys and values. The user will input theirusername
andpassword
.Validate that
username
andpassword
are not empty.Validate that
username
is not already registered by querying the database and checking if a result is returned.db.execute
takes a SQL query with?
placeholders for any user input, and a tuple of values to replace the placeholders with. The database library will take care of escaping the values so you are not vulnerable to a SQL injection attack.fetchone()
returns one row from the query. If the query returned no results, it returnsNone
. Later,fetchall()
is used, which returns a list of all results.If validation succeeds, insert the new user data into the database. For security, passwords should never be stored in the database directly. Instead,
generate_password_hash()
is used to securely hash the password, and that hash is stored. Since this query modifies data,db.commit()
needs to be called afterwards to save the changes.After storing the user, they are redirected to the login page.
url_for()
generates the URL for the login view based on its name. This is preferable to writing the URL directly as it allows you to change the URL later without changing all code that links to it.redirect()
generates a redirect response to the generated URL.If validation fails, the error is shown to the user.
flash()
stores messages that can be retrieved when rendering the template.When the user initially navigates to
auth/register
, or there was a validation error, an HTML page with the registration form should be shown.render_template()
will render a template containing the HTML, which you’ll write in the next step of the tutorial.
Login¶
This view follows the same pattern as the register
view above.
flaskr/auth.py
¶@bp.route('/login', methods=('GET', 'POST'))
def login():
if request.method == 'POST':
username = request.form['username']
password = request.form['password']
db = get_db()
error = None
user = db.execute(
'SELECT * FROM user WHERE username = ?', (username,)
).fetchone()
if user is None:
error = 'Incorrect username.'
elif not check_password_hash(user['password'], password):
error = 'Incorrect password.'
if error is None:
session.clear()
session['user_id'] = user['id']
return redirect(url_for('index'))
flash(error)
return render_template('auth/login.html')
There are a few differences from the register
view:
The user is queried first and stored in a variable for later use.
check_password_hash()
hashes the submitted password in the same way as the stored hash and securely compares them. If they match, the password is valid.session
is adict
that stores data across requests. When validation succeeds, the user’sid
is stored in a new session. The data is stored in a cookie that is sent to the browser, and the browser then sends it back with subsequent requests. Flask securely signs the data so that it can’t be tampered with.
Now that the user’s id
is stored in the session
, it will be
available on subsequent requests. At the beginning of each request, if
a user is logged in their information should be loaded and made
available to other views.
flaskr/auth.py
¶@bp.before_app_request
def load_logged_in_user():
user_id = session.get('user_id')
if user_id is None:
g.user = None
else:
g.user = get_db().execute(
'SELECT * FROM user WHERE id = ?', (user_id,)
).fetchone()
bp.before_app_request()
registers
a function that runs before the view function, no matter what URL is
requested. load_logged_in_user
checks if a user id is stored in the
session
and gets that user’s data from the database, storing it
on g.user
, which lasts for the length of the request. If
there is no user id, or if the id doesn’t exist, g.user
will be
None
.
Logout¶
To log out, you need to remove the user id from the session
.
Then load_logged_in_user
won’t load a user on subsequent requests.
flaskr/auth.py
¶@bp.route('/logout')
def logout():
session.clear()
return redirect(url_for('index'))
Require Authentication in Other Views¶
Creating, editing, and deleting blog posts will require a user to be logged in. A decorator can be used to check this for each view it’s applied to.
flaskr/auth.py
¶def login_required(view):
@functools.wraps(view)
def wrapped_view(**kwargs):
if g.user is None:
return redirect(url_for('auth.login'))
return view(**kwargs)
return wrapped_view
This decorator returns a new view function that wraps the original view it’s applied to. The new function checks if a user is loaded and redirects to the login page otherwise. If a user is loaded the original view is called and continues normally. You’ll use this decorator when writing the blog views.
Endpoints and URLs¶
The url_for()
function generates the URL to a view based on a name
and arguments. The name associated with a view is also called the
endpoint, and by default it’s the same as the name of the view
function.
For example, the hello()
view that was added to the app
factory earlier in the tutorial has the name 'hello'
and can be
linked to with url_for('hello')
. If it took an argument, which
you’ll see later, it would be linked to using
url_for('hello', who='World')
.
When using a blueprint, the name of the blueprint is prepended to the
name of the function, so the endpoint for the login
function you
wrote above is 'auth.login'
because you added it to the 'auth'
blueprint.
Continue to Templates.
Templates¶
You’ve written the authentication views for your application, but if
you’re running the server and try to go to any of the URLs, you’ll see a
TemplateNotFound
error. That’s because the views are calling
render_template()
, but you haven’t written the templates yet.
The template files will be stored in the templates
directory inside
the flaskr
package.
Templates are files that contain static data as well as placeholders for dynamic data. A template is rendered with specific data to produce a final document. Flask uses the Jinja template library to render templates.
In your application, you will use templates to render HTML which
will display in the user’s browser. In Flask, Jinja is configured to
autoescape any data that is rendered in HTML templates. This means
that it’s safe to render user input; any characters they’ve entered that
could mess with the HTML, such as <
and >
will be escaped with
safe values that look the same in the browser but don’t cause unwanted
effects.
Jinja looks and behaves mostly like Python. Special delimiters are used
to distinguish Jinja syntax from the static data in the template.
Anything between {{
and }}
is an expression that will be output
to the final document. {%
and %}
denotes a control flow
statement like if
and for
. Unlike Python, blocks are denoted
by start and end tags rather than indentation since static text within
a block could change indentation.
The Base Layout¶
Each page in the application will have the same basic layout around a different body. Instead of writing the entire HTML structure in each template, each template will extend a base template and override specific sections.
flaskr/templates/base.html
¶<!doctype html>
<title>{% block title %}{% endblock %} - Flaskr</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ url_for('static', filename='style.css') }}">
<nav>
<h1>Flaskr</h1>
<ul>
{% if g.user %}
<li><span>{{ g.user['username'] }}</span>
<li><a href="{{ url_for('auth.logout') }}">Log Out</a>
{% else %}
<li><a href="{{ url_for('auth.register') }}">Register</a>
<li><a href="{{ url_for('auth.login') }}">Log In</a>
{% endif %}
</ul>
</nav>
<section class="content">
<header>
{% block header %}{% endblock %}
</header>
{% for message in get_flashed_messages() %}
<div class="flash">{{ message }}</div>
{% endfor %}
{% block content %}{% endblock %}
</section>
g
is automatically available in templates. Based on if
g.user
is set (from load_logged_in_user
), either the username
and a log out link are displayed, or links to register and log in
are displayed. url_for()
is also automatically available, and is
used to generate URLs to views instead of writing them out manually.
After the page title, and before the content, the template loops over
each message returned by get_flashed_messages()
. You used
flash()
in the views to show error messages, and this is the code
that will display them.
There are three blocks defined here that will be overridden in the other templates:
{% block title %}
will change the title displayed in the browser’s tab and window title.{% block header %}
is similar totitle
but will change the title displayed on the page.{% block content %}
is where the content of each page goes, such as the login form or a blog post.
The base template is directly in the templates
directory. To keep
the others organized, the templates for a blueprint will be placed in a
directory with the same name as the blueprint.
Register¶
flaskr/templates/auth/register.html
¶{% extends 'base.html' %}
{% block header %}
<h1>{% block title %}Register{% endblock %}</h1>
{% endblock %}
{% block content %}
<form method="post">
<label for="username">Username</label>
<input name="username" id="username" required>
<label for="password">Password</label>
<input type="password" name="password" id="password" required>
<input type="submit" value="Register">
</form>
{% endblock %}
{% extends 'base.html' %}
tells Jinja that this template should
replace the blocks from the base template. All the rendered content must
appear inside {% block %}
tags that override blocks from the base
template.
A useful pattern used here is to place {% block title %}
inside
{% block header %}
. This will set the title block and then output
the value of it into the header block, so that both the window and page
share the same title without writing it twice.
The input
tags are using the required
attribute here. This tells
the browser not to submit the form until those fields are filled in. If
the user is using an older browser that doesn’t support that attribute,
or if they are using something besides a browser to make requests, you
still want to validate the data in the Flask view. It’s important to
always fully validate the data on the server, even if the client does
some validation as well.
Log In¶
This is identical to the register template except for the title and submit button.
flaskr/templates/auth/login.html
¶{% extends 'base.html' %}
{% block header %}
<h1>{% block title %}Log In{% endblock %}</h1>
{% endblock %}
{% block content %}
<form method="post">
<label for="username">Username</label>
<input name="username" id="username" required>
<label for="password">Password</label>
<input type="password" name="password" id="password" required>
<input type="submit" value="Log In">
</form>
{% endblock %}
Register A User¶
Now that the authentication templates are written, you can register a
user. Make sure the server is still running (flask run
if it’s not),
then go to http://127.0.0.1:5000/auth/register.
Try clicking the “Register” button without filling out the form and see
that the browser shows an error message. Try removing the required
attributes from the register.html
template and click “Register”
again. Instead of the browser showing an error, the page will reload and
the error from flash()
in the view will be shown.
Fill out a username and password and you’ll be redirected to the login
page. Try entering an incorrect username, or the correct username and
incorrect password. If you log in you’ll get an error because there’s
no index
view to redirect to yet.
Continue to Static Files.
Static Files¶
The authentication views and templates work, but they look very plain right now. Some CSS can be added to add style to the HTML layout you constructed. The style won’t change, so it’s a static file rather than a template.
Flask automatically adds a static
view that takes a path relative
to the flaskr/static
directory and serves it. The base.html
template already has a link to the style.css
file:
{{ url_for('static', filename='style.css') }}
Besides CSS, other types of static files might be files with JavaScript
functions, or a logo image. They are all placed under the
flaskr/static
directory and referenced with
url_for('static', filename='...')
.
This tutorial isn’t focused on how to write CSS, so you can just copy
the following into the flaskr/static/style.css
file:
flaskr/static/style.css
¶html { font-family: sans-serif; background: #eee; padding: 1rem; }
body { max-width: 960px; margin: 0 auto; background: white; }
h1 { font-family: serif; color: #377ba8; margin: 1rem 0; }
a { color: #377ba8; }
hr { border: none; border-top: 1px solid lightgray; }
nav { background: lightgray; display: flex; align-items: center; padding: 0 0.5rem; }
nav h1 { flex: auto; margin: 0; }
nav h1 a { text-decoration: none; padding: 0.25rem 0.5rem; }
nav ul { display: flex; list-style: none; margin: 0; padding: 0; }
nav ul li a, nav ul li span, header .action { display: block; padding: 0.5rem; }
.content { padding: 0 1rem 1rem; }
.content > header { border-bottom: 1px solid lightgray; display: flex; align-items: flex-end; }
.content > header h1 { flex: auto; margin: 1rem 0 0.25rem 0; }
.flash { margin: 1em 0; padding: 1em; background: #cae6f6; border: 1px solid #377ba8; }
.post > header { display: flex; align-items: flex-end; font-size: 0.85em; }
.post > header > div:first-of-type { flex: auto; }
.post > header h1 { font-size: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0; }
.post .about { color: slategray; font-style: italic; }
.post .body { white-space: pre-line; }
.content:last-child { margin-bottom: 0; }
.content form { margin: 1em 0; display: flex; flex-direction: column; }
.content label { font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0.5em; }
.content input, .content textarea { margin-bottom: 1em; }
.content textarea { min-height: 12em; resize: vertical; }
input.danger { color: #cc2f2e; }
input[type=submit] { align-self: start; min-width: 10em; }
You can find a less compact version of style.css
in the
example code.
Go to http://127.0.0.1:5000/auth/login and the page should look like the screenshot below.

You can read more about CSS from Mozilla’s documentation. If you change a static file, refresh the browser page. If the change doesn’t show up, try clearing your browser’s cache.
Continue to Blog Blueprint.
Blog Blueprint¶
You’ll use the same techniques you learned about when writing the authentication blueprint to write the blog blueprint. The blog should list all posts, allow logged in users to create posts, and allow the author of a post to edit or delete it.
As you implement each view, keep the development server running. As you save your changes, try going to the URL in your browser and testing them out.
The Blueprint¶
Define the blueprint and register it in the application factory.
flaskr/blog.py
¶from flask import (
Blueprint, flash, g, redirect, render_template, request, url_for
)
from werkzeug.exceptions import abort
from flaskr.auth import login_required
from flaskr.db import get_db
bp = Blueprint('blog', __name__)
Import and register the blueprint from the factory using
app.register_blueprint()
. Place the
new code at the end of the factory function before returning the app.
flaskr/__init__.py
¶def create_app():
app = ...
# existing code omitted
from . import blog
app.register_blueprint(blog.bp)
app.add_url_rule('/', endpoint='index')
return app
Unlike the auth blueprint, the blog blueprint does not have a
url_prefix
. So the index
view will be at /
, the create
view at /create
, and so on. The blog is the main feature of Flaskr,
so it makes sense that the blog index will be the main index.
However, the endpoint for the index
view defined below will be
blog.index
. Some of the authentication views referred to a plain
index
endpoint. app.add_url_rule()
associates the endpoint name 'index'
with the /
url so that
url_for('index')
or url_for('blog.index')
will both work,
generating the same /
URL either way.
In another application you might give the blog blueprint a
url_prefix
and define a separate index
view in the application
factory, similar to the hello
view. Then the index
and
blog.index
endpoints and URLs would be different.
Index¶
The index will show all of the posts, most recent first. A JOIN
is
used so that the author information from the user
table is
available in the result.
flaskr/blog.py
¶@bp.route('/')
def index():
db = get_db()
posts = db.execute(
'SELECT p.id, title, body, created, author_id, username'
' FROM post p JOIN user u ON p.author_id = u.id'
' ORDER BY created DESC'
).fetchall()
return render_template('blog/index.html', posts=posts)
flaskr/templates/blog/index.html
¶{% extends 'base.html' %}
{% block header %}
<h1>{% block title %}Posts{% endblock %}</h1>
{% if g.user %}
<a class="action" href="{{ url_for('blog.create') }}">New</a>
{% endif %}
{% endblock %}
{% block content %}
{% for post in posts %}
<article class="post">
<header>
<div>
<h1>{{ post['title'] }}</h1>
<div class="about">by {{ post['username'] }} on {{ post['created'].strftime('%Y-%m-%d') }}</div>
</div>
{% if g.user['id'] == post['author_id'] %}
<a class="action" href="{{ url_for('blog.update', id=post['id']) }}">Edit</a>
{% endif %}
</header>
<p class="body">{{ post['body'] }}</p>
</article>
{% if not loop.last %}
<hr>
{% endif %}
{% endfor %}
{% endblock %}
When a user is logged in, the header
block adds a link to the
create
view. When the user is the author of a post, they’ll see an
“Edit” link to the update
view for that post. loop.last
is a
special variable available inside Jinja for loops. It’s used to
display a line after each post except the last one, to visually separate
them.
Create¶
The create
view works the same as the auth register
view. Either
the form is displayed, or the posted data is validated and the post is
added to the database or an error is shown.
The login_required
decorator you wrote earlier is used on the blog
views. A user must be logged in to visit these views, otherwise they
will be redirected to the login page.
flaskr/blog.py
¶@bp.route('/create', methods=('GET', 'POST'))
@login_required
def create():
if request.method == 'POST':
title = request.form['title']
body = request.form['body']
error = None
if not title:
error = 'Title is required.'
if error is not None:
flash(error)
else:
db = get_db()
db.execute(
'INSERT INTO post (title, body, author_id)'
' VALUES (?, ?, ?)',
(title, body, g.user['id'])
)
db.commit()
return redirect(url_for('blog.index'))
return render_template('blog/create.html')
flaskr/templates/blog/create.html
¶{% extends 'base.html' %}
{% block header %}
<h1>{% block title %}New Post{% endblock %}</h1>
{% endblock %}
{% block content %}
<form method="post">
<label for="title">Title</label>
<input name="title" id="title" value="{{ request.form['title'] }}" required>
<label for="body">Body</label>
<textarea name="body" id="body">{{ request.form['body'] }}</textarea>
<input type="submit" value="Save">
</form>
{% endblock %}
Update¶
Both the update
and delete
views will need to fetch a post
by id
and check if the author matches the logged in user. To avoid
duplicating code, you can write a function to get the post
and call
it from each view.
flaskr/blog.py
¶def get_post(id, check_author=True):
post = get_db().execute(
'SELECT p.id, title, body, created, author_id, username'
' FROM post p JOIN user u ON p.author_id = u.id'
' WHERE p.id = ?',
(id,)
).fetchone()
if post is None:
abort(404, "Post id {0} doesn't exist.".format(id))
if check_author and post['author_id'] != g.user['id']:
abort(403)
return post
abort()
will raise a special exception that returns an HTTP status
code. It takes an optional message to show with the error, otherwise a
default message is used. 404
means “Not Found”, and 403
means
“Forbidden”. (401
means “Unauthorized”, but you redirect to the
login page instead of returning that status.)
The check_author
argument is defined so that the function can be
used to get a post
without checking the author. This would be useful
if you wrote a view to show an individual post on a page, where the user
doesn’t matter because they’re not modifying the post.
flaskr/blog.py
¶@bp.route('/<int:id>/update', methods=('GET', 'POST'))
@login_required
def update(id):
post = get_post(id)
if request.method == 'POST':
title = request.form['title']
body = request.form['body']
error = None
if not title:
error = 'Title is required.'
if error is not None:
flash(error)
else:
db = get_db()
db.execute(
'UPDATE post SET title = ?, body = ?'
' WHERE id = ?',
(title, body, id)
)
db.commit()
return redirect(url_for('blog.index'))
return render_template('blog/update.html', post=post)
Unlike the views you’ve written so far, the update
function takes
an argument, id
. That corresponds to the <int:id>
in the route.
A real URL will look like /1/update
. Flask will capture the 1
,
ensure it’s an int
, and pass it as the id
argument. If you
don’t specify int:
and instead do <id>
, it will be a string.
To generate a URL to the update page, url_for()
needs to be passed
the id
so it knows what to fill in:
url_for('blog.update', id=post['id'])
. This is also in the
index.html
file above.
The create
and update
views look very similar. The main
difference is that the update
view uses a post
object and an
UPDATE
query instead of an INSERT
. With some clever refactoring,
you could use one view and template for both actions, but for the
tutorial it’s clearer to keep them separate.
flaskr/templates/blog/update.html
¶{% extends 'base.html' %}
{% block header %}
<h1>{% block title %}Edit "{{ post['title'] }}"{% endblock %}</h1>
{% endblock %}
{% block content %}
<form method="post">
<label for="title">Title</label>
<input name="title" id="title"
value="{{ request.form['title'] or post['title'] }}" required>
<label for="body">Body</label>
<textarea name="body" id="body">{{ request.form['body'] or post['body'] }}</textarea>
<input type="submit" value="Save">
</form>
<hr>
<form action="{{ url_for('blog.delete', id=post['id']) }}" method="post">
<input class="danger" type="submit" value="Delete" onclick="return confirm('Are you sure?');">
</form>
{% endblock %}
This template has two forms. The first posts the edited data to the
current page (/<id>/update
). The other form contains only a button
and specifies an action
attribute that posts to the delete view
instead. The button uses some JavaScript to show a confirmation dialog
before submitting.
The pattern {{ request.form['title'] or post['title'] }}
is used to
choose what data appears in the form. When the form hasn’t been
submitted, the original post
data appears, but if invalid form data
was posted you want to display that so the user can fix the error, so
request.form
is used instead. request
is another variable
that’s automatically available in templates.
Delete¶
The delete view doesn’t have its own template, the delete button is part
of update.html
and posts to the /<id>/delete
URL. Since there
is no template, it will only handle the POST
method and then redirect
to the index
view.
flaskr/blog.py
¶@bp.route('/<int:id>/delete', methods=('POST',))
@login_required
def delete(id):
get_post(id)
db = get_db()
db.execute('DELETE FROM post WHERE id = ?', (id,))
db.commit()
return redirect(url_for('blog.index'))
Congratulations, you’ve now finished writing your application! Take some time to try out everything in the browser. However, there’s still more to do before the project is complete.
Continue to Make the Project Installable.
Make the Project Installable¶
Making your project installable means that you can build a distribution file and install that in another environment, just like you installed Flask in your project’s environment. This makes deploying your project the same as installing any other library, so you’re using all the standard Python tools to manage everything.
Installing also comes with other benefits that might not be obvious from the tutorial or as a new Python user, including:
Currently, Python and Flask understand how to use the
flaskr
package only because you’re running from your project’s directory. Installing means you can import it no matter where you run from.You can manage your project’s dependencies just like other packages do, so
pip install yourproject.whl
installs them.Test tools can isolate your test environment from your development environment.
Note
This is being introduced late in the tutorial, but in your future projects you should always start with this.
Describe the Project¶
The setup.py
file describes your project and the files that belong
to it.
setup.py
¶from setuptools import find_packages, setup
setup(
name='flaskr',
version='1.0.0',
packages=find_packages(),
include_package_data=True,
zip_safe=False,
install_requires=[
'flask',
],
)
packages
tells Python what package directories (and the Python files
they contain) to include. find_packages()
finds these directories
automatically so you don’t have to type them out. To include other
files, such as the static and templates directories,
include_package_data
is set. Python needs another file named
MANIFEST.in
to tell what this other data is.
MANIFEST.in
¶include flaskr/schema.sql
graft flaskr/static
graft flaskr/templates
global-exclude *.pyc
This tells Python to copy everything in the static
and templates
directories, and the schema.sql
file, but to exclude all bytecode
files.
See the official packaging guide for another explanation of the files and options used.
Install the Project¶
Use pip
to install your project in the virtual environment.
$ pip install -e .
This tells pip to find setup.py
in the current directory and install
it in editable or development mode. Editable mode means that as you
make changes to your local code, you’ll only need to re-install if you
change the metadata about the project, such as its dependencies.
You can observe that the project is now installed with pip list
.
$ pip list
Package Version Location
-------------- --------- ----------------------------------
click 6.7
Flask 1.0
flaskr 1.0.0 /home/user/Projects/flask-tutorial
itsdangerous 0.24
Jinja2 2.10
MarkupSafe 1.0
pip 9.0.3
setuptools 39.0.1
Werkzeug 0.14.1
wheel 0.30.0
Nothing changes from how you’ve been running your project so far.
FLASK_APP
is still set to flaskr
and flask run
still runs
the application, but you can call it from anywhere, not just the
flask-tutorial
directory.
Continue to Test Coverage.
Test Coverage¶
Writing unit tests for your application lets you check that the code you wrote works the way you expect. Flask provides a test client that simulates requests to the application and returns the response data.
You should test as much of your code as possible. Code in functions only
runs when the function is called, and code in branches, such as if
blocks, only runs when the condition is met. You want to make sure that
each function is tested with data that covers each branch.
The closer you get to 100% coverage, the more comfortable you can be that making a change won’t unexpectedly change other behavior. However, 100% coverage doesn’t guarantee that your application doesn’t have bugs. In particular, it doesn’t test how the user interacts with the application in the browser. Despite this, test coverage is an important tool to use during development.
Note
This is being introduced late in the tutorial, but in your future projects you should test as you develop.
You’ll use pytest and coverage to test and measure your code. Install them both:
$ pip install pytest coverage
Setup and Fixtures¶
The test code is located in the tests
directory. This directory is
next to the flaskr
package, not inside it. The
tests/conftest.py
file contains setup functions called fixtures
that each test will use. Tests are in Python modules that start with
test_
, and each test function in those modules also starts with
test_
.
Each test will create a new temporary database file and populate some data that will be used in the tests. Write a SQL file to insert that data.
tests/data.sql
¶INSERT INTO user (username, password)
VALUES
('test', 'pbkdf2:sha256:50000$TCI4GzcX$0de171a4f4dac32e3364c7ddc7c14f3e2fa61f2d17574483f7ffbb431b4acb2f'),
('other', 'pbkdf2:sha256:50000$kJPKsz6N$d2d4784f1b030a9761f5ccaeeaca413f27f2ecb76d6168407af962ddce849f79');
INSERT INTO post (title, body, author_id, created)
VALUES
('test title', 'test' || x'0a' || 'body', 1, '2018-01-01 00:00:00');
The app
fixture will call the factory and pass test_config
to
configure the application and database for testing instead of using your
local development configuration.
tests/conftest.py
¶import os
import tempfile
import pytest
from flaskr import create_app
from flaskr.db import get_db, init_db
with open(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'data.sql'), 'rb') as f:
_data_sql = f.read().decode('utf8')
@pytest.fixture
def app():
db_fd, db_path = tempfile.mkstemp()
app = create_app({
'TESTING': True,
'DATABASE': db_path,
})
with app.app_context():
init_db()
get_db().executescript(_data_sql)
yield app
os.close(db_fd)
os.unlink(db_path)
@pytest.fixture
def client(app):
return app.test_client()
@pytest.fixture
def runner(app):
return app.test_cli_runner()
tempfile.mkstemp()
creates and opens a temporary file, returning
the file object and the path to it. The DATABASE
path is
overridden so it points to this temporary path instead of the instance
folder. After setting the path, the database tables are created and the
test data is inserted. After the test is over, the temporary file is
closed and removed.
TESTING
tells Flask that the app is in test mode. Flask changes
some internal behavior so it’s easier to test, and other extensions can
also use the flag to make testing them easier.
The client
fixture calls
app.test_client()
with the application
object created by the app
fixture. Tests will use the client to make
requests to the application without running the server.
The runner
fixture is similar to client
.
app.test_cli_runner()
creates a runner
that can call the Click commands registered with the application.
Pytest uses fixtures by matching their function names with the names
of arguments in the test functions. For example, the test_hello
function you’ll write next takes a client
argument. Pytest matches
that with the client
fixture function, calls it, and passes the
returned value to the test function.
Factory¶
There’s not much to test about the factory itself. Most of the code will be executed for each test already, so if something fails the other tests will notice.
The only behavior that can change is passing test config. If config is not passed, there should be some default configuration, otherwise the configuration should be overridden.
tests/test_factory.py
¶from flaskr import create_app
def test_config():
assert not create_app().testing
assert create_app({'TESTING': True}).testing
def test_hello(client):
response = client.get('/hello')
assert response.data == b'Hello, World!'
You added the hello
route as an example when writing the factory at
the beginning of the tutorial. It returns “Hello, World!”, so the test
checks that the response data matches.
Database¶
Within an application context, get_db
should return the same
connection each time it’s called. After the context, the connection
should be closed.
tests/test_db.py
¶import sqlite3
import pytest
from flaskr.db import get_db
def test_get_close_db(app):
with app.app_context():
db = get_db()
assert db is get_db()
with pytest.raises(sqlite3.ProgrammingError) as e:
db.execute('SELECT 1')
assert 'closed' in str(e.value)
The init-db
command should call the init_db
function and output
a message.
tests/test_db.py
¶def test_init_db_command(runner, monkeypatch):
class Recorder(object):
called = False
def fake_init_db():
Recorder.called = True
monkeypatch.setattr('flaskr.db.init_db', fake_init_db)
result = runner.invoke(args=['init-db'])
assert 'Initialized' in result.output
assert Recorder.called
This test uses Pytest’s monkeypatch
fixture to replace the
init_db
function with one that records that it’s been called. The
runner
fixture you wrote above is used to call the init-db
command by name.
Authentication¶
For most of the views, a user needs to be logged in. The easiest way to
do this in tests is to make a POST
request to the login
view
with the client. Rather than writing that out every time, you can write
a class with methods to do that, and use a fixture to pass it the client
for each test.
tests/conftest.py
¶class AuthActions(object):
def __init__(self, client):
self._client = client
def login(self, username='test', password='test'):
return self._client.post(
'/auth/login',
data={'username': username, 'password': password}
)
def logout(self):
return self._client.get('/auth/logout')
@pytest.fixture
def auth(client):
return AuthActions(client)
With the auth
fixture, you can call auth.login()
in a test to
log in as the test
user, which was inserted as part of the test
data in the app
fixture.
The register
view should render successfully on GET
. On POST
with valid form data, it should redirect to the login URL and the user’s
data should be in the database. Invalid data should display error
messages.
tests/test_auth.py
¶import pytest
from flask import g, session
from flaskr.db import get_db
def test_register(client, app):
assert client.get('/auth/register').status_code == 200
response = client.post(
'/auth/register', data={'username': 'a', 'password': 'a'}
)
assert 'http://localhost/auth/login' == response.headers['Location']
with app.app_context():
assert get_db().execute(
"select * from user where username = 'a'",
).fetchone() is not None
@pytest.mark.parametrize(('username', 'password', 'message'), (
('', '', b'Username is required.'),
('a', '', b'Password is required.'),
('test', 'test', b'already registered'),
))
def test_register_validate_input(client, username, password, message):
response = client.post(
'/auth/register',
data={'username': username, 'password': password}
)
assert message in response.data
client.get()
makes a GET
request
and returns the Response
object returned by Flask. Similarly,
client.post()
makes a POST
request, converting the data
dict into form data.
To test that the page renders successfully, a simple request is made and
checked for a 200 OK
status_code
. If
rendering failed, Flask would return a 500 Internal Server Error
code.
headers
will have a Location
header with the login
URL when the register view redirects to the login view.
data
contains the body of the response as bytes. If
you expect a certain value to render on the page, check that it’s in
data
. Bytes must be compared to bytes. If you want to compare
Unicode text, use get_data(as_text=True)
instead.
pytest.mark.parametrize
tells Pytest to run the same test function
with different arguments. You use it here to test different invalid
input and error messages without writing the same code three times.
The tests for the login
view are very similar to those for
register
. Rather than testing the data in the database,
session
should have user_id
set after logging in.
tests/test_auth.py
¶def test_login(client, auth):
assert client.get('/auth/login').status_code == 200
response = auth.login()
assert response.headers['Location'] == 'http://localhost/'
with client:
client.get('/')
assert session['user_id'] == 1
assert g.user['username'] == 'test'
@pytest.mark.parametrize(('username', 'password', 'message'), (
('a', 'test', b'Incorrect username.'),
('test', 'a', b'Incorrect password.'),
))
def test_login_validate_input(auth, username, password, message):
response = auth.login(username, password)
assert message in response.data
Using client
in a with
block allows accessing context variables
such as session
after the response is returned. Normally,
accessing session
outside of a request would raise an error.
Testing logout
is the opposite of login
. session
should
not contain user_id
after logging out.
tests/test_auth.py
¶def test_logout(client, auth):
auth.login()
with client:
auth.logout()
assert 'user_id' not in session
Blog¶
All the blog views use the auth
fixture you wrote earlier. Call
auth.login()
and subsequent requests from the client will be logged
in as the test
user.
The index
view should display information about the post that was
added with the test data. When logged in as the author, there should be
a link to edit the post.
You can also test some more authentication behavior while testing the
index
view. When not logged in, each page shows links to log in or
register. When logged in, there’s a link to log out.
tests/test_blog.py
¶import pytest
from flaskr.db import get_db
def test_index(client, auth):
response = client.get('/')
assert b"Log In" in response.data
assert b"Register" in response.data
auth.login()
response = client.get('/')
assert b'Log Out' in response.data
assert b'test title' in response.data
assert b'by test on 2018-01-01' in response.data
assert b'test\nbody' in response.data
assert b'href="/1/update"' in response.data
A user must be logged in to access the create
, update
, and
delete
views. The logged in user must be the author of the post to
access update
and delete
, otherwise a 403 Forbidden
status
is returned. If a post
with the given id
doesn’t exist,
update
and delete
should return 404 Not Found
.
tests/test_blog.py
¶@pytest.mark.parametrize('path', (
'/create',
'/1/update',
'/1/delete',
))
def test_login_required(client, path):
response = client.post(path)
assert response.headers['Location'] == 'http://localhost/auth/login'
def test_author_required(app, client, auth):
# change the post author to another user
with app.app_context():
db = get_db()
db.execute('UPDATE post SET author_id = 2 WHERE id = 1')
db.commit()
auth.login()
# current user can't modify other user's post
assert client.post('/1/update').status_code == 403
assert client.post('/1/delete').status_code == 403
# current user doesn't see edit link
assert b'href="/1/update"' not in client.get('/').data
@pytest.mark.parametrize('path', (
'/2/update',
'/2/delete',
))
def test_exists_required(client, auth, path):
auth.login()
assert client.post(path).status_code == 404
The create
and update
views should render and return a
200 OK
status for a GET
request. When valid data is sent in a
POST
request, create
should insert the new post data into the
database, and update
should modify the existing data. Both pages
should show an error message on invalid data.
tests/test_blog.py
¶def test_create(client, auth, app):
auth.login()
assert client.get('/create').status_code == 200
client.post('/create', data={'title': 'created', 'body': ''})
with app.app_context():
db = get_db()
count = db.execute('SELECT COUNT(id) FROM post').fetchone()[0]
assert count == 2
def test_update(client, auth, app):
auth.login()
assert client.get('/1/update').status_code == 200
client.post('/1/update', data={'title': 'updated', 'body': ''})
with app.app_context():
db = get_db()
post = db.execute('SELECT * FROM post WHERE id = 1').fetchone()
assert post['title'] == 'updated'
@pytest.mark.parametrize('path', (
'/create',
'/1/update',
))
def test_create_update_validate(client, auth, path):
auth.login()
response = client.post(path, data={'title': '', 'body': ''})
assert b'Title is required.' in response.data
The delete
view should redirect to the index URL and the post should
no longer exist in the database.
tests/test_blog.py
¶def test_delete(client, auth, app):
auth.login()
response = client.post('/1/delete')
assert response.headers['Location'] == 'http://localhost/'
with app.app_context():
db = get_db()
post = db.execute('SELECT * FROM post WHERE id = 1').fetchone()
assert post is None
Running the Tests¶
Some extra configuration, which is not required but makes running
tests with coverage less verbose, can be added to the project’s
setup.cfg
file.
setup.cfg
¶[tool:pytest]
testpaths = tests
[coverage:run]
branch = True
source =
flaskr
To run the tests, use the pytest
command. It will find and run all
the test functions you’ve written.
$ pytest
========================= test session starts ==========================
platform linux -- Python 3.6.4, pytest-3.5.0, py-1.5.3, pluggy-0.6.0
rootdir: /home/user/Projects/flask-tutorial, inifile: setup.cfg
collected 23 items
tests/test_auth.py ........ [ 34%]
tests/test_blog.py ............ [ 86%]
tests/test_db.py .. [ 95%]
tests/test_factory.py .. [100%]
====================== 24 passed in 0.64 seconds =======================
If any tests fail, pytest will show the error that was raised. You can
run pytest -v
to get a list of each test function rather than dots.
To measure the code coverage of your tests, use the coverage
command
to run pytest instead of running it directly.
$ coverage run -m pytest
You can either view a simple coverage report in the terminal:
$ coverage report
Name Stmts Miss Branch BrPart Cover
------------------------------------------------------
flaskr/__init__.py 21 0 2 0 100%
flaskr/auth.py 54 0 22 0 100%
flaskr/blog.py 54 0 16 0 100%
flaskr/db.py 24 0 4 0 100%
------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL 153 0 44 0 100%
An HTML report allows you to see which lines were covered in each file:
$ coverage html
This generates files in the htmlcov
directory. Open
htmlcov/index.html
in your browser to see the report.
Continue to Deploy to Production.
Deploy to Production¶
This part of the tutorial assumes you have a server that you want to deploy your application to. It gives an overview of how to create the distribution file and install it, but won’t go into specifics about what server or software to use. You can set up a new environment on your development computer to try out the instructions below, but probably shouldn’t use it for hosting a real public application. See Deployment Options for a list of many different ways to host your application.
Build and Install¶
When you want to deploy your application elsewhere, you build a
distribution file. The current standard for Python distribution is the
wheel format, with the .whl
extension. Make sure the wheel library
is installed first:
$ pip install wheel
Running setup.py
with Python gives you a command line tool to issue
build-related commands. The bdist_wheel
command will build a wheel
distribution file.
$ python setup.py bdist_wheel
You can find the file in dist/flaskr-1.0.0-py3-none-any.whl
. The
file name is in the format of {project name}-{version}-{python tag}
-{abi tag}-{platform tag}.
Copy this file to another machine,
set up a new virtualenv, then install the
file with pip
.
$ pip install flaskr-1.0.0-py3-none-any.whl
Pip will install your project along with its dependencies.
Since this is a different machine, you need to run init-db
again to
create the database in the instance folder.
$ export FLASK_APP=flaskr
$ flask init-db
When Flask detects that it’s installed (not in editable mode), it uses
a different directory for the instance folder. You can find it at
venv/var/flaskr-instance
instead.
Configure the Secret Key¶
In the beginning of the tutorial that you gave a default value for
SECRET_KEY
. This should be changed to some random bytes in
production. Otherwise, attackers could use the public 'dev'
key to
modify the session cookie, or anything else that uses the secret key.
You can use the following command to output a random secret key:
$ python -c 'import os; print(os.urandom(16))'
b'_5#y2L"F4Q8z\n\xec]/'
Create the config.py
file in the instance folder, which the factory
will read from if it exists. Copy the generated value into it.
venv/var/flaskr-instance/config.py
¶SECRET_KEY = b'_5#y2L"F4Q8z\n\xec]/'
You can also set any other necessary configuration here, although
SECRET_KEY
is the only one needed for Flaskr.
Run with a Production Server¶
When running publicly rather than in development, you should not use the
built-in development server (flask run
). The development server is
provided by Werkzeug for convenience, but is not designed to be
particularly efficient, stable, or secure.
Instead, use a production WSGI server. For example, to use Waitress, first install it in the virtual environment:
$ pip install waitress
You need to tell Waitress about your application, but it doesn’t use
FLASK_APP
like flask run
does. You need to tell it to import and
call the application factory to get an application object.
$ waitress-serve --call 'flaskr:create_app'
Serving on http://0.0.0.0:8080
See Deployment Options for a list of many different ways to host your application. Waitress is just an example, chosen for the tutorial because it supports both Windows and Linux. There are many more WSGI servers and deployment options that you may choose for your project.
Continue to Keep Developing!.
Keep Developing!¶
You’ve learned about quite a few Flask and Python concepts throughout the tutorial. Go back and review the tutorial and compare your code with the steps you took to get there. Compare your project to the example project, which might look a bit different due to the step-by-step nature of the tutorial.
There’s a lot more to Flask than what you’ve seen so far. Even so, you’re now equipped to start developing your own web applications. Check out the Quickstart for an overview of what Flask can do, then dive into the docs to keep learning. Flask uses Jinja, Click, Werkzeug, and ItsDangerous behind the scenes, and they all have their own documentation too. You’ll also be interested in Extensions which make tasks like working with the database or validating form data easier and more powerful.
If you want to keep developing your Flaskr project, here are some ideas for what to try next:
A detail view to show a single post. Click a post’s title to go to its page.
Like / unlike a post.
Comments.
Tags. Clicking a tag shows all the posts with that tag.
A search box that filters the index page by name.
Paged display. Only show 5 posts per page.
Upload an image to go along with a post.
Format posts using Markdown.
An RSS feed of new posts.
Have fun and make awesome applications!
This tutorial will walk you through creating a basic blog application called Flaskr. Users will be able to register, log in, create posts, and edit or delete their own posts. You will be able to package and install the application on other computers.

It’s assumed that you’re already familiar with Python. The official tutorial in the Python docs is a great way to learn or review first.
While it’s designed to give a good starting point, the tutorial doesn’t cover all of Flask’s features. Check out the Quickstart for an overview of what Flask can do, then dive into the docs to find out more. The tutorial only uses what’s provided by Flask and Python. In another project, you might decide to use Extensions or other libraries to make some tasks simpler.

Flask is flexible. It doesn’t require you to use any particular project or code layout. However, when first starting, it’s helpful to use a more structured approach. This means that the tutorial will require a bit of boilerplate up front, but it’s done to avoid many common pitfalls that new developers encounter, and it creates a project that’s easy to expand on. Once you become more comfortable with Flask, you can step out of this structure and take full advantage of Flask’s flexibility.

The tutorial project is available as an example in the Flask repository, if you want to compare your project with the final product as you follow the tutorial.
Continue to Project Layout.
Templates¶
Flask leverages Jinja2 as its template engine. You are obviously free to use a different template engine, but you still have to install Jinja2 to run Flask itself. This requirement is necessary to enable rich extensions. An extension can depend on Jinja2 being present.
This section only gives a very quick introduction into how Jinja2 is integrated into Flask. If you want information on the template engine’s syntax itself, head over to the official Jinja2 Template Documentation for more information.
Jinja Setup¶
Unless customized, Jinja2 is configured by Flask as follows:
autoescaping is enabled for all templates ending in
.html
,.htm
,.xml
as well as.xhtml
when usingrender_template()
.autoescaping is enabled for all strings when using
render_template_string()
.a template has the ability to opt in/out autoescaping with the
{% autoescape %}
tag.Flask inserts a couple of global functions and helpers into the Jinja2 context, additionally to the values that are present by default.
Standard Context¶
The following global variables are available within Jinja2 templates by default:
-
config
The current configuration object (
flask.config
)Changelog
Changed in version 0.10: This is now always available, even in imported templates.
New in version 0.6.
-
request
The current request object (
flask.request
). This variable is unavailable if the template was rendered without an active request context.
-
session
The current session object (
flask.session
). This variable is unavailable if the template was rendered without an active request context.
-
g
The request-bound object for global variables (
flask.g
). This variable is unavailable if the template was rendered without an active request context.
-
url_for
() The
flask.url_for()
function.
-
get_flashed_messages
() The
flask.get_flashed_messages()
function.
The Jinja Context Behavior
These variables are added to the context of variables, they are not global variables. The difference is that by default these will not show up in the context of imported templates. This is partially caused by performance considerations, partially to keep things explicit.
What does this mean for you? If you have a macro you want to import, that needs to access the request object you have two possibilities:
you explicitly pass the request to the macro as parameter, or the attribute of the request object you are interested in.
you import the macro “with context”.
Importing with context looks like this:
{% from '_helpers.html' import my_macro with context %}
Standard Filters¶
Flask provides the following Jinja2 filters in addition to the filters provided by Jinja2 itself:
-
tojson
() This function converts the given object into JSON representation. This is for example very helpful if you try to generate JavaScript on the fly.
<script type=text/javascript> doSomethingWith({{ user.username|tojson }}); </script>
It is also safe to use the output of |tojson in a single-quoted HTML attribute:
<button onclick='doSomethingWith({{ user.username|tojson }})'> Click me </button>
Note that in versions of Flask prior to 0.10, if using the output of
|tojson
insidescript
, make sure to disable escaping with|safe
. In Flask 0.10 and above, this happens automatically.
Controlling Autoescaping¶
Autoescaping is the concept of automatically escaping special characters
for you. Special characters in the sense of HTML (or XML, and thus XHTML)
are &
, >
, <
, "
as well as '
. Because these characters
carry specific meanings in documents on their own you have to replace them
by so called “entities” if you want to use them for text. Not doing so
would not only cause user frustration by the inability to use these
characters in text, but can also lead to security problems. (see
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS))
Sometimes however you will need to disable autoescaping in templates. This can be the case if you want to explicitly inject HTML into pages, for example if they come from a system that generates secure HTML like a markdown to HTML converter.
There are three ways to accomplish that:
In the Python code, wrap the HTML string in a
Markup
object before passing it to the template. This is in general the recommended way.Inside the template, use the
|safe
filter to explicitly mark a string as safe HTML ({{ myvariable|safe }}
)Temporarily disable the autoescape system altogether.
To disable the autoescape system in templates, you can use the {%
autoescape %}
block:
{% autoescape false %}
<p>autoescaping is disabled here
<p>{{ will_not_be_escaped }}
{% endautoescape %}
Whenever you do this, please be very cautious about the variables you are using in this block.
Registering Filters¶
If you want to register your own filters in Jinja2 you have two ways to do
that. You can either put them by hand into the
jinja_env
of the application or use the
template_filter()
decorator.
The two following examples work the same and both reverse an object:
@app.template_filter('reverse')
def reverse_filter(s):
return s[::-1]
def reverse_filter(s):
return s[::-1]
app.jinja_env.filters['reverse'] = reverse_filter
In case of the decorator the argument is optional if you want to use the function name as name of the filter. Once registered, you can use the filter in your templates in the same way as Jinja2’s builtin filters, for example if you have a Python list in context called mylist:
{% for x in mylist | reverse %}
{% endfor %}
Context Processors¶
To inject new variables automatically into the context of a template, context processors exist in Flask. Context processors run before the template is rendered and have the ability to inject new values into the template context. A context processor is a function that returns a dictionary. The keys and values of this dictionary are then merged with the template context, for all templates in the app:
@app.context_processor
def inject_user():
return dict(user=g.user)
The context processor above makes a variable called user available in the template with the value of g.user. This example is not very interesting because g is available in templates anyways, but it gives an idea how this works.
Variables are not limited to values; a context processor can also make functions available to templates (since Python allows passing around functions):
@app.context_processor
def utility_processor():
def format_price(amount, currency=u'€'):
return u'{0:.2f}{1}'.format(amount, currency)
return dict(format_price=format_price)
The context processor above makes the format_price function available to all templates:
{{ format_price(0.33) }}
You could also build format_price as a template filter (see Registering Filters), but this demonstrates how to pass functions in a context processor.
Testing Flask Applications¶
Something that is untested is broken.
The origin of this quote is unknown and while it is not entirely correct, it is also not far from the truth. Untested applications make it hard to improve existing code and developers of untested applications tend to become pretty paranoid. If an application has automated tests, you can safely make changes and instantly know if anything breaks.
Flask provides a way to test your application by exposing the Werkzeug
test Client
and handling the context locals for you.
You can then use that with your favourite testing solution.
In this documentation we will use the pytest package as the base
framework for our tests. You can install it with pip
, like so:
$ pip install pytest
The Application¶
First, we need an application to test; we will use the application from the Tutorial. If you don’t have that application yet, get the source code from the examples.
The Testing Skeleton¶
We begin by adding a tests directory under the application root. Then
create a Python file to store our tests (test_flaskr.py
). When we
format the filename like test_*.py
, it will be auto-discoverable by
pytest.
Next, we create a pytest fixture called
client()
that configures
the application for testing and initializes a new database:
import os
import tempfile
import pytest
from flaskr import flaskr
@pytest.fixture
def client():
db_fd, flaskr.app.config['DATABASE'] = tempfile.mkstemp()
flaskr.app.config['TESTING'] = True
with flaskr.app.test_client() as client:
with flaskr.app.app_context():
flaskr.init_db()
yield client
os.close(db_fd)
os.unlink(flaskr.app.config['DATABASE'])
This client fixture will be called by each individual test. It gives us a simple interface to the application, where we can trigger test requests to the application. The client will also keep track of cookies for us.
During setup, the TESTING
config flag is activated. What
this does is disable error catching during request handling, so that
you get better error reports when performing test requests against the
application.
Because SQLite3 is filesystem-based, we can easily use the
tempfile
module to create a temporary database and initialize it.
The mkstemp()
function does two things for us: it returns a
low-level file handle and a random file name, the latter we use as
database name. We just have to keep the db_fd around so that we can use
the os.close()
function to close the file.
To delete the database after the test, the fixture closes the file and removes it from the filesystem.
If we now run the test suite, we should see the following output:
$ pytest
================ test session starts ================
rootdir: ./flask/examples/flaskr, inifile: setup.cfg
collected 0 items
=========== no tests ran in 0.07 seconds ============
Even though it did not run any actual tests, we already know that our
flaskr
application is syntactically valid, otherwise the import
would have died with an exception.
The First Test¶
Now it’s time to start testing the functionality of the application.
Let’s check that the application shows “No entries here so far” if we
access the root of the application (/
). To do this, we add a new
test function to test_flaskr.py
, like this:
def test_empty_db(client):
"""Start with a blank database."""
rv = client.get('/')
assert b'No entries here so far' in rv.data
Notice that our test functions begin with the word test; this allows pytest to automatically identify the function as a test to run.
By using client.get
we can send an HTTP GET
request to the
application with the given path. The return value will be a
response_class
object. We can now use the
data
attribute to inspect
the return value (as string) from the application.
In this case, we ensure that 'No entries here so far'
is part of the output.
Run it again and you should see one passing test:
$ pytest -v
================ test session starts ================
rootdir: ./flask/examples/flaskr, inifile: setup.cfg
collected 1 items
tests/test_flaskr.py::test_empty_db PASSED
============= 1 passed in 0.10 seconds ==============
Logging In and Out¶
The majority of the functionality of our application is only available for the administrative user, so we need a way to log our test client in and out of the application. To do this, we fire some requests to the login and logout pages with the required form data (username and password). And because the login and logout pages redirect, we tell the client to follow_redirects.
Add the following two functions to your test_flaskr.py
file:
def login(client, username, password):
return client.post('/login', data=dict(
username=username,
password=password
), follow_redirects=True)
def logout(client):
return client.get('/logout', follow_redirects=True)
Now we can easily test that logging in and out works and that it fails with invalid credentials. Add this new test function:
def test_login_logout(client):
"""Make sure login and logout works."""
rv = login(client, flaskr.app.config['USERNAME'], flaskr.app.config['PASSWORD'])
assert b'You were logged in' in rv.data
rv = logout(client)
assert b'You were logged out' in rv.data
rv = login(client, flaskr.app.config['USERNAME'] + 'x', flaskr.app.config['PASSWORD'])
assert b'Invalid username' in rv.data
rv = login(client, flaskr.app.config['USERNAME'], flaskr.app.config['PASSWORD'] + 'x')
assert b'Invalid password' in rv.data
Test Adding Messages¶
We should also test that adding messages works. Add a new test function like this:
def test_messages(client):
"""Test that messages work."""
login(client, flaskr.app.config['USERNAME'], flaskr.app.config['PASSWORD'])
rv = client.post('/add', data=dict(
title='<Hello>',
text='<strong>HTML</strong> allowed here'
), follow_redirects=True)
assert b'No entries here so far' not in rv.data
assert b'<Hello>' in rv.data
assert b'<strong>HTML</strong> allowed here' in rv.data
Here we check that HTML is allowed in the text but not in the title, which is the intended behavior.
Running that should now give us three passing tests:
$ pytest -v
================ test session starts ================
rootdir: ./flask/examples/flaskr, inifile: setup.cfg
collected 3 items
tests/test_flaskr.py::test_empty_db PASSED
tests/test_flaskr.py::test_login_logout PASSED
tests/test_flaskr.py::test_messages PASSED
============= 3 passed in 0.23 seconds ==============
Other Testing Tricks¶
Besides using the test client as shown above, there is also the
test_request_context()
method that can be used
in combination with the with
statement to activate a request context
temporarily. With this you can access the request
,
g
and session
objects like in view
functions. Here is a full example that demonstrates this approach:
import flask
app = flask.Flask(__name__)
with app.test_request_context('/?name=Peter'):
assert flask.request.path == '/'
assert flask.request.args['name'] == 'Peter'
All the other objects that are context bound can be used in the same way.
If you want to test your application with different configurations and there does not seem to be a good way to do that, consider switching to application factories (see Application Factories).
Note however that if you are using a test request context, the
before_request()
and after_request()
functions are not called automatically. However
teardown_request()
functions are indeed executed when
the test request context leaves the with
block. If you do want the
before_request()
functions to be called as well, you
need to call preprocess_request()
yourself:
app = flask.Flask(__name__)
with app.test_request_context('/?name=Peter'):
app.preprocess_request()
...
This can be necessary to open database connections or something similar depending on how your application was designed.
If you want to call the after_request()
functions you
need to call into process_response()
which however
requires that you pass it a response object:
app = flask.Flask(__name__)
with app.test_request_context('/?name=Peter'):
resp = Response('...')
resp = app.process_response(resp)
...
This in general is less useful because at that point you can directly start using the test client.
Faking Resources and Context¶
Changelog
New in version 0.10.
A very common pattern is to store user authorization information and
database connections on the application context or the flask.g
object. The general pattern for this is to put the object on there on
first usage and then to remove it on a teardown. Imagine for instance
this code to get the current user:
def get_user():
user = getattr(g, 'user', None)
if user is None:
user = fetch_current_user_from_database()
g.user = user
return user
For a test it would be nice to override this user from the outside without
having to change some code. This can be accomplished with
hooking the flask.appcontext_pushed
signal:
from contextlib import contextmanager
from flask import appcontext_pushed, g
@contextmanager
def user_set(app, user):
def handler(sender, **kwargs):
g.user = user
with appcontext_pushed.connected_to(handler, app):
yield
And then to use it:
from flask import json, jsonify
@app.route('/users/me')
def users_me():
return jsonify(username=g.user.username)
with user_set(app, my_user):
with app.test_client() as c:
resp = c.get('/users/me')
data = json.loads(resp.data)
self.assert_equal(data['username'], my_user.username)
Keeping the Context Around¶
Changelog
New in version 0.4.
Sometimes it is helpful to trigger a regular request but still keep the
context around for a little longer so that additional introspection can
happen. With Flask 0.4 this is possible by using the
test_client()
with a with
block:
app = flask.Flask(__name__)
with app.test_client() as c:
rv = c.get('/?tequila=42')
assert request.args['tequila'] == '42'
If you were to use just the test_client()
without
the with
block, the assert
would fail with an error because request
is no longer available (because you are trying to use it
outside of the actual request).
Accessing and Modifying Sessions¶
Changelog
New in version 0.8.
Sometimes it can be very helpful to access or modify the sessions from the
test client. Generally there are two ways for this. If you just want to
ensure that a session has certain keys set to certain values you can just
keep the context around and access flask.session
:
with app.test_client() as c:
rv = c.get('/')
assert flask.session['foo'] == 42
This however does not make it possible to also modify the session or to access the session before a request was fired. Starting with Flask 0.8 we provide a so called “session transaction” which simulates the appropriate calls to open a session in the context of the test client and to modify it. At the end of the transaction the session is stored and ready to be used by the test client. This works independently of the session backend used:
with app.test_client() as c:
with c.session_transaction() as sess:
sess['a_key'] = 'a value'
# once this is reached the session was stored and ready to be used by the client
c.get(...)
Note that in this case you have to use the sess
object instead of the
flask.session
proxy. The object however itself will provide the
same interface.
Testing JSON APIs¶
Changelog
New in version 1.0.
Flask has great support for JSON, and is a popular choice for building JSON APIs. Making requests with JSON data and examining JSON data in responses is very convenient:
from flask import request, jsonify
@app.route('/api/auth')
def auth():
json_data = request.get_json()
email = json_data['email']
password = json_data['password']
return jsonify(token=generate_token(email, password))
with app.test_client() as c:
rv = c.post('/api/auth', json={
'email': 'flask@example.com', 'password': 'secret'
})
json_data = rv.get_json()
assert verify_token(email, json_data['token'])
Passing the json
argument in the test client methods sets the request data
to the JSON-serialized object and sets the content type to
application/json
. You can get the JSON data from the request or response
with get_json
.
Testing CLI Commands¶
Click comes with utilities for testing your CLI commands. A
CliRunner
runs commands in isolation and
captures the output in a Result
object.
Flask provides test_cli_runner()
to create a
FlaskCliRunner
that passes the Flask app to the
CLI automatically. Use its invoke()
method to call commands in the same way they would be called from the
command line.
import click
@app.cli.command('hello')
@click.option('--name', default='World')
def hello_command(name):
click.echo(f'Hello, {name}!')
def test_hello():
runner = app.test_cli_runner()
# invoke the command directly
result = runner.invoke(hello_command, ['--name', 'Flask'])
assert 'Hello, Flask' in result.output
# or by name
result = runner.invoke(args=['hello'])
assert 'World' in result.output
In the example above, invoking the command by name is useful because it verifies that the command was correctly registered with the app.
If you want to test how your command parses parameters, without running
the command, use its make_context()
method.
This is useful for testing complex validation rules and custom types.
def upper(ctx, param, value):
if value is not None:
return value.upper()
@app.cli.command('hello')
@click.option('--name', default='World', callback=upper)
def hello_command(name):
click.echo(f'Hello, {name}!')
def test_hello_params():
context = hello_command.make_context('hello', ['--name', 'flask'])
assert context.params['name'] == 'FLASK'
Application Errors¶
Changelog
New in version 0.3.
Applications fail, servers fail. Sooner or later you will see an exception in production. Even if your code is 100% correct, you will still see exceptions from time to time. Why? Because everything else involved will fail. Here are some situations where perfectly fine code can lead to server errors:
the client terminated the request early and the application was still reading from the incoming data
the database server was overloaded and could not handle the query
a filesystem is full
a harddrive crashed
a backend server overloaded
a programming error in a library you are using
network connection of the server to another system failed
And that’s just a small sample of issues you could be facing. So how do we
deal with that sort of problem? By default if your application runs in
production mode, Flask will display a very simple page for you and log the
exception to the logger
.
But there is more you can do, and we will cover some better setups to deal with errors.
Error Logging Tools¶
Sending error mails, even if just for critical ones, can become overwhelming if enough users are hitting the error and log files are typically never looked at. This is why we recommend using Sentry for dealing with application errors. It’s available as an Open Source project on GitHub and is also available as a hosted version which you can try for free. Sentry aggregates duplicate errors, captures the full stack trace and local variables for debugging, and sends you mails based on new errors or frequency thresholds.
To use Sentry you need to install the sentry-sdk client with extra flask dependencies:
$ pip install sentry-sdk[flask]
And then add this to your Flask app:
import sentry_sdk
from sentry_sdk.integrations.flask import FlaskIntegration
sentry_sdk.init('YOUR_DSN_HERE',integrations=[FlaskIntegration()])
The YOUR_DSN_HERE value needs to be replaced with the DSN value you get from your Sentry installation.
After installation, failures leading to an Internal Server Error are automatically reported to Sentry and from there you can receive error notifications.
Follow-up reads:
Sentry also supports catching errors from your worker queue (RQ, Celery) in a similar fashion. See the Python SDK docs for more information.
Error handlers¶
You might want to show custom error pages to the user when an error occurs. This can be done by registering error handlers.
An error handler is a normal view function that returns a response, but instead of being registered for a route, it is registered for an exception or HTTP status code that would be raised while trying to handle a request.
Registering¶
Register handlers by decorating a function with
errorhandler()
. Or use
register_error_handler()
to register the function later.
Remember to set the error code when returning the response.
@app.errorhandler(werkzeug.exceptions.BadRequest)
def handle_bad_request(e):
return 'bad request!', 400
# or, without the decorator
app.register_error_handler(400, handle_bad_request)
werkzeug.exceptions.HTTPException
subclasses like
BadRequest
and their HTTP codes are interchangeable
when registering handlers. (BadRequest.code == 400
)
Non-standard HTTP codes cannot be registered by code because they are not known
by Werkzeug. Instead, define a subclass of
HTTPException
with the appropriate code and
register and raise that exception class.
class InsufficientStorage(werkzeug.exceptions.HTTPException):
code = 507
description = 'Not enough storage space.'
app.register_error_handler(InsufficientStorage, handle_507)
raise InsufficientStorage()
Handlers can be registered for any exception class, not just
HTTPException
subclasses or HTTP status
codes. Handlers can be registered for a specific class, or for all subclasses
of a parent class.
Handling¶
When an exception is caught by Flask while handling a request, it is first
looked up by code. If no handler is registered for the code, it is looked up
by its class hierarchy; the most specific handler is chosen. If no handler is
registered, HTTPException
subclasses show a
generic message about their code, while other exceptions are converted to a
generic 500 Internal Server Error.
For example, if an instance of ConnectionRefusedError
is raised,
and a handler is registered for ConnectionError
and
ConnectionRefusedError
,
the more specific ConnectionRefusedError
handler is called with the
exception instance to generate the response.
Handlers registered on the blueprint take precedence over those registered globally on the application, assuming a blueprint is handling the request that raises the exception. However, the blueprint cannot handle 404 routing errors because the 404 occurs at the routing level before the blueprint can be determined.
Generic Exception Handlers¶
It is possible to register error handlers for very generic base classes
such as HTTPException
or even Exception
. However, be aware that
these will catch more than you might expect.
An error handler for HTTPException
might be useful for turning
the default HTML errors pages into JSON, for example. However, this
handler will trigger for things you don’t cause directly, such as 404
and 405 errors during routing. Be sure to craft your handler carefully
so you don’t lose information about the HTTP error.
from flask import json
from werkzeug.exceptions import HTTPException
@app.errorhandler(HTTPException)
def handle_exception(e):
"""Return JSON instead of HTML for HTTP errors."""
# start with the correct headers and status code from the error
response = e.get_response()
# replace the body with JSON
response.data = json.dumps({
"code": e.code,
"name": e.name,
"description": e.description,
})
response.content_type = "application/json"
return response
An error handler for Exception
might seem useful for changing how
all errors, even unhandled ones, are presented to the user. However,
this is similar to doing except Exception:
in Python, it will
capture all otherwise unhandled errors, including all HTTP status
codes. In most cases it will be safer to register handlers for more
specific exceptions. Since HTTPException
instances are valid WSGI
responses, you could also pass them through directly.
from werkzeug.exceptions import HTTPException
@app.errorhandler(Exception)
def handle_exception(e):
# pass through HTTP errors
if isinstance(e, HTTPException):
return e
# now you're handling non-HTTP exceptions only
return render_template("500_generic.html", e=e), 500
Error handlers still respect the exception class hierarchy. If you
register handlers for both HTTPException
and Exception
, the
Exception
handler will not handle HTTPException
subclasses
because it the HTTPException
handler is more specific.
Unhandled Exceptions¶
When there is no error handler registered for an exception, a 500
Internal Server Error will be returned instead. See
flask.Flask.handle_exception()
for information about this
behavior.
If there is an error handler registered for InternalServerError
,
this will be invoked. As of Flask 1.1.0, this error handler will always
be passed an instance of InternalServerError
, not the original
unhandled error. The original error is available as e.original_exception
.
Until Werkzeug 1.0.0, this attribute will only exist during unhandled
errors, use getattr
to get access it for compatibility.
@app.errorhandler(InternalServerError)
def handle_500(e):
original = getattr(e, "original_exception", None)
if original is None:
# direct 500 error, such as abort(500)
return render_template("500.html"), 500
# wrapped unhandled error
return render_template("500_unhandled.html", e=original), 500
Logging¶
See Logging for information on how to log exceptions, such as by emailing them to admins.
Debugging Application Errors¶
For production applications, configure your application with logging and notifications as described in Application Errors. This section provides pointers when debugging deployment configuration and digging deeper with a full-featured Python debugger.
When in Doubt, Run Manually¶
Having problems getting your application configured for production? If you have shell access to your host, verify that you can run your application manually from the shell in the deployment environment. Be sure to run under the same user account as the configured deployment to troubleshoot permission issues. You can use Flask’s builtin development server with debug=True on your production host, which is helpful in catching configuration issues, but be sure to do this temporarily in a controlled environment. Do not run in production with debug=True.
Working with Debuggers¶
To dig deeper, possibly to trace code execution, Flask provides a debugger out of the box (see Debug Mode). If you would like to use another Python debugger, note that debuggers interfere with each other. You have to set some options in order to use your favorite debugger:
debug
- whether to enable debug mode and catch exceptionsuse_debugger
- whether to use the internal Flask debuggeruse_reloader
- whether to reload and fork the process if modules were changed
debug
must be True (i.e., exceptions must be caught) in order for the other
two options to have any value.
If you’re using Aptana/Eclipse for debugging you’ll need to set both
use_debugger
and use_reloader
to False.
A possible useful pattern for configuration is to set the following in your config.yaml (change the block as appropriate for your application, of course):
FLASK:
DEBUG: True
DEBUG_WITH_APTANA: True
Then in your application’s entry-point (main.py), you could have something like:
if __name__ == "__main__":
# To allow aptana to receive errors, set use_debugger=False
app = create_app(config="config.yaml")
use_debugger = app.debug and not(app.config.get('DEBUG_WITH_APTANA'))
app.run(use_debugger=use_debugger, debug=app.debug,
use_reloader=use_debugger, host='0.0.0.0')
Logging¶
Flask uses standard Python logging
. Messages about your Flask
application are logged with app.logger
,
which takes the same name as app.name
. This
logger can also be used to log your own messages.
@app.route('/login', methods=['POST'])
def login():
user = get_user(request.form['username'])
if user.check_password(request.form['password']):
login_user(user)
app.logger.info('%s logged in successfully', user.username)
return redirect(url_for('index'))
else:
app.logger.info('%s failed to log in', user.username)
abort(401)
Basic Configuration¶
When you want to configure logging for your project, you should do it as soon
as possible when the program starts. If app.logger
is accessed before logging is configured, it will add a default handler. If
possible, configure logging before creating the application object.
This example uses dictConfig()
to create a logging
configuration similar to Flask’s default, except for all logs:
from logging.config import dictConfig
dictConfig({
'version': 1,
'formatters': {'default': {
'format': '[%(asctime)s] %(levelname)s in %(module)s: %(message)s',
}},
'handlers': {'wsgi': {
'class': 'logging.StreamHandler',
'stream': 'ext://flask.logging.wsgi_errors_stream',
'formatter': 'default'
}},
'root': {
'level': 'INFO',
'handlers': ['wsgi']
}
})
app = Flask(__name__)
Default Configuration¶
If you do not configure logging yourself, Flask will add a
StreamHandler
to app.logger
automatically. During requests, it will write to the stream specified by the
WSGI server in environ['wsgi.errors']
(which is usually
sys.stderr
). Outside a request, it will log to sys.stderr
.
Removing the Default Handler¶
If you configured logging after accessing
app.logger
, and need to remove the default
handler, you can import and remove it:
from flask.logging import default_handler
app.logger.removeHandler(default_handler)
Email Errors to Admins¶
When running the application on a remote server for production, you probably won’t be looking at the log messages very often. The WSGI server will probably send log messages to a file, and you’ll only check that file if a user tells you something went wrong.
To be proactive about discovering and fixing bugs, you can configure a
logging.handlers.SMTPHandler
to send an email when errors and higher
are logged.
import logging
from logging.handlers import SMTPHandler
mail_handler = SMTPHandler(
mailhost='127.0.0.1',
fromaddr='server-error@example.com',
toaddrs=['admin@example.com'],
subject='Application Error'
)
mail_handler.setLevel(logging.ERROR)
mail_handler.setFormatter(logging.Formatter(
'[%(asctime)s] %(levelname)s in %(module)s: %(message)s'
))
if not app.debug:
app.logger.addHandler(mail_handler)
This requires that you have an SMTP server set up on the same server. See the Python docs for more information about configuring the handler.
Injecting Request Information¶
Seeing more information about the request, such as the IP address, may help
debugging some errors. You can subclass logging.Formatter
to inject
your own fields that can be used in messages. You can change the formatter for
Flask’s default handler, the mail handler defined above, or any other
handler.
from flask import has_request_context, request
from flask.logging import default_handler
class RequestFormatter(logging.Formatter):
def format(self, record):
if has_request_context():
record.url = request.url
record.remote_addr = request.remote_addr
else:
record.url = None
record.remote_addr = None
return super().format(record)
formatter = RequestFormatter(
'[%(asctime)s] %(remote_addr)s requested %(url)s\n'
'%(levelname)s in %(module)s: %(message)s'
)
default_handler.setFormatter(formatter)
mail_handler.setFormatter(formatter)
Other Libraries¶
Other libraries may use logging extensively, and you want to see relevant messages from those logs too. The simplest way to do this is to add handlers to the root logger instead of only the app logger.
from flask.logging import default_handler
root = logging.getLogger()
root.addHandler(default_handler)
root.addHandler(mail_handler)
Depending on your project, it may be more useful to configure each logger you care about separately, instead of configuring only the root logger.
for logger in (
app.logger,
logging.getLogger('sqlalchemy'),
logging.getLogger('other_package'),
):
logger.addHandler(default_handler)
logger.addHandler(mail_handler)
Werkzeug¶
Werkzeug logs basic request/response information to the 'werkzeug'
logger.
If the root logger has no handlers configured, Werkzeug adds a
StreamHandler
to its logger.
Flask Extensions¶
Depending on the situation, an extension may choose to log to
app.logger
or its own named logger. Consult each
extension’s documentation for details.
Configuration Handling¶
Applications need some kind of configuration. There are different settings you might want to change depending on the application environment like toggling the debug mode, setting the secret key, and other such environment-specific things.
The way Flask is designed usually requires the configuration to be available when the application starts up. You can hard code the configuration in the code, which for many small applications is not actually that bad, but there are better ways.
Independent of how you load your config, there is a config object
available which holds the loaded configuration values:
The config
attribute of the Flask
object. This is the place where Flask itself puts certain configuration
values and also where extensions can put their configuration values. But
this is also where you can have your own configuration.
Configuration Basics¶
The config
is actually a subclass of a dictionary and
can be modified just like any dictionary:
app = Flask(__name__)
app.config['TESTING'] = True
Certain configuration values are also forwarded to the
Flask
object so you can read and write them from there:
app.testing = True
To update multiple keys at once you can use the dict.update()
method:
app.config.update(
TESTING=True,
SECRET_KEY=b'_5#y2L"F4Q8z\n\xec]/'
)
Environment and Debug Features¶
The ENV
and DEBUG
config values are special because they
may behave inconsistently if changed after the app has begun setting up.
In order to set the environment and debug mode reliably, Flask uses
environment variables.
The environment is used to indicate to Flask, extensions, and other
programs, like Sentry, what context Flask is running in. It is
controlled with the FLASK_ENV
environment variable and
defaults to production
.
Setting FLASK_ENV
to development
will enable debug mode.
flask run
will use the interactive debugger and reloader by default
in debug mode. To control this separately from the environment, use the
FLASK_DEBUG
flag.
Changelog
Changed in version 1.0: Added FLASK_ENV
to control the environment separately
from debug mode. The development environment enables debug mode.
To switch Flask to the development environment and enable debug mode,
set FLASK_ENV
:
$ export FLASK_ENV=development
$ flask run
(On Windows, use set
instead of export
.)
Using the environment variables as described above is recommended. While
it is possible to set ENV
and DEBUG
in your config or
code, this is strongly discouraged. They can’t be read early by the
flask
command, and some systems or extensions may have already
configured themselves based on a previous value.
Builtin Configuration Values¶
The following configuration values are used internally by Flask:
-
ENV
¶ What environment the app is running in. Flask and extensions may enable behaviors based on the environment, such as enabling debug mode. The
env
attribute maps to this config key. This is set by theFLASK_ENV
environment variable and may not behave as expected if set in code.Do not enable development when deploying in production.
Default:
'production'
Changelog
New in version 1.0.
-
DEBUG
¶ Whether debug mode is enabled. When using
flask run
to start the development server, an interactive debugger will be shown for unhandled exceptions, and the server will be reloaded when code changes. Thedebug
attribute maps to this config key. This is enabled whenENV
is'development'
and is overridden by theFLASK_DEBUG
environment variable. It may not behave as expected if set in code.Do not enable debug mode when deploying in production.
Default:
True
ifENV
is'development'
, orFalse
otherwise.
-
TESTING
¶ Enable testing mode. Exceptions are propagated rather than handled by the the app’s error handlers. Extensions may also change their behavior to facilitate easier testing. You should enable this in your own tests.
Default:
False
-
PROPAGATE_EXCEPTIONS
¶ Exceptions are re-raised rather than being handled by the app’s error handlers. If not set, this is implicitly true if
TESTING
orDEBUG
is enabled.Default:
None
-
PRESERVE_CONTEXT_ON_EXCEPTION
¶ Don’t pop the request context when an exception occurs. If not set, this is true if
DEBUG
is true. This allows debuggers to introspect the request data on errors, and should normally not need to be set directly.Default:
None
-
TRAP_HTTP_EXCEPTIONS
¶ If there is no handler for an
HTTPException
-type exception, re-raise it to be handled by the interactive debugger instead of returning it as a simple error response.Default:
False
-
TRAP_BAD_REQUEST_ERRORS
¶ Trying to access a key that doesn’t exist from request dicts like
args
andform
will return a 400 Bad Request error page. Enable this to treat the error as an unhandled exception instead so that you get the interactive debugger. This is a more specific version ofTRAP_HTTP_EXCEPTIONS
. If unset, it is enabled in debug mode.Default:
None
-
SECRET_KEY
¶ A secret key that will be used for securely signing the session cookie and can be used for any other security related needs by extensions or your application. It should be a long random string of bytes, although unicode is accepted too. For example, copy the output of this to your config:
$ python -c 'import os; print(os.urandom(16))' b'_5#y2L"F4Q8z\n\xec]/'
Do not reveal the secret key when posting questions or committing code.
Default:
None
-
SESSION_COOKIE_NAME
¶ The name of the session cookie. Can be changed in case you already have a cookie with the same name.
Default:
'session'
-
SESSION_COOKIE_DOMAIN
¶ The domain match rule that the session cookie will be valid for. If not set, the cookie will be valid for all subdomains of
SERVER_NAME
. IfFalse
, the cookie’s domain will not be set.Default:
None
-
SESSION_COOKIE_PATH
¶ The path that the session cookie will be valid for. If not set, the cookie will be valid underneath
APPLICATION_ROOT
or/
if that is not set.Default:
None
-
SESSION_COOKIE_HTTPONLY
¶ Browsers will not allow JavaScript access to cookies marked as “HTTP only” for security.
Default:
True
-
SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE
¶ Browsers will only send cookies with requests over HTTPS if the cookie is marked “secure”. The application must be served over HTTPS for this to make sense.
Default:
False
-
SESSION_COOKIE_SAMESITE
¶ Restrict how cookies are sent with requests from external sites. Can be set to
'Lax'
(recommended) or'Strict'
. See Set-Cookie options.Default:
None
Changelog
New in version 1.0.
-
PERMANENT_SESSION_LIFETIME
¶ If
session.permanent
is true, the cookie’s expiration will be set this number of seconds in the future. Can either be adatetime.timedelta
or anint
.Flask’s default cookie implementation validates that the cryptographic signature is not older than this value.
Default:
timedelta(days=31)
(2678400
seconds)
-
SESSION_REFRESH_EACH_REQUEST
¶ Control whether the cookie is sent with every response when
session.permanent
is true. Sending the cookie every time (the default) can more reliably keep the session from expiring, but uses more bandwidth. Non-permanent sessions are not affected.Default:
True
-
USE_X_SENDFILE
¶ When serving files, set the
X-Sendfile
header instead of serving the data with Flask. Some web servers, such as Apache, recognize this and serve the data more efficiently. This only makes sense when using such a server.Default:
False
-
SEND_FILE_MAX_AGE_DEFAULT
¶ When serving files, set the cache control max age to this number of seconds. Can either be a
datetime.timedelta
or anint
. Override this value on a per-file basis usingget_send_file_max_age()
on the application or blueprint.Default:
timedelta(hours=12)
(43200
seconds)
-
SERVER_NAME
¶ Inform the application what host and port it is bound to. Required for subdomain route matching support.
If set, will be used for the session cookie domain if
SESSION_COOKIE_DOMAIN
is not set. Modern web browsers will not allow setting cookies for domains without a dot. To use a domain locally, add any names that should route to the app to yourhosts
file.127.0.0.1 localhost.dev
If set,
url_for
can generate external URLs with only an application context instead of a request context.Default:
None
-
APPLICATION_ROOT
¶ Inform the application what path it is mounted under by the application / web server. This is used for generating URLs outside the context of a request (inside a request, the dispatcher is responsible for setting
SCRIPT_NAME
instead; see Application Dispatching for examples of dispatch configuration).Will be used for the session cookie path if
SESSION_COOKIE_PATH
is not set.Default:
'/'
-
PREFERRED_URL_SCHEME
¶ Use this scheme for generating external URLs when not in a request context.
Default:
'http'
-
MAX_CONTENT_LENGTH
¶ Don’t read more than this many bytes from the incoming request data. If not set and the request does not specify a
CONTENT_LENGTH
, no data will be read for security.Default:
None
-
JSON_AS_ASCII
¶ Serialize objects to ASCII-encoded JSON. If this is disabled, the JSON will be returned as a Unicode string, or encoded as
UTF-8
byjsonify
. This has security implications when rendering the JSON into JavaScript in templates, and should typically remain enabled.Default:
True
-
JSON_SORT_KEYS
¶ Sort the keys of JSON objects alphabetically. This is useful for caching because it ensures the data is serialized the same way no matter what Python’s hash seed is. While not recommended, you can disable this for a possible performance improvement at the cost of caching.
Default:
True
-
JSONIFY_PRETTYPRINT_REGULAR
¶ jsonify
responses will be output with newlines, spaces, and indentation for easier reading by humans. Always enabled in debug mode.Default:
False
-
JSONIFY_MIMETYPE
¶ The mimetype of
jsonify
responses.Default:
'application/json'
-
TEMPLATES_AUTO_RELOAD
¶ Reload templates when they are changed. If not set, it will be enabled in debug mode.
Default:
None
-
EXPLAIN_TEMPLATE_LOADING
¶ Log debugging information tracing how a template file was loaded. This can be useful to figure out why a template was not loaded or the wrong file appears to be loaded.
Default:
False
-
MAX_COOKIE_SIZE
¶ Warn if cookie headers are larger than this many bytes. Defaults to
4093
. Larger cookies may be silently ignored by browsers. Set to0
to disable the warning.
Changelog
Changed in version 1.0: LOGGER_NAME
and LOGGER_HANDLER_POLICY
were removed. See
Logging for information about configuration.
Added ENV
to reflect the FLASK_ENV
environment
variable.
Added SESSION_COOKIE_SAMESITE
to control the session
cookie’s SameSite
option.
Added MAX_COOKIE_SIZE
to control a warning from Werkzeug.
New in version 0.11: SESSION_REFRESH_EACH_REQUEST
, TEMPLATES_AUTO_RELOAD
,
LOGGER_HANDLER_POLICY
, EXPLAIN_TEMPLATE_LOADING
New in version 0.10: JSON_AS_ASCII
, JSON_SORT_KEYS
, JSONIFY_PRETTYPRINT_REGULAR
New in version 0.9: PREFERRED_URL_SCHEME
New in version 0.8: TRAP_BAD_REQUEST_ERRORS
, TRAP_HTTP_EXCEPTIONS
,
APPLICATION_ROOT
, SESSION_COOKIE_DOMAIN
,
SESSION_COOKIE_PATH
, SESSION_COOKIE_HTTPONLY
,
SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE
New in version 0.7: PROPAGATE_EXCEPTIONS
, PRESERVE_CONTEXT_ON_EXCEPTION
New in version 0.6: MAX_CONTENT_LENGTH
New in version 0.5: SERVER_NAME
New in version 0.4: LOGGER_NAME
Configuring from Files¶
Configuration becomes more useful if you can store it in a separate file, ideally located outside the actual application package. This makes packaging and distributing your application possible via various package handling tools (Deploying with Setuptools) and finally modifying the configuration file afterwards.
So a common pattern is this:
app = Flask(__name__)
app.config.from_object('yourapplication.default_settings')
app.config.from_envvar('YOURAPPLICATION_SETTINGS')
This first loads the configuration from the
yourapplication.default_settings module and then overrides the values
with the contents of the file the YOURAPPLICATION_SETTINGS
environment variable points to. This environment variable can be set on
Linux or OS X with the export command in the shell before starting the
server:
$ export YOURAPPLICATION_SETTINGS=/path/to/settings.cfg
$ python run-app.py
* Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/
* Restarting with reloader...
On Windows systems use the set builtin instead:
> set YOURAPPLICATION_SETTINGS=\path\to\settings.cfg
The configuration files themselves are actual Python files. Only values in uppercase are actually stored in the config object later on. So make sure to use uppercase letters for your config keys.
Here is an example of a configuration file:
# Example configuration
DEBUG = False
SECRET_KEY = b'_5#y2L"F4Q8z\n\xec]/'
Make sure to load the configuration very early on, so that extensions have
the ability to access the configuration when starting up. There are other
methods on the config object as well to load from individual files. For a
complete reference, read the Config
object’s
documentation.
Configuring from Environment Variables¶
In addition to pointing to configuration files using environment variables, you may find it useful (or necessary) to control your configuration values directly from the environment.
Environment variables can be set on Linux or OS X with the export command in the shell before starting the server:
$ export SECRET_KEY='5f352379324c22463451387a0aec5d2f'
$ export MAIL_ENABLED=false
$ python run-app.py
* Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/
On Windows systems use the set
builtin instead:
> set SECRET_KEY='5f352379324c22463451387a0aec5d2f'
While this approach is straightforward to use, it is important to remember that environment variables are strings – they are not automatically deserialized into Python types.
Here is an example of a configuration file that uses environment variables:
import os
_mail_enabled = os.environ.get("MAIL_ENABLED", default="true")
MAIL_ENABLED = _mail_enabled.lower() in {"1", "t", "true"}
SECRET_KEY = os.environ.get("SECRET_KEY")
if not SECRET_KEY:
raise ValueError("No SECRET_KEY set for Flask application")
Notice that any value besides an empty string will be interpreted as a boolean
True
value in Python, which requires care if an environment explicitly sets
values intended to be False
.
Make sure to load the configuration very early on, so that extensions have the
ability to access the configuration when starting up. There are other methods
on the config object as well to load from individual files. For a complete
reference, read the Config
class documentation.
Configuration Best Practices¶
The downside with the approach mentioned earlier is that it makes testing a little harder. There is no single 100% solution for this problem in general, but there are a couple of things you can keep in mind to improve that experience:
Create your application in a function and register blueprints on it. That way you can create multiple instances of your application with different configurations attached which makes unit testing a lot easier. You can use this to pass in configuration as needed.
Do not write code that needs the configuration at import time. If you limit yourself to request-only accesses to the configuration you can reconfigure the object later on as needed.
Development / Production¶
Most applications need more than one configuration. There should be at least separate configurations for the production server and the one used during development. The easiest way to handle this is to use a default configuration that is always loaded and part of the version control, and a separate configuration that overrides the values as necessary as mentioned in the example above:
app = Flask(__name__)
app.config.from_object('yourapplication.default_settings')
app.config.from_envvar('YOURAPPLICATION_SETTINGS')
Then you just have to add a separate config.py
file and export
YOURAPPLICATION_SETTINGS=/path/to/config.py
and you are done. However
there are alternative ways as well. For example you could use imports or
subclassing.
What is very popular in the Django world is to make the import explicit in
the config file by adding from yourapplication.default_settings
import *
to the top of the file and then overriding the changes by hand.
You could also inspect an environment variable like
YOURAPPLICATION_MODE
and set that to production, development etc
and import different hard-coded files based on that.
An interesting pattern is also to use classes and inheritance for configuration:
class Config(object):
DEBUG = False
TESTING = False
DATABASE_URI = 'sqlite:///:memory:'
class ProductionConfig(Config):
DATABASE_URI = 'mysql://user@localhost/foo'
class DevelopmentConfig(Config):
DEBUG = True
class TestingConfig(Config):
TESTING = True
To enable such a config you just have to call into
from_object()
:
app.config.from_object('configmodule.ProductionConfig')
Note that from_object()
does not instantiate the class
object. If you need to instantiate the class, such as to access a property,
then you must do so before calling from_object()
:
from configmodule import ProductionConfig
app.config.from_object(ProductionConfig())
# Alternatively, import via string:
from werkzeug.utils import import_string
cfg = import_string('configmodule.ProductionConfig')()
app.config.from_object(cfg)
Instantiating the configuration object allows you to use @property
in
your configuration classes:
class Config(object):
"""Base config, uses staging database server."""
DEBUG = False
TESTING = False
DB_SERVER = '192.168.1.56'
@property
def DATABASE_URI(self): # Note: all caps
return 'mysql://user@{}/foo'.format(self.DB_SERVER)
class ProductionConfig(Config):
"""Uses production database server."""
DB_SERVER = '192.168.19.32'
class DevelopmentConfig(Config):
DB_SERVER = 'localhost'
DEBUG = True
class TestingConfig(Config):
DB_SERVER = 'localhost'
DEBUG = True
DATABASE_URI = 'sqlite:///:memory:'
There are many different ways and it’s up to you how you want to manage your configuration files. However here a list of good recommendations:
Keep a default configuration in version control. Either populate the config with this default configuration or import it in your own configuration files before overriding values.
Use an environment variable to switch between the configurations. This can be done from outside the Python interpreter and makes development and deployment much easier because you can quickly and easily switch between different configs without having to touch the code at all. If you are working often on different projects you can even create your own script for sourcing that activates a virtualenv and exports the development configuration for you.
Use a tool like fabric in production to push code and configurations separately to the production server(s). For some details about how to do that, head over to the Deploying with Fabric pattern.
Instance Folders¶
Changelog
New in version 0.8.
Flask 0.8 introduces instance folders. Flask for a long time made it
possible to refer to paths relative to the application’s folder directly
(via Flask.root_path
). This was also how many developers loaded
configurations stored next to the application. Unfortunately however this
only works well if applications are not packages in which case the root
path refers to the contents of the package.
With Flask 0.8 a new attribute was introduced:
Flask.instance_path
. It refers to a new concept called the
“instance folder”. The instance folder is designed to not be under
version control and be deployment specific. It’s the perfect place to
drop things that either change at runtime or configuration files.
You can either explicitly provide the path of the instance folder when creating the Flask application or you can let Flask autodetect the instance folder. For explicit configuration use the instance_path parameter:
app = Flask(__name__, instance_path='/path/to/instance/folder')
Please keep in mind that this path must be absolute when provided.
If the instance_path parameter is not provided the following default locations are used:
Uninstalled module:
/myapp.py /instance
Uninstalled package:
/myapp /__init__.py /instance
Installed module or package:
$PREFIX/lib/python2.X/site-packages/myapp $PREFIX/var/myapp-instance
$PREFIX
is the prefix of your Python installation. This can be/usr
or the path to your virtualenv. You can print the value ofsys.prefix
to see what the prefix is set to.
Since the config object provided loading of configuration files from relative filenames we made it possible to change the loading via filenames to be relative to the instance path if wanted. The behavior of relative paths in config files can be flipped between “relative to the application root” (the default) to “relative to instance folder” via the instance_relative_config switch to the application constructor:
app = Flask(__name__, instance_relative_config=True)
Here is a full example of how to configure Flask to preload the config from a module and then override the config from a file in the instance folder if it exists:
app = Flask(__name__, instance_relative_config=True)
app.config.from_object('yourapplication.default_settings')
app.config.from_pyfile('application.cfg', silent=True)
The path to the instance folder can be found via the
Flask.instance_path
. Flask also provides a shortcut to open a
file from the instance folder with Flask.open_instance_resource()
.
Example usage for both:
filename = os.path.join(app.instance_path, 'application.cfg')
with open(filename) as f:
config = f.read()
# or via open_instance_resource:
with app.open_instance_resource('application.cfg') as f:
config = f.read()
Signals¶
Changelog
New in version 0.6.
Starting with Flask 0.6, there is integrated support for signalling in Flask. This support is provided by the excellent blinker library and will gracefully fall back if it is not available.
What are signals? Signals help you decouple applications by sending notifications when actions occur elsewhere in the core framework or another Flask extensions. In short, signals allow certain senders to notify subscribers that something happened.
Flask comes with a couple of signals and other extensions might provide
more. Also keep in mind that signals are intended to notify subscribers
and should not encourage subscribers to modify data. You will notice that
there are signals that appear to do the same thing like some of the
builtin decorators do (eg: request_started
is very similar
to before_request()
). However, there are differences in
how they work. The core before_request()
handler, for
example, is executed in a specific order and is able to abort the request
early by returning a response. In contrast all signal handlers are
executed in undefined order and do not modify any data.
The big advantage of signals over handlers is that you can safely subscribe to them for just a split second. These temporary subscriptions are helpful for unit testing for example. Say you want to know what templates were rendered as part of a request: signals allow you to do exactly that.
Subscribing to Signals¶
To subscribe to a signal, you can use the
connect()
method of a signal. The first
argument is the function that should be called when the signal is emitted,
the optional second argument specifies a sender. To unsubscribe from a
signal, you can use the disconnect()
method.
For all core Flask signals, the sender is the application that issued the signal. When you subscribe to a signal, be sure to also provide a sender unless you really want to listen for signals from all applications. This is especially true if you are developing an extension.
For example, here is a helper context manager that can be used in a unit test to determine which templates were rendered and what variables were passed to the template:
from flask import template_rendered
from contextlib import contextmanager
@contextmanager
def captured_templates(app):
recorded = []
def record(sender, template, context, **extra):
recorded.append((template, context))
template_rendered.connect(record, app)
try:
yield recorded
finally:
template_rendered.disconnect(record, app)
This can now easily be paired with a test client:
with captured_templates(app) as templates:
rv = app.test_client().get('/')
assert rv.status_code == 200
assert len(templates) == 1
template, context = templates[0]
assert template.name == 'index.html'
assert len(context['items']) == 10
Make sure to subscribe with an extra **extra
argument so that your
calls don’t fail if Flask introduces new arguments to the signals.
All the template rendering in the code issued by the application app
in the body of the with
block will now be recorded in the templates
variable. Whenever a template is rendered, the template object as well as
context are appended to it.
Additionally there is a convenient helper method
(connected_to()
) that allows you to
temporarily subscribe a function to a signal with a context manager on
its own. Because the return value of the context manager cannot be
specified that way, you have to pass the list in as an argument:
from flask import template_rendered
def captured_templates(app, recorded, **extra):
def record(sender, template, context):
recorded.append((template, context))
return template_rendered.connected_to(record, app)
The example above would then look like this:
templates = []
with captured_templates(app, templates, **extra):
...
template, context = templates[0]
Blinker API Changes
The connected_to()
method arrived in Blinker
with version 1.1.
Creating Signals¶
If you want to use signals in your own application, you can use the
blinker library directly. The most common use case are named signals in a
custom Namespace
.. This is what is recommended
most of the time:
from blinker import Namespace
my_signals = Namespace()
Now you can create new signals like this:
model_saved = my_signals.signal('model-saved')
The name for the signal here makes it unique and also simplifies
debugging. You can access the name of the signal with the
name
attribute.
For Extension Developers
If you are writing a Flask extension and you want to gracefully degrade for
missing blinker installations, you can do so by using the
flask.signals.Namespace
class.
Sending Signals¶
If you want to emit a signal, you can do so by calling the
send()
method. It accepts a sender as first
argument and optionally some keyword arguments that are forwarded to the
signal subscribers:
class Model(object):
...
def save(self):
model_saved.send(self)
Try to always pick a good sender. If you have a class that is emitting a
signal, pass self
as sender. If you are emitting a signal from a random
function, you can pass current_app._get_current_object()
as sender.
Passing Proxies as Senders
Never pass current_app
as sender to a signal. Use
current_app._get_current_object()
instead. The reason for this is
that current_app
is a proxy and not the real application
object.
Signals and Flask’s Request Context¶
Signals fully support The Request Context when receiving signals.
Context-local variables are consistently available between
request_started
and request_finished
, so you can
rely on flask.g
and others as needed. Note the limitations described
in Sending Signals and the request_tearing_down
signal.
Decorator Based Signal Subscriptions¶
With Blinker 1.1 you can also easily subscribe to signals by using the new
connect_via()
decorator:
from flask import template_rendered
@template_rendered.connect_via(app)
def when_template_rendered(sender, template, context, **extra):
print 'Template %s is rendered with %s' % (template.name, context)
Core Signals¶
Take a look at Signals for a list of all builtin signals.
Pluggable Views¶
Changelog
New in version 0.7.
Flask 0.7 introduces pluggable views inspired by the generic views from Django which are based on classes instead of functions. The main intention is that you can replace parts of the implementations and this way have customizable pluggable views.
Basic Principle¶
Consider you have a function that loads a list of objects from the database and renders into a template:
@app.route('/users/')
def show_users(page):
users = User.query.all()
return render_template('users.html', users=users)
This is simple and flexible, but if you want to provide this view in a generic fashion that can be adapted to other models and templates as well you might want more flexibility. This is where pluggable class-based views come into place. As the first step to convert this into a class based view you would do this:
from flask.views import View
class ShowUsers(View):
def dispatch_request(self):
users = User.query.all()
return render_template('users.html', objects=users)
app.add_url_rule('/users/', view_func=ShowUsers.as_view('show_users'))
As you can see what you have to do is to create a subclass of
flask.views.View
and implement
dispatch_request()
. Then we have to convert that
class into an actual view function by using the
as_view()
class method. The string you pass to
that function is the name of the endpoint that view will then have. But
this by itself is not helpful, so let’s refactor the code a bit:
from flask.views import View
class ListView(View):
def get_template_name(self):
raise NotImplementedError()
def render_template(self, context):
return render_template(self.get_template_name(), **context)
def dispatch_request(self):
context = {'objects': self.get_objects()}
return self.render_template(context)
class UserView(ListView):
def get_template_name(self):
return 'users.html'
def get_objects(self):
return User.query.all()
This of course is not that helpful for such a small example, but it’s good
enough to explain the basic principle. When you have a class-based view
the question comes up what self
points to. The way this works is that
whenever the request is dispatched a new instance of the class is created
and the dispatch_request()
method is called with
the parameters from the URL rule. The class itself is instantiated with
the parameters passed to the as_view()
function.
For instance you can write a class like this:
class RenderTemplateView(View):
def __init__(self, template_name):
self.template_name = template_name
def dispatch_request(self):
return render_template(self.template_name)
And then you can register it like this:
app.add_url_rule('/about', view_func=RenderTemplateView.as_view(
'about_page', template_name='about.html'))
Method Hints¶
Pluggable views are attached to the application like a regular function by
either using route()
or better
add_url_rule()
. That however also means that you would
have to provide the names of the HTTP methods the view supports when you
attach this. In order to move that information to the class you can
provide a methods
attribute that has this
information:
class MyView(View):
methods = ['GET', 'POST']
def dispatch_request(self):
if request.method == 'POST':
...
...
app.add_url_rule('/myview', view_func=MyView.as_view('myview'))
Method Based Dispatching¶
For RESTful APIs it’s especially helpful to execute a different function
for each HTTP method. With the flask.views.MethodView
you can
easily do that. Each HTTP method maps to a function with the same name
(just in lowercase):
from flask.views import MethodView
class UserAPI(MethodView):
def get(self):
users = User.query.all()
...
def post(self):
user = User.from_form_data(request.form)
...
app.add_url_rule('/users/', view_func=UserAPI.as_view('users'))
That way you also don’t have to provide the
methods
attribute. It’s automatically set based
on the methods defined in the class.
Decorating Views¶
Since the view class itself is not the view function that is added to the
routing system it does not make much sense to decorate the class itself.
Instead you either have to decorate the return value of
as_view()
by hand:
def user_required(f):
"""Checks whether user is logged in or raises error 401."""
def decorator(*args, **kwargs):
if not g.user:
abort(401)
return f(*args, **kwargs)
return decorator
view = user_required(UserAPI.as_view('users'))
app.add_url_rule('/users/', view_func=view)
Starting with Flask 0.8 there is also an alternative way where you can specify a list of decorators to apply in the class declaration:
class UserAPI(MethodView):
decorators = [user_required]
Due to the implicit self from the caller’s perspective you cannot use regular view decorators on the individual methods of the view however, keep this in mind.
Method Views for APIs¶
Web APIs are often working very closely with HTTP verbs so it makes a lot
of sense to implement such an API based on the
MethodView
. That said, you will notice that the API
will require different URL rules that go to the same method view most of
the time. For instance consider that you are exposing a user object on
the web:
URL |
Method |
Description |
|
|
Gives a list of all users |
|
|
Creates a new user |
|
|
Shows a single user |
|
|
Updates a single user |
|
|
Deletes a single user |
So how would you go about doing that with the
MethodView
? The trick is to take advantage of the
fact that you can provide multiple rules to the same view.
Let’s assume for the moment the view would look like this:
class UserAPI(MethodView):
def get(self, user_id):
if user_id is None:
# return a list of users
pass
else:
# expose a single user
pass
def post(self):
# create a new user
pass
def delete(self, user_id):
# delete a single user
pass
def put(self, user_id):
# update a single user
pass
So how do we hook this up with the routing system? By adding two rules and explicitly mentioning the methods for each:
user_view = UserAPI.as_view('user_api')
app.add_url_rule('/users/', defaults={'user_id': None},
view_func=user_view, methods=['GET',])
app.add_url_rule('/users/', view_func=user_view, methods=['POST',])
app.add_url_rule('/users/<int:user_id>', view_func=user_view,
methods=['GET', 'PUT', 'DELETE'])
If you have a lot of APIs that look similar you can refactor that registration code:
def register_api(view, endpoint, url, pk='id', pk_type='int'):
view_func = view.as_view(endpoint)
app.add_url_rule(url, defaults={pk: None},
view_func=view_func, methods=['GET',])
app.add_url_rule(url, view_func=view_func, methods=['POST',])
app.add_url_rule('%s<%s:%s>' % (url, pk_type, pk), view_func=view_func,
methods=['GET', 'PUT', 'DELETE'])
register_api(UserAPI, 'user_api', '/users/', pk='user_id')
The Application Context¶
The application context keeps track of the application-level data during
a request, CLI command, or other activity. Rather than passing the
application around to each function, the current_app
and
g
proxies are accessed instead.
This is similar to the The Request Context, which keeps track of request-level data during a request. A corresponding application context is pushed when a request context is pushed.
Purpose of the Context¶
The Flask
application object has attributes, such as
config
, that are useful to access within views and
CLI commands. However, importing the app
instance
within the modules in your project is prone to circular import issues.
When using the app factory pattern or
writing reusable blueprints or
extensions there won’t be an app
instance to
import at all.
Flask solves this issue with the application context. Rather than
referring to an app
directly, you use the current_app
proxy, which points to the application handling the current activity.
Flask automatically pushes an application context when handling a
request. View functions, error handlers, and other functions that run
during a request will have access to current_app
.
Flask will also automatically push an app context when running CLI
commands registered with Flask.cli
using @app.cli.command()
.
Lifetime of the Context¶
The application context is created and destroyed as necessary. When a Flask application begins handling a request, it pushes an application context and a request context. When the request ends it pops the request context then the application context. Typically, an application context will have the same lifetime as a request.
See The Request Context for more information about how the contexts work and the full life cycle of a request.
Manually Push a Context¶
If you try to access current_app
, or anything that uses it,
outside an application context, you’ll get this error message:
RuntimeError: Working outside of application context.
This typically means that you attempted to use functionality that
needed to interface with the current application object in some way.
To solve this, set up an application context with app.app_context().
If you see that error while configuring your application, such as when
initializing an extension, you can push a context manually since you
have direct access to the app
. Use app_context()
in a
with
block, and everything that runs in the block will have access
to current_app
.
def create_app():
app = Flask(__name__)
with app.app_context():
init_db()
return app
If you see that error somewhere else in your code not related to configuring the application, it most likely indicates that you should move that code into a view function or CLI command.
Storing Data¶
The application context is a good place to store common data during a
request or CLI command. Flask provides the g object
for this
purpose. It is a simple namespace object that has the same lifetime as
an application context.
Note
The g
name stands for “global”, but that is referring to the
data being global within a context. The data on g
is lost
after the context ends, and it is not an appropriate place to store
data between requests. Use the session
or a database to
store data across requests.
A common use for g
is to manage resources during a request.
get_X()
creates resourceX
if it does not exist, caching it asg.X
.teardown_X()
closes or otherwise deallocates the resource if it exists. It is registered as ateardown_appcontext()
handler.
For example, you can manage a database connection using this pattern:
from flask import g
def get_db():
if 'db' not in g:
g.db = connect_to_database()
return g.db
@app.teardown_appcontext
def teardown_db(exception):
db = g.pop('db', None)
if db is not None:
db.close()
During a request, every call to get_db()
will return the same
connection, and it will be closed automatically at the end of the
request.
You can use LocalProxy
to make a new context
local from get_db()
:
from werkzeug.local import LocalProxy
db = LocalProxy(get_db)
Accessing db
will call get_db
internally, in the same way that
current_app
works.
If you’re writing an extension, g
should be reserved for user
code. You may store internal data on the context itself, but be sure to
use a sufficiently unique name. The current context is accessed with
_app_ctx_stack.top
. For more information see
Flask Extension Development.
Events and Signals¶
The application will call functions registered with
teardown_appcontext()
when the application context is
popped.
If signals_available
is true, the following signals are
sent: appcontext_pushed
, appcontext_tearing_down
, and
appcontext_popped
.
The Request Context¶
The request context keeps track of the request-level data during a
request. Rather than passing the request object to each function that
runs during a request, the request
and session
proxies
are accessed instead.
This is similar to the The Application Context, which keeps track of the application-level data independent of a request. A corresponding application context is pushed when a request context is pushed.
Purpose of the Context¶
When the Flask
application handles a request, it creates a
Request
object based on the environment it received from the
WSGI server. Because a worker (thread, process, or coroutine depending
on the server) handles only one request at a time, the request data can
be considered global to that worker during that request. Flask uses the
term context local for this.
Flask automatically pushes a request context when handling a request.
View functions, error handlers, and other functions that run during a
request will have access to the request
proxy, which points to
the request object for the current request.
Lifetime of the Context¶
When a Flask application begins handling a request, it pushes a request context, which also pushes an The Application Context. When the request ends it pops the request context then the application context.
The context is unique to each thread (or other worker type).
request
cannot be passed to another thread, the other thread
will have a different context stack and will not know about the request
the parent thread was pointing to.
Context locals are implemented in Werkzeug. See Context Locals for more information on how this works internally.
Manually Push a Context¶
If you try to access request
, or anything that uses it, outside
a request context, you’ll get this error message:
RuntimeError: Working outside of request context.
This typically means that you attempted to use functionality that
needed an active HTTP request. Consult the documentation on testing
for information about how to avoid this problem.
This should typically only happen when testing code that expects an
active request. One option is to use the
test client
to simulate a full request. Or
you can use test_request_context()
in a with
block, and
everything that runs in the block will have access to request
,
populated with your test data.
def generate_report(year):
format = request.args.get('format')
...
with app.test_request_context(
'/make_report/2017', data={'format': 'short'}):
generate_report()
If you see that error somewhere else in your code not related to testing, it most likely indicates that you should move that code into a view function.
For information on how to use the request context from the interactive Python shell, see Working with the Shell.
How the Context Works¶
The Flask.wsgi_app()
method is called to handle each request. It
manages the contexts during the request. Internally, the request and
application contexts work as stacks, _request_ctx_stack
and
_app_ctx_stack
. When contexts are pushed onto the stack, the
proxies that depend on them are available and point at information from
the top context on the stack.
When the request starts, a RequestContext
is created and
pushed, which creates and pushes an AppContext
first if
a context for that application is not already the top context. While
these contexts are pushed, the current_app
, g
,
request
, and session
proxies are available to the
original thread handling the request.
Because the contexts are stacks, other contexts may be pushed to change the proxies during a request. While this is not a common pattern, it can be used in advanced applications to, for example, do internal redirects or chain different applications together.
After the request is dispatched and a response is generated and sent,
the request context is popped, which then pops the application context.
Immediately before they are popped, the teardown_request()
and teardown_appcontext()
functions are executed. These
execute even if an unhandled exception occurred during dispatch.
Callbacks and Errors¶
Flask dispatches a request in multiple stages which can affect the request, response, and how errors are handled. The contexts are active during all of these stages.
A Blueprint
can add handlers for these events that are specific
to the blueprint. The handlers for a blueprint will run if the blueprint
owns the route that matches the request.
Before each request,
before_request()
functions are called. If one of these functions return a value, the other functions are skipped. The return value is treated as the response and the view function is not called.If the
before_request()
functions did not return a response, the view function for the matched route is called and returns a response.The return value of the view is converted into an actual response object and passed to the
after_request()
functions. Each function returns a modified or new response object.After the response is returned, the contexts are popped, which calls the
teardown_request()
andteardown_appcontext()
functions. These functions are called even if an unhandled exception was raised at any point above.
If an exception is raised before the teardown functions, Flask tries to
match it with an errorhandler()
function to handle the
exception and return a response. If no error handler is found, or the
handler itself raises an exception, Flask returns a generic
500 Internal Server Error
response. The teardown functions are still
called, and are passed the exception object.
If debug mode is enabled, unhandled exceptions are not converted to a
500
response and instead are propagated to the WSGI server. This
allows the development server to present the interactive debugger with
the traceback.
Teardown Callbacks¶
The teardown callbacks are independent of the request dispatch, and are instead called by the contexts when they are popped. The functions are called even if there is an unhandled exception during dispatch, and for manually pushed contexts. This means there is no guarantee that any other parts of the request dispatch have run first. Be sure to write these functions in a way that does not depend on other callbacks and will not fail.
During testing, it can be useful to defer popping the contexts after the
request ends, so that their data can be accessed in the test function.
Use the test_client()
as a with
block to preserve the
contexts until the with
block exits.
from flask import Flask, request
app = Flask(__name__)
@app.route('/')
def hello():
print('during view')
return 'Hello, World!'
@app.teardown_request
def show_teardown(exception):
print('after with block')
with app.test_request_context():
print('during with block')
# teardown functions are called after the context with block exits
with app.test_client() as client:
client.get('/')
# the contexts are not popped even though the request ended
print(request.path)
# the contexts are popped and teardown functions are called after
# the client with block exits
Signals¶
If signals_available
is true, the following signals are
sent:
request_started
is sent before thebefore_request()
functions are called.request_finished
is sent after theafter_request()
functions are called.got_request_exception
is sent when an exception begins to be handled, but before anerrorhandler()
is looked up or called.request_tearing_down
is sent after theteardown_request()
functions are called.
Context Preservation on Error¶
At the end of a request, the request context is popped and all data associated with it is destroyed. If an error occurs during development, it is useful to delay destroying the data for debugging purposes.
When the development server is running in development mode (the
FLASK_ENV
environment variable is set to 'development'
), the
error and data will be preserved and shown in the interactive debugger.
This behavior can be controlled with the
PRESERVE_CONTEXT_ON_EXCEPTION
config. As described above, it
defaults to True
in the development environment.
Do not enable PRESERVE_CONTEXT_ON_EXCEPTION
in production, as it
will cause your application to leak memory on exceptions.
Notes On Proxies¶
Some of the objects provided by Flask are proxies to other objects. The proxies are accessed in the same way for each worker thread, but point to the unique object bound to each worker behind the scenes as described on this page.
Most of the time you don’t have to care about that, but there are some exceptions where it is good to know that this object is actually a proxy:
The proxy objects cannot fake their type as the actual object types. If you want to perform instance checks, you have to do that on the object being proxied.
The reference to the proxied object is needed in some situations, such as sending Signals or passing data to a background thread.
If you need to access the underlying object that is proxied, use the
_get_current_object()
method:
app = current_app._get_current_object()
my_signal.send(app)
Modular Applications with Blueprints¶
Changelog
New in version 0.7.
Flask uses a concept of blueprints for making application components and
supporting common patterns within an application or across applications.
Blueprints can greatly simplify how large applications work and provide a
central means for Flask extensions to register operations on applications.
A Blueprint
object works similarly to a Flask
application object, but it is not actually an application. Rather it is a
blueprint of how to construct or extend an application.
Why Blueprints?¶
Blueprints in Flask are intended for these cases:
Factor an application into a set of blueprints. This is ideal for larger applications; a project could instantiate an application object, initialize several extensions, and register a collection of blueprints.
Register a blueprint on an application at a URL prefix and/or subdomain. Parameters in the URL prefix/subdomain become common view arguments (with defaults) across all view functions in the blueprint.
Register a blueprint multiple times on an application with different URL rules.
Provide template filters, static files, templates, and other utilities through blueprints. A blueprint does not have to implement applications or view functions.
Register a blueprint on an application for any of these cases when initializing a Flask extension.
A blueprint in Flask is not a pluggable app because it is not actually an application – it’s a set of operations which can be registered on an application, even multiple times. Why not have multiple application objects? You can do that (see Application Dispatching), but your applications will have separate configs and will be managed at the WSGI layer.
Blueprints instead provide separation at the Flask level, share application config, and can change an application object as necessary with being registered. The downside is that you cannot unregister a blueprint once an application was created without having to destroy the whole application object.
The Concept of Blueprints¶
The basic concept of blueprints is that they record operations to execute when registered on an application. Flask associates view functions with blueprints when dispatching requests and generating URLs from one endpoint to another.
My First Blueprint¶
This is what a very basic blueprint looks like. In this case we want to implement a blueprint that does simple rendering of static templates:
from flask import Blueprint, render_template, abort
from jinja2 import TemplateNotFound
simple_page = Blueprint('simple_page', __name__,
template_folder='templates')
@simple_page.route('/', defaults={'page': 'index'})
@simple_page.route('/<page>')
def show(page):
try:
return render_template('pages/%s.html' % page)
except TemplateNotFound:
abort(404)
When you bind a function with the help of the @simple_page.route
decorator, the blueprint will record the intention of registering the
function show
on the application when it’s later registered.
Additionally it will prefix the endpoint of the function with the
name of the blueprint which was given to the Blueprint
constructor (in this case also simple_page
). The blueprint’s name
does not modify the URL, only the endpoint.
Registering Blueprints¶
So how do you register that blueprint? Like this:
from flask import Flask
from yourapplication.simple_page import simple_page
app = Flask(__name__)
app.register_blueprint(simple_page)
If you check the rules registered on the application, you will find these:
>>> app.url_map
Map([<Rule '/static/<filename>' (HEAD, OPTIONS, GET) -> static>,
<Rule '/<page>' (HEAD, OPTIONS, GET) -> simple_page.show>,
<Rule '/' (HEAD, OPTIONS, GET) -> simple_page.show>])
The first one is obviously from the application itself for the static
files. The other two are for the show function of the simple_page
blueprint. As you can see, they are also prefixed with the name of the
blueprint and separated by a dot (.
).
Blueprints however can also be mounted at different locations:
app.register_blueprint(simple_page, url_prefix='/pages')
And sure enough, these are the generated rules:
>>> app.url_map
Map([<Rule '/static/<filename>' (HEAD, OPTIONS, GET) -> static>,
<Rule '/pages/<page>' (HEAD, OPTIONS, GET) -> simple_page.show>,
<Rule '/pages/' (HEAD, OPTIONS, GET) -> simple_page.show>])
On top of that you can register blueprints multiple times though not every blueprint might respond properly to that. In fact it depends on how the blueprint is implemented if it can be mounted more than once.
Blueprint Resources¶
Blueprints can provide resources as well. Sometimes you might want to introduce a blueprint only for the resources it provides.
Blueprint Resource Folder¶
Like for regular applications, blueprints are considered to be contained in a folder. While multiple blueprints can originate from the same folder, it does not have to be the case and it’s usually not recommended.
The folder is inferred from the second argument to Blueprint
which
is usually __name__. This argument specifies what logical Python
module or package corresponds to the blueprint. If it points to an actual
Python package that package (which is a folder on the filesystem) is the
resource folder. If it’s a module, the package the module is contained in
will be the resource folder. You can access the
Blueprint.root_path
property to see what the resource folder is:
>>> simple_page.root_path
'/Users/username/TestProject/yourapplication'
To quickly open sources from this folder you can use the
open_resource()
function:
with simple_page.open_resource('static/style.css') as f:
code = f.read()
Static Files¶
A blueprint can expose a folder with static files by providing the path
to the folder on the filesystem with the static_folder
argument.
It is either an absolute path or relative to the blueprint’s location:
admin = Blueprint('admin', __name__, static_folder='static')
By default the rightmost part of the path is where it is exposed on the
web. This can be changed with the static_url_path
argument. Because the
folder is called static
here it will be available at the
url_prefix
of the blueprint + /static
. If the blueprint
has the prefix /admin
, the static URL will be /admin/static
.
The endpoint is named blueprint_name.static
. You can generate URLs
to it with url_for()
like you would with the static folder of the
application:
url_for('admin.static', filename='style.css')
However, if the blueprint does not have a url_prefix
, it is not
possible to access the blueprint’s static folder. This is because the
URL would be /static
in this case, and the application’s /static
route takes precedence. Unlike template folders, blueprint static
folders are not searched if the file does not exist in the application
static folder.
Templates¶
If you want the blueprint to expose templates you can do that by providing
the template_folder parameter to the Blueprint
constructor:
admin = Blueprint('admin', __name__, template_folder='templates')
For static files, the path can be absolute or relative to the blueprint resource folder.
The template folder is added to the search path of templates but with a lower priority than the actual application’s template folder. That way you can easily override templates that a blueprint provides in the actual application. This also means that if you don’t want a blueprint template to be accidentally overridden, make sure that no other blueprint or actual application template has the same relative path. When multiple blueprints provide the same relative template path the first blueprint registered takes precedence over the others.
So if you have a blueprint in the folder yourapplication/admin
and you
want to render the template 'admin/index.html'
and you have provided
templates
as a template_folder you will have to create a file like
this: yourapplication/admin/templates/admin/index.html
. The reason
for the extra admin
folder is to avoid getting our template overridden
by a template named index.html
in the actual application template
folder.
To further reiterate this: if you have a blueprint named admin
and you
want to render a template called index.html
which is specific to this
blueprint, the best idea is to lay out your templates like this:
yourpackage/
blueprints/
admin/
templates/
admin/
index.html
__init__.py
And then when you want to render the template, use admin/index.html
as
the name to look up the template by. If you encounter problems loading
the correct templates enable the EXPLAIN_TEMPLATE_LOADING
config
variable which will instruct Flask to print out the steps it goes through
to locate templates on every render_template
call.
Building URLs¶
If you want to link from one page to another you can use the
url_for()
function just like you normally would do just that you
prefix the URL endpoint with the name of the blueprint and a dot (.
):
url_for('admin.index')
Additionally if you are in a view function of a blueprint or a rendered template and you want to link to another endpoint of the same blueprint, you can use relative redirects by prefixing the endpoint with a dot only:
url_for('.index')
This will link to admin.index
for instance in case the current request
was dispatched to any other admin blueprint endpoint.
Error Handlers¶
Blueprints support the errorhandler
decorator just like the Flask
application object, so it is easy to make Blueprint-specific custom error
pages.
Here is an example for a “404 Page Not Found” exception:
@simple_page.errorhandler(404)
def page_not_found(e):
return render_template('pages/404.html')
Most errorhandlers will simply work as expected; however, there is a caveat
concerning handlers for 404 and 405 exceptions. These errorhandlers are only
invoked from an appropriate raise
statement or a call to abort
in another
of the blueprint’s view functions; they are not invoked by, e.g., an invalid URL
access. This is because the blueprint does not “own” a certain URL space, so
the application instance has no way of knowing which blueprint error handler it
should run if given an invalid URL. If you would like to execute different
handling strategies for these errors based on URL prefixes, they may be defined
at the application level using the request
proxy object:
@app.errorhandler(404)
@app.errorhandler(405)
def _handle_api_error(ex):
if request.path.startswith('/api/'):
return jsonify_error(ex)
else:
return ex
More information on error handling see Custom Error Pages.
Extensions¶
Extensions are extra packages that add functionality to a Flask application. For example, an extension might add support for sending email or connecting to a database. Some extensions add entire new frameworks to help build certain types of applications, like a REST API.
Finding Extensions¶
Flask extensions are usually named “Flask-Foo” or “Foo-Flask”. You can search PyPI for packages tagged with Framework :: Flask.
Using Extensions¶
Consult each extension’s documentation for installation, configuration,
and usage instructions. Generally, extensions pull their own
configuration from app.config
and are
passed an application instance during initialization. For example,
an extension called “Flask-Foo” might be used like this:
from flask_foo import Foo
foo = Foo()
app = Flask(__name__)
app.config.update(
FOO_BAR='baz',
FOO_SPAM='eggs',
)
foo.init_app(app)
Building Extensions¶
While the PyPI contains many Flask extensions, you may not find an extension that fits your need. If this is the case, you can create your own. Read Flask Extension Development to develop your own Flask extension.
Command Line Interface¶
Installing Flask installs the flask
script, a Click command line
interface, in your virtualenv. Executed from the terminal, this script gives
access to built-in, extension, and application-defined commands. The --help
option will give more information about any commands and options.
Application Discovery¶
The flask
command is installed by Flask, not your application; it must be
told where to find your application in order to use it. The FLASK_APP
environment variable is used to specify how to load the application.
Unix Bash (Linux, Mac, etc.):
$ export FLASK_APP=hello
$ flask run
Windows CMD:
> set FLASK_APP=hello
> flask run
Windows PowerShell:
> $env:FLASK_APP = "hello"
> flask run
While FLASK_APP
supports a variety of options for specifying your
application, most use cases should be simple. Here are the typical values:
- (nothing)
The file
wsgi.py
is imported, automatically detecting an app (app
). This provides an easy way to create an app from a factory with extra arguments.FLASK_APP=hello
The name is imported, automatically detecting an app (
app
) or factory (create_app
).
FLASK_APP
has three parts: an optional path that sets the current working
directory, a Python file or dotted import path, and an optional variable
name of the instance or factory. If the name is a factory, it can optionally
be followed by arguments in parentheses. The following values demonstrate these
parts:
FLASK_APP=src/hello
Sets the current working directory to
src
then importshello
.FLASK_APP=hello.web
Imports the path
hello.web
.FLASK_APP=hello:app2
Uses the
app2
Flask instance inhello
.FLASK_APP="hello:create_app('dev')"
The
create_app
factory inhello
is called with the string'dev'
as the argument.
If FLASK_APP
is not set, the command will try to import “app” or
“wsgi” (as a “.py” file, or package) and try to detect an application
instance or factory.
Within the given import, the command looks for an application instance named
app
or application
, then any application instance. If no instance is
found, the command looks for a factory function named create_app
or
make_app
that returns an instance.
When calling an application factory, if the factory takes an argument named
script_info
, then the ScriptInfo
instance is passed as a
keyword argument. If the application factory takes only one argument and no
parentheses follow the factory name, the ScriptInfo
instance
is passed as a positional argument. If parentheses follow the factory name,
their contents are parsed as Python literals and passes as arguments to the
function. This means that strings must still be in quotes.
Run the Development Server¶
The run
command will start the development server. It
replaces the Flask.run()
method in most cases.
$ flask run
* Serving Flask app "hello"
* Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/ (Press CTRL+C to quit)
Warning
Do not use this command to run your application in production. Only use the development server during development. The development server is provided for convenience, but is not designed to be particularly secure, stable, or efficient. See Deployment Options for how to run in production.
Open a Shell¶
To explore the data in your application, you can start an interactive Python
shell with the shell
command. An application
context will be active, and the app instance will be imported.
$ flask shell
Python 3.6.2 (default, Jul 20 2017, 03:52:27)
[GCC 7.1.1 20170630] on linux
App: example
Instance: /home/user/Projects/hello/instance
>>>
Use shell_context_processor()
to add other automatic imports.
Environments¶
Changelog
New in version 1.0.
The environment in which the Flask app runs is set by the
FLASK_ENV
environment variable. If not set it defaults to
production
. The other recognized environment is development
.
Flask and extensions may choose to enable behaviors based on the
environment.
If the env is set to development
, the flask
command will enable
debug mode and flask run
will enable the interactive debugger and
reloader.
$ FLASK_ENV=development flask run
* Serving Flask app "hello"
* Environment: development
* Debug mode: on
* Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/ (Press CTRL+C to quit)
* Restarting with inotify reloader
* Debugger is active!
* Debugger PIN: 223-456-919
Watch Extra Files with the Reloader¶
When using development mode, the reloader will trigger whenever your
Python code or imported modules change. The reloader can watch
additional files with the --extra-files
option, or the
FLASK_RUN_EXTRA_FILES
environment variable. Multiple paths are
separated with :
, or ;
on Windows.
$ flask run --extra-files file1:dirA/file2:dirB/
# or
$ export FLASK_RUN_EXTRA_FILES=file1:dirA/file2:dirB/
$ flask run
* Running on http://127.0.0.1:8000/
* Detected change in '/path/to/file1', reloading
Debug Mode¶
Debug mode will be enabled when FLASK_ENV
is development
,
as described above. If you want to control debug mode separately, use
FLASK_DEBUG
. The value 1
enables it, 0
disables it.
Environment Variables From dotenv¶
Rather than setting FLASK_APP
each time you open a new terminal, you can
use Flask’s dotenv support to set environment variables automatically.
If python-dotenv is installed, running the flask
command will set
environment variables defined in the files .env
and .flaskenv
.
This can be used to avoid having to set FLASK_APP
manually every time you
open a new terminal, and to set configuration using environment variables
similar to how some deployment services work.
Variables set on the command line are used over those set in .env
,
which are used over those set in .flaskenv
. .flaskenv
should be
used for public variables, such as FLASK_APP
, while .env
should not
be committed to your repository so that it can set private variables.
Directories are scanned upwards from the directory you call flask
from to locate the files. The current working directory will be set to the
location of the file, with the assumption that that is the top level project
directory.
The files are only loaded by the flask
command or calling
run()
. If you would like to load these files when running in
production, you should call load_dotenv()
manually.
Setting Command Options¶
Click is configured to load default values for command options from
environment variables. The variables use the pattern
FLASK_COMMAND_OPTION
. For example, to set the port for the run
command, instead of flask run --port 8000
:
$ export FLASK_RUN_PORT=8000
$ flask run
* Running on http://127.0.0.1:8000/
These can be added to the .flaskenv
file just like FLASK_APP
to
control default command options.
Disable dotenv¶
The flask
command will show a message if it detects dotenv files but
python-dotenv is not installed.
$ flask run
* Tip: There are .env files present. Do "pip install python-dotenv" to use them.
You can tell Flask not to load dotenv files even when python-dotenv is
installed by setting the FLASK_SKIP_DOTENV
environment variable.
This can be useful if you want to load them manually, or if you’re using
a project runner that loads them already. Keep in mind that the
environment variables must be set before the app loads or it won’t
configure as expected.
$ export FLASK_SKIP_DOTENV=1
$ flask run
Environment Variables From virtualenv¶
If you do not want to install dotenv support, you can still set environment
variables by adding them to the end of the virtualenv’s activate
script. Activating the virtualenv will set the variables.
Unix Bash, venv/bin/activate
:
$ export FLASK_APP=hello
Windows CMD, venv\Scripts\activate.bat
:
> set FLASK_APP=hello
It is preferred to use dotenv support over this, since .flaskenv
can be
committed to the repository so that it works automatically wherever the project
is checked out.
Custom Commands¶
The flask
command is implemented using Click. See that project’s
documentation for full information about writing commands.
This example adds the command create-user
that takes the argument
name
.
import click
from flask import Flask
app = Flask(__name__)
@app.cli.command("create-user")
@click.argument("name")
def create_user(name):
...
$ flask create-user admin
This example adds the same command, but as user create
, a command in a
group. This is useful if you want to organize multiple related commands.
import click
from flask import Flask
from flask.cli import AppGroup
app = Flask(__name__)
user_cli = AppGroup('user')
@user_cli.command('create')
@click.argument('name')
def create_user(name):
...
app.cli.add_command(user_cli)
$ flask user create demo
See Testing CLI Commands for an overview of how to test your custom commands.
Registering Commands with Blueprints¶
If your application uses blueprints, you can optionally register CLI
commands directly onto them. When your blueprint is registered onto your
application, the associated commands will be available to the flask
command. By default, those commands will be nested in a group matching
the name of the blueprint.
from flask import Blueprint
bp = Blueprint('students', __name__)
@bp.cli.command('create')
@click.argument('name')
def create(name):
...
app.register_blueprint(bp)
$ flask students create alice
You can alter the group name by specifying the cli_group
parameter
when creating the Blueprint
object, or later with
app.register_blueprint(bp, cli_group='...')
.
The following are equivalent:
bp = Blueprint('students', __name__, cli_group='other')
# or
app.register_blueprint(bp, cli_group='other')
$ flask other create alice
Specifying cli_group=None
will remove the nesting and merge the
commands directly to the application’s level:
bp = Blueprint('students', __name__, cli_group=None)
# or
app.register_blueprint(bp, cli_group=None)
$ flask create alice
Application Context¶
Commands added using the Flask app’s cli
command()
decorator will be executed with an application
context pushed, so your command and extensions have access to the app and its
configuration. If you create a command using the Click command()
decorator instead of the Flask decorator, you can use
with_appcontext()
to get the same behavior.
import click
from flask.cli import with_appcontext
@click.command()
@with_appcontext
def do_work():
...
app.cli.add_command(do_work)
If you’re sure a command doesn’t need the context, you can disable it:
@app.cli.command(with_appcontext=False)
def do_work():
...
Plugins¶
Flask will automatically load commands specified in the flask.commands
entry point. This is useful for extensions that want to add commands when
they are installed. Entry points are specified in setup.py
from setuptools import setup
setup(
name='flask-my-extension',
...,
entry_points={
'flask.commands': [
'my-command=flask_my_extension.commands:cli'
],
},
)
Inside flask_my_extension/commands.py
you can then export a Click
object:
import click
@click.command()
def cli():
...
Once that package is installed in the same virtualenv as your Flask project,
you can run flask my-command
to invoke the command.
Custom Scripts¶
When you are using the app factory pattern, it may be more convenient to define
your own Click script. Instead of using FLASK_APP
and letting Flask load
your application, you can create your own Click object and export it as a
console script entry point.
Create an instance of FlaskGroup
and pass it the factory:
import click
from flask import Flask
from flask.cli import FlaskGroup
def create_app():
app = Flask('wiki')
# other setup
return app
@click.group(cls=FlaskGroup, create_app=create_app)
def cli():
"""Management script for the Wiki application."""
Define the entry point in setup.py
:
from setuptools import setup
setup(
name='flask-my-extension',
...,
entry_points={
'console_scripts': [
'wiki=wiki:cli'
],
},
)
Install the application in the virtualenv in editable mode and the custom
script is available. Note that you don’t need to set FLASK_APP
.
$ pip install -e .
$ wiki run
Errors in Custom Scripts
When using a custom script, if you introduce an error in your module-level code, the reloader will fail because it can no longer load the entry point.
The flask
command, being separate from your code, does not have
this issue and is recommended in most cases.
PyCharm Integration¶
PyCharm Professional provides a special Flask run configuration. For
the Community Edition, we need to configure it to call the flask run
CLI command with the correct environment variables. These instructions
should be similar for any other IDE you might want to use.
In PyCharm, with your project open, click on Run from the menu bar and go to Edit Configurations. You’ll be greeted by a screen similar to this:

There’s quite a few options to change, but once we’ve done it for one command, we can easily copy the entire configuration and make a single tweak to give us access to other commands, including any custom ones you may implement yourself.
Click the + (Add New Configuration) button and select Python. Give
the configuration a name such as “flask run”. For the flask run
command, check “Single instance only” since you can’t run the server
more than once at the same time.
Select Module name from the dropdown (A) then input flask
.
The Parameters field (B) is set to the CLI command to execute
(with any arguments). In this example we use run
, which will run
the development server.
You can skip this next step if you’re using Environment Variables From dotenv. We need to
add an environment variable (C) to identify our application. Click
on the browse button and add an entry with FLASK_APP
on the left and
the Python import or file on the right (hello
for example). Add an
entry with FLASK_ENV
and set it to development
.
Next we need to set the working directory (D) to be the folder where our application resides.
If you have installed your project as a package in your virtualenv, you may untick the PYTHONPATH options (E). This will more accurately match how you deploy the app later.
Click Apply to save the configuration, or OK to save and close the window. Select the configuration in the main PyCharm window and click the play button next to it to run the server.
Now that we have a configuration which runs flask run
from within
PyCharm, we can copy that configuration and alter the Script argument
to run a different CLI command, e.g. flask shell
.
Development Server¶
Starting with Flask 0.11 there are multiple built-in ways to run a
development server. The best one is the flask command line utility
but you can also continue using the Flask.run()
method.
Command Line¶
The flask command line script (Command Line Interface) is strongly recommended for development because it provides a superior reload experience due to how it loads the application. The basic usage is like this:
$ export FLASK_APP=my_application
$ export FLASK_ENV=development
$ flask run
This enables the development environment, including the interactive debugger and reloader, and then starts the server on http://localhost:5000/.
The individual features of the server can be controlled by passing more
arguments to the run
option. For instance the reloader can be
disabled:
$ flask run --no-reload
Note
Prior to Flask 1.0 the FLASK_ENV
environment variable was
not supported and you needed to enable debug mode by exporting
FLASK_DEBUG=1
. This can still be used to control debug mode, but
you should prefer setting the development environment as shown
above.
In Code¶
The alternative way to start the application is through the
Flask.run()
method. This will immediately launch a local server
exactly the same way the flask script does.
Example:
if __name__ == '__main__':
app.run()
This works well for the common case but it does not work well for development which is why from Flask 0.11 onwards the flask method is recommended. The reason for this is that due to how the reload mechanism works there are some bizarre side-effects (like executing certain code twice, sometimes crashing without message or dying when a syntax or import error happens).
It is however still a perfectly valid method for invoking a non automatic reloading application.
Working with the Shell¶
Changelog
New in version 0.3.
One of the reasons everybody loves Python is the interactive shell. It basically allows you to execute Python commands in real time and immediately get results back. Flask itself does not come with an interactive shell, because it does not require any specific setup upfront, just import your application and start playing around.
There are however some handy helpers to make playing around in the shell a
more pleasant experience. The main issue with interactive console
sessions is that you’re not triggering a request like a browser does which
means that g
, request
and others are not
available. But the code you want to test might depend on them, so what
can you do?
This is where some helper functions come in handy. Keep in mind however that these functions are not only there for interactive shell usage, but also for unit testing and other situations that require a faked request context.
Generally it’s recommended that you read the The Request Context chapter of the documentation first.
Command Line Interface¶
Starting with Flask 0.11 the recommended way to work with the shell is the
flask shell
command which does a lot of this automatically for you.
For instance the shell is automatically initialized with a loaded
application context.
For more information see Command Line Interface.
Creating a Request Context¶
The easiest way to create a proper request context from the shell is by
using the test_request_context
method which creates
us a RequestContext
:
>>> ctx = app.test_request_context()
Normally you would use the with
statement to make this request object
active, but in the shell it’s easier to use the
push()
and
pop()
methods by hand:
>>> ctx.push()
From that point onwards you can work with the request object until you call pop:
>>> ctx.pop()
Firing Before/After Request¶
By just creating a request context, you still don’t have run the code that
is normally run before a request. This might result in your database
being unavailable if you are connecting to the database in a
before-request callback or the current user not being stored on the
g
object etc.
This however can easily be done yourself. Just call
preprocess_request()
:
>>> ctx = app.test_request_context()
>>> ctx.push()
>>> app.preprocess_request()
Keep in mind that the preprocess_request()
function
might return a response object, in that case just ignore it.
To shutdown a request, you need to trick a bit before the after request
functions (triggered by process_response()
) operate on
a response object:
>>> app.process_response(app.response_class())
<Response 0 bytes [200 OK]>
>>> ctx.pop()
The functions registered as teardown_request()
are
automatically called when the context is popped. So this is the perfect
place to automatically tear down resources that were needed by the request
context (such as database connections).
Further Improving the Shell Experience¶
If you like the idea of experimenting in a shell, create yourself a module with stuff you want to star import into your interactive session. There you could also define some more helper methods for common things such as initializing the database, dropping tables etc.
Just put them into a module (like shelltools) and import from there:
>>> from shelltools import *
Patterns for Flask¶
Certain features and interactions are common enough that you will find them in most web applications. For example, many applications use a relational database and user authentication. They will open a database connection at the beginning of the request and get the information for the logged in user. At the end of the request, the database connection is closed.
These types of patterns may be a bit outside the scope of Flask itself, but Flask makes it easy to implement them. Some common patterns are collected in the following pages.
Larger Applications¶
Imagine a simple flask application structure that looks like this:
/yourapplication
yourapplication.py
/static
style.css
/templates
layout.html
index.html
login.html
...
While this is fine for small applications, for larger applications it’s a good idea to use a package instead of a module. The tutorial is structured to use the package pattern, see the example code.
Simple Packages¶
To convert that into a larger one, just create a new folder
yourapplication
inside the existing one and move everything below it.
Then rename yourapplication.py
to __init__.py
. (Make sure to delete
all .pyc
files first, otherwise things would most likely break)
You should then end up with something like that:
/yourapplication
/yourapplication
__init__.py
/static
style.css
/templates
layout.html
index.html
login.html
...
But how do you run your application now? The naive python
yourapplication/__init__.py
will not work. Let’s just say that Python
does not want modules in packages to be the startup file. But that is not
a big problem, just add a new file called setup.py
next to the inner
yourapplication
folder with the following contents:
from setuptools import setup
setup(
name='yourapplication',
packages=['yourapplication'],
include_package_data=True,
install_requires=[
'flask',
],
)
In order to run the application you need to export an environment variable that tells Flask where to find the application instance:
$ export FLASK_APP=yourapplication
If you are outside of the project directory make sure to provide the exact path to your application directory. Similarly you can turn on the development features like this:
$ export FLASK_ENV=development
In order to install and run the application you need to issue the following commands:
$ pip install -e .
$ flask run
What did we gain from this? Now we can restructure the application a bit into multiple modules. The only thing you have to remember is the following quick checklist:
the Flask application object creation has to be in the
__init__.py
file. That way each module can import it safely and the __name__ variable will resolve to the correct package.all the view functions (the ones with a
route()
decorator on top) have to be imported in the__init__.py
file. Not the object itself, but the module it is in. Import the view module after the application object is created.
Here’s an example __init__.py
:
from flask import Flask
app = Flask(__name__)
import yourapplication.views
And this is what views.py
would look like:
from yourapplication import app
@app.route('/')
def index():
return 'Hello World!'
You should then end up with something like that:
/yourapplication
setup.py
/yourapplication
__init__.py
views.py
/static
style.css
/templates
layout.html
index.html
login.html
...
Circular Imports
Every Python programmer hates them, and yet we just added some:
circular imports (That’s when two modules depend on each other. In this
case views.py
depends on __init__.py
). Be advised that this is a
bad idea in general but here it is actually fine. The reason for this is
that we are not actually using the views in __init__.py
and just
ensuring the module is imported and we are doing that at the bottom of
the file.
There are still some problems with that approach but if you want to use decorators there is no way around that. Check out the Becoming Big section for some inspiration how to deal with that.
Working with Blueprints¶
If you have larger applications it’s recommended to divide them into smaller groups where each group is implemented with the help of a blueprint. For a gentle introduction into this topic refer to the Modular Applications with Blueprints chapter of the documentation.
Application Factories¶
If you are already using packages and blueprints for your application (Modular Applications with Blueprints) there are a couple of really nice ways to further improve the experience. A common pattern is creating the application object when the blueprint is imported. But if you move the creation of this object into a function, you can then create multiple instances of this app later.
So why would you want to do this?
Testing. You can have instances of the application with different settings to test every case.
Multiple instances. Imagine you want to run different versions of the same application. Of course you could have multiple instances with different configs set up in your webserver, but if you use factories, you can have multiple instances of the same application running in the same application process which can be handy.
So how would you then actually implement that?
Basic Factories¶
The idea is to set up the application in a function. Like this:
def create_app(config_filename):
app = Flask(__name__)
app.config.from_pyfile(config_filename)
from yourapplication.model import db
db.init_app(app)
from yourapplication.views.admin import admin
from yourapplication.views.frontend import frontend
app.register_blueprint(admin)
app.register_blueprint(frontend)
return app
The downside is that you cannot use the application object in the blueprints
at import time. You can however use it from within a request. How do you
get access to the application with the config? Use
current_app
:
from flask import current_app, Blueprint, render_template
admin = Blueprint('admin', __name__, url_prefix='/admin')
@admin.route('/')
def index():
return render_template(current_app.config['INDEX_TEMPLATE'])
Here we look up the name of a template in the config.
Factories & Extensions¶
It’s preferable to create your extensions and app factories so that the extension object does not initially get bound to the application.
Using Flask-SQLAlchemy, as an example, you should not do something along those lines:
def create_app(config_filename):
app = Flask(__name__)
app.config.from_pyfile(config_filename)
db = SQLAlchemy(app)
But, rather, in model.py (or equivalent):
db = SQLAlchemy()
and in your application.py (or equivalent):
def create_app(config_filename):
app = Flask(__name__)
app.config.from_pyfile(config_filename)
from yourapplication.model import db
db.init_app(app)
Using this design pattern, no application-specific state is stored on the extension object, so one extension object can be used for multiple apps. For more information about the design of extensions refer to Flask Extension Development.
Using Applications¶
To run such an application, you can use the flask command:
$ export FLASK_APP=myapp
$ flask run
Flask will automatically detect the factory (create_app
or make_app
)
in myapp
. You can also pass arguments to the factory like this:
$ export FLASK_APP="myapp:create_app('dev')"
$ flask run
Then the create_app
factory in myapp
is called with the string
'dev'
as the argument. See Command Line Interface for more detail.
Factory Improvements¶
The factory function above is not very clever, but you can improve it. The following changes are straightforward to implement:
Make it possible to pass in configuration values for unit tests so that you don’t have to create config files on the filesystem.
Call a function from a blueprint when the application is setting up so that you have a place to modify attributes of the application (like hooking in before/after request handlers etc.)
Add in WSGI middlewares when the application is being created if necessary.
Application Dispatching¶
Application dispatching is the process of combining multiple Flask applications on the WSGI level. You can combine not only Flask applications but any WSGI application. This would allow you to run a Django and a Flask application in the same interpreter side by side if you want. The usefulness of this depends on how the applications work internally.
The fundamental difference from the module approach is that in this case you are running the same or different Flask applications that are entirely isolated from each other. They run different configurations and are dispatched on the WSGI level.
Working with this Document¶
Each of the techniques and examples below results in an application
object
that can be run with any WSGI server. For production, see Deployment Options.
For development, Werkzeug provides a builtin server for development available
at werkzeug.serving.run_simple()
:
from werkzeug.serving import run_simple
run_simple('localhost', 5000, application, use_reloader=True)
Note that run_simple
is not intended for
use in production. Use a full-blown WSGI server.
In order to use the interactive debugger, debugging must be enabled both on
the application and the simple server. Here is the “hello world” example with
debugging and run_simple
:
from flask import Flask
from werkzeug.serving import run_simple
app = Flask(__name__)
app.debug = True
@app.route('/')
def hello_world():
return 'Hello World!'
if __name__ == '__main__':
run_simple('localhost', 5000, app,
use_reloader=True, use_debugger=True, use_evalex=True)
Combining Applications¶
If you have entirely separated applications and you want them to work next
to each other in the same Python interpreter process you can take
advantage of the werkzeug.wsgi.DispatcherMiddleware
. The idea
here is that each Flask application is a valid WSGI application and they
are combined by the dispatcher middleware into a larger one that is
dispatched based on prefix.
For example you could have your main application run on /
and your
backend interface on /backend
:
from werkzeug.middleware.dispatcher import DispatcherMiddleware
from frontend_app import application as frontend
from backend_app import application as backend
application = DispatcherMiddleware(frontend, {
'/backend': backend
})
Dispatch by Subdomain¶
Sometimes you might want to use multiple instances of the same application with different configurations. Assuming the application is created inside a function and you can call that function to instantiate it, that is really easy to implement. In order to develop your application to support creating new instances in functions have a look at the Application Factories pattern.
A very common example would be creating applications per subdomain. For instance you configure your webserver to dispatch all requests for all subdomains to your application and you then use the subdomain information to create user-specific instances. Once you have your server set up to listen on all subdomains you can use a very simple WSGI application to do the dynamic application creation.
The perfect level for abstraction in that regard is the WSGI layer. You write your own WSGI application that looks at the request that comes and delegates it to your Flask application. If that application does not exist yet, it is dynamically created and remembered:
from threading import Lock
class SubdomainDispatcher(object):
def __init__(self, domain, create_app):
self.domain = domain
self.create_app = create_app
self.lock = Lock()
self.instances = {}
def get_application(self, host):
host = host.split(':')[0]
assert host.endswith(self.domain), 'Configuration error'
subdomain = host[:-len(self.domain)].rstrip('.')
with self.lock:
app = self.instances.get(subdomain)
if app is None:
app = self.create_app(subdomain)
self.instances[subdomain] = app
return app
def __call__(self, environ, start_response):
app = self.get_application(environ['HTTP_HOST'])
return app(environ, start_response)
This dispatcher can then be used like this:
from myapplication import create_app, get_user_for_subdomain
from werkzeug.exceptions import NotFound
def make_app(subdomain):
user = get_user_for_subdomain(subdomain)
if user is None:
# if there is no user for that subdomain we still have
# to return a WSGI application that handles that request.
# We can then just return the NotFound() exception as
# application which will render a default 404 page.
# You might also redirect the user to the main page then
return NotFound()
# otherwise create the application for the specific user
return create_app(user)
application = SubdomainDispatcher('example.com', make_app)
Dispatch by Path¶
Dispatching by a path on the URL is very similar. Instead of looking at
the Host
header to figure out the subdomain one simply looks at the
request path up to the first slash:
from threading import Lock
from werkzeug.wsgi import pop_path_info, peek_path_info
class PathDispatcher(object):
def __init__(self, default_app, create_app):
self.default_app = default_app
self.create_app = create_app
self.lock = Lock()
self.instances = {}
def get_application(self, prefix):
with self.lock:
app = self.instances.get(prefix)
if app is None:
app = self.create_app(prefix)
if app is not None:
self.instances[prefix] = app
return app
def __call__(self, environ, start_response):
app = self.get_application(peek_path_info(environ))
if app is not None:
pop_path_info(environ)
else:
app = self.default_app
return app(environ, start_response)
The big difference between this and the subdomain one is that this one
falls back to another application if the creator function returns None
:
from myapplication import create_app, default_app, get_user_for_prefix
def make_app(prefix):
user = get_user_for_prefix(prefix)
if user is not None:
return create_app(user)
application = PathDispatcher(default_app, make_app)
Implementing API Exceptions¶
It’s very common to implement RESTful APIs on top of Flask. One of the first things that developers run into is the realization that the builtin exceptions are not expressive enough for APIs and that the content type of text/html they are emitting is not very useful for API consumers.
The better solution than using abort
to signal errors for invalid API
usage is to implement your own exception type and install an error handler
for it that produces the errors in the format the user is expecting.
Simple Exception Class¶
The basic idea is to introduce a new exception that can take a proper human readable message, a status code for the error and some optional payload to give more context for the error.
This is a simple example:
from flask import jsonify
class InvalidUsage(Exception):
status_code = 400
def __init__(self, message, status_code=None, payload=None):
Exception.__init__(self)
self.message = message
if status_code is not None:
self.status_code = status_code
self.payload = payload
def to_dict(self):
rv = dict(self.payload or ())
rv['message'] = self.message
return rv
A view can now raise that exception with an error message. Additionally some extra payload can be provided as a dictionary through the payload parameter.
Registering an Error Handler¶
At that point views can raise that error, but it would immediately result in an internal server error. The reason for this is that there is no handler registered for this error class. That however is easy to add:
@app.errorhandler(InvalidUsage)
def handle_invalid_usage(error):
response = jsonify(error.to_dict())
response.status_code = error.status_code
return response
Usage in Views¶
Here is how a view can use that functionality:
@app.route('/foo')
def get_foo():
raise InvalidUsage('This view is gone', status_code=410)
Using URL Processors¶
Changelog
New in version 0.7.
Flask 0.7 introduces the concept of URL processors. The idea is that you might have a bunch of resources with common parts in the URL that you don’t always explicitly want to provide. For instance you might have a bunch of URLs that have the language code in it but you don’t want to have to handle it in every single function yourself.
URL processors are especially helpful when combined with blueprints. We will handle both application specific URL processors here as well as blueprint specifics.
Internationalized Application URLs¶
Consider an application like this:
from flask import Flask, g
app = Flask(__name__)
@app.route('/<lang_code>/')
def index(lang_code):
g.lang_code = lang_code
...
@app.route('/<lang_code>/about')
def about(lang_code):
g.lang_code = lang_code
...
This is an awful lot of repetition as you have to handle the language code
setting on the g
object yourself in every single function.
Sure, a decorator could be used to simplify this, but if you want to
generate URLs from one function to another you would have to still provide
the language code explicitly which can be annoying.
For the latter, this is where url_defaults()
functions
come in. They can automatically inject values into a call to
url_for()
. The code below checks if the
language code is not yet in the dictionary of URL values and if the
endpoint wants a value named 'lang_code'
:
@app.url_defaults
def add_language_code(endpoint, values):
if 'lang_code' in values or not g.lang_code:
return
if app.url_map.is_endpoint_expecting(endpoint, 'lang_code'):
values['lang_code'] = g.lang_code
The method is_endpoint_expecting()
of the URL
map can be used to figure out if it would make sense to provide a language
code for the given endpoint.
The reverse of that function are
url_value_preprocessor()
s. They are executed right
after the request was matched and can execute code based on the URL
values. The idea is that they pull information out of the values
dictionary and put it somewhere else:
@app.url_value_preprocessor
def pull_lang_code(endpoint, values):
g.lang_code = values.pop('lang_code', None)
That way you no longer have to do the lang_code assignment to
g
in every function. You can further improve that by
writing your own decorator that prefixes URLs with the language code, but
the more beautiful solution is using a blueprint. Once the
'lang_code'
is popped from the values dictionary and it will no longer
be forwarded to the view function reducing the code to this:
from flask import Flask, g
app = Flask(__name__)
@app.url_defaults
def add_language_code(endpoint, values):
if 'lang_code' in values or not g.lang_code:
return
if app.url_map.is_endpoint_expecting(endpoint, 'lang_code'):
values['lang_code'] = g.lang_code
@app.url_value_preprocessor
def pull_lang_code(endpoint, values):
g.lang_code = values.pop('lang_code', None)
@app.route('/<lang_code>/')
def index():
...
@app.route('/<lang_code>/about')
def about():
...
Internationalized Blueprint URLs¶
Because blueprints can automatically prefix all URLs with a common string
it’s easy to automatically do that for every function. Furthermore
blueprints can have per-blueprint URL processors which removes a whole lot
of logic from the url_defaults()
function because it no
longer has to check if the URL is really interested in a 'lang_code'
parameter:
from flask import Blueprint, g
bp = Blueprint('frontend', __name__, url_prefix='/<lang_code>')
@bp.url_defaults
def add_language_code(endpoint, values):
values.setdefault('lang_code', g.lang_code)
@bp.url_value_preprocessor
def pull_lang_code(endpoint, values):
g.lang_code = values.pop('lang_code')
@bp.route('/')
def index():
...
@bp.route('/about')
def about():
...
Deploying with Setuptools¶
Setuptools, is an extension library that is commonly used to distribute Python libraries and extensions. It extends distutils, a basic module installation system shipped with Python to also support various more complex constructs that make larger applications easier to distribute:
support for dependencies: a library or application can declare a list of other libraries it depends on which will be installed automatically for you.
package registry: setuptools registers your package with your Python installation. This makes it possible to query information provided by one package from another package. The best known feature of this system is the entry point support which allows one package to declare an “entry point” that another package can hook into to extend the other package.
installation manager: pip can install other libraries for you.
If you have Python 2 (>=2.7.9) or Python 3 (>=3.4) installed from python.org, you will already have pip and setuptools on your system. Otherwise, you will need to install them yourself.
Flask itself, and all the libraries you can find on PyPI are distributed with either setuptools or distutils.
In this case we assume your application is called
yourapplication.py
and you are not using a module, but a package. If you have not yet converted your application into
a package, head over to the Larger Applications pattern to see
how this can be done.
A working deployment with setuptools is the first step into more complex and more automated deployment scenarios. If you want to fully automate the process, also read the Deploying with Fabric chapter.
Basic Setup Script¶
Because you have Flask installed, you have setuptools available on your system. Flask already depends upon setuptools.
Standard disclaimer applies: you better use a virtualenv.
Your setup code always goes into a file named setup.py
next to your
application. The name of the file is only convention, but because
everybody will look for a file with that name, you better not change it.
A basic setup.py
file for a Flask application looks like this:
from setuptools import setup
setup(
name='Your Application',
version='1.0',
long_description=__doc__,
packages=['yourapplication'],
include_package_data=True,
zip_safe=False,
install_requires=['Flask']
)
Please keep in mind that you have to list subpackages explicitly. If you
want setuptools to lookup the packages for you automatically, you can use
the find_packages
function:
from setuptools import setup, find_packages
setup(
...
packages=find_packages()
)
Most parameters to the setup
function should be self explanatory,
include_package_data
and zip_safe
might not be.
include_package_data
tells setuptools to look for a MANIFEST.in
file
and install all the entries that match as package data. We will use this
to distribute the static files and templates along with the Python module
(see Distributing Resources). The zip_safe
flag can be used to
force or prevent zip Archive creation. In general you probably don’t want
your packages to be installed as zip files because some tools do not
support them and they make debugging a lot harder.
Tagging Builds¶
It is useful to distinguish between release and development builds. Add a
setup.cfg
file to configure these options.
[egg_info]
tag_build = .dev
tag_date = 1
[aliases]
release = egg_info -Db ''
Running python setup.py sdist
will create a development package
with “.dev” and the current date appended: flaskr-1.0.dev20160314.tar.gz
.
Running python setup.py release sdist
will create a release package
with only the version: flaskr-1.0.tar.gz
.
Distributing Resources¶
If you try to install the package you just created, you will notice that
folders like static
or templates
are not installed for you. The
reason for this is that setuptools does not know which files to add for
you. What you should do, is to create a MANIFEST.in
file next to your
setup.py
file. This file lists all the files that should be added to
your tarball:
recursive-include yourapplication/templates *
recursive-include yourapplication/static *
Don’t forget that even if you enlist them in your MANIFEST.in
file, they
won’t be installed for you unless you set the include_package_data
parameter of the setup
function to True
!
Declaring Dependencies¶
Dependencies are declared in the install_requires
parameter as a list.
Each item in that list is the name of a package that should be pulled from
PyPI on installation. By default it will always use the most recent
version, but you can also provide minimum and maximum version
requirements. Here some examples:
install_requires=[
'Flask>=0.2',
'SQLAlchemy>=0.6',
'BrokenPackage>=0.7,<=1.0'
]
As mentioned earlier, dependencies are pulled from PyPI. What if you want to depend on a package that cannot be found on PyPI and won’t be because it is an internal package you don’t want to share with anyone? Just do it as if there was a PyPI entry and provide a list of alternative locations where setuptools should look for tarballs:
dependency_links=['http://example.com/yourfiles']
Make sure that page has a directory listing and the links on the page are pointing to the actual tarballs with their correct filenames as this is how setuptools will find the files. If you have an internal company server that contains the packages, provide the URL to that server.
Installing / Developing¶
To install your application (ideally into a virtualenv) just run the
setup.py
script with the install
parameter. It will install your
application into the virtualenv’s site-packages folder and also download
and install all dependencies:
$ python setup.py install
If you are developing on the package and also want the requirements to be
installed, you can use the develop
command instead:
$ python setup.py develop
This has the advantage of just installing a link to the site-packages
folder instead of copying the data over. You can then continue to work on
the code without having to run install
again after each change.
Deploying with Fabric¶
Fabric is a tool for Python similar to Makefiles but with the ability to execute commands on a remote server. In combination with a properly set up Python package (Larger Applications) and a good concept for configurations (Configuration Handling) it is very easy to deploy Flask applications to external servers.
Before we get started, here a quick checklist of things we have to ensure upfront:
Fabric 1.0 has to be installed locally. This tutorial assumes the latest version of Fabric.
The application already has to be a package and requires a working
setup.py
file (Deploying with Setuptools).In the following example we are using mod_wsgi for the remote servers. You can of course use your own favourite server there, but for this example we chose Apache + mod_wsgi because it’s very easy to setup and has a simple way to reload applications without root access.
Creating the first Fabfile¶
A fabfile is what controls what Fabric executes. It is named fabfile.py
and executed by the fab command. All the functions defined in that file
will show up as fab subcommands. They are executed on one or more
hosts. These hosts can be defined either in the fabfile or on the command
line. In this case we will add them to the fabfile.
This is a basic first example that has the ability to upload the current source code to the server and install it into a pre-existing virtual environment:
from fabric.api import *
# the user to use for the remote commands
env.user = 'appuser'
# the servers where the commands are executed
env.hosts = ['server1.example.com', 'server2.example.com']
def pack():
# build the package
local('python setup.py sdist --formats=gztar', capture=False)
def deploy():
# figure out the package name and version
dist = local('python setup.py --fullname', capture=True).strip()
filename = '%s.tar.gz' % dist
# upload the package to the temporary folder on the server
put('dist/%s' % filename, '/tmp/%s' % filename)
# install the package in the application's virtualenv with pip
run('/var/www/yourapplication/env/bin/pip install /tmp/%s' % filename)
# remove the uploaded package
run('rm -r /tmp/%s' % filename)
# touch the .wsgi file to trigger a reload in mod_wsgi
run('touch /var/www/yourapplication.wsgi')
Running Fabfiles¶
Now how do you execute that fabfile? You use the fab command. To deploy the current version of the code on the remote server you would use this command:
$ fab pack deploy
However this requires that our server already has the
/var/www/yourapplication
folder created and
/var/www/yourapplication/env
to be a virtual environment. Furthermore
are we not creating the configuration or .wsgi
file on the server. So
how do we bootstrap a new server into our infrastructure?
This now depends on the number of servers we want to set up. If we just have one application server (which the majority of applications will have), creating a command in the fabfile for this is overkill. But obviously you can do that. In that case you would probably call it setup or bootstrap and then pass the servername explicitly on the command line:
$ fab -H newserver.example.com bootstrap
To setup a new server you would roughly do these steps:
Create the directory structure in
/var/www
:$ mkdir /var/www/yourapplication $ cd /var/www/yourapplication $ virtualenv --distribute env
Upload a new
application.wsgi
file to the server and the configuration file for the application (eg:application.cfg
)Create a new Apache config for
yourapplication
and activate it. Make sure to activate watching for changes of the.wsgi
file so that we can automatically reload the application by touching it. (See mod_wsgi (Apache) for more information)
So now the question is, where do the application.wsgi
and
application.cfg
files come from?
The WSGI File¶
The WSGI file has to import the application and also to set an environment variable so that the application knows where to look for the config. This is a short example that does exactly that:
import os
os.environ['YOURAPPLICATION_CONFIG'] = '/var/www/yourapplication/application.cfg'
from yourapplication import app
The application itself then has to initialize itself like this to look for the config at that environment variable:
app = Flask(__name__)
app.config.from_object('yourapplication.default_config')
app.config.from_envvar('YOURAPPLICATION_CONFIG')
This approach is explained in detail in the Configuration Handling section of the documentation.
The Configuration File¶
Now as mentioned above, the application will find the correct
configuration file by looking up the YOURAPPLICATION_CONFIG
environment
variable. So we have to put the configuration in a place where the
application will able to find it. Configuration files have the unfriendly
quality of being different on all computers, so you do not version them
usually.
A popular approach is to store configuration files for different servers
in a separate version control repository and check them out on all
servers. Then symlink the file that is active for the server into the
location where it’s expected (eg: /var/www/yourapplication
).
Either way, in our case here we only expect one or two servers and we can upload them ahead of time by hand.
First Deployment¶
Now we can do our first deployment. We have set up the servers so that they have their virtual environments and activated apache configs. Now we can pack up the application and deploy it:
$ fab pack deploy
Fabric will now connect to all servers and run the commands as written
down in the fabfile. First it will execute pack so that we have our
tarball ready and then it will execute deploy and upload the source code
to all servers and install it there. Thanks to the setup.py
file we
will automatically pull in the required libraries into our virtual
environment.
Next Steps¶
From that point onwards there is so much that can be done to make deployment actually fun:
Create a bootstrap command that initializes new servers. It could initialize a new virtual environment, setup apache appropriately etc.
Put configuration files into a separate version control repository and symlink the active configs into place.
You could also put your application code into a repository and check out the latest version on the server and then install. That way you can also easily go back to older versions.
hook in testing functionality so that you can deploy to an external server and run the test suite.
Working with Fabric is fun and you will notice that it’s quite magical to
type fab deploy
and see your application being deployed automatically
to one or more remote servers.
Using SQLite 3 with Flask¶
In Flask you can easily implement the opening of database connections on demand and closing them when the context dies (usually at the end of the request).
Here is a simple example of how you can use SQLite 3 with Flask:
import sqlite3
from flask import g
DATABASE = '/path/to/database.db'
def get_db():
db = getattr(g, '_database', None)
if db is None:
db = g._database = sqlite3.connect(DATABASE)
return db
@app.teardown_appcontext
def close_connection(exception):
db = getattr(g, '_database', None)
if db is not None:
db.close()
Now, to use the database, the application must either have an active
application context (which is always true if there is a request in flight)
or create an application context itself. At that point the get_db
function can be used to get the current database connection. Whenever the
context is destroyed the database connection will be terminated.
Note: if you use Flask 0.9 or older you need to use
flask._app_ctx_stack.top
instead of g
as the flask.g
object was bound to the request and not application context.
Example:
@app.route('/')
def index():
cur = get_db().cursor()
...
Note
Please keep in mind that the teardown request and appcontext functions are always executed, even if a before-request handler failed or was never executed. Because of this we have to make sure here that the database is there before we close it.
Connect on Demand¶
The upside of this approach (connecting on first use) is that this will only open the connection if truly necessary. If you want to use this code outside a request context you can use it in a Python shell by opening the application context by hand:
with app.app_context():
# now you can use get_db()
Easy Querying¶
Now in each request handling function you can access get_db() to get the
current open database connection. To simplify working with SQLite, a
row factory function is useful. It is executed for every result returned
from the database to convert the result. For instance, in order to get
dictionaries instead of tuples, this could be inserted into the get_db
function we created above:
def make_dicts(cursor, row):
return dict((cursor.description[idx][0], value)
for idx, value in enumerate(row))
db.row_factory = make_dicts
This will make the sqlite3 module return dicts for this database connection, which are much nicer to deal with. Even more simply, we could place this in get_db
instead:
db.row_factory = sqlite3.Row
This would use Row objects rather than dicts to return the results of queries. These are namedtuple
s, so we can access them either by index or by key. For example, assuming we have a sqlite3.Row
called r
for the rows id
, FirstName
, LastName
, and MiddleInitial
:
>>> # You can get values based on the row's name
>>> r['FirstName']
John
>>> # Or, you can get them based on index
>>> r[1]
John
# Row objects are also iterable:
>>> for value in r:
... print(value)
1
John
Doe
M
Additionally, it is a good idea to provide a query function that combines getting the cursor, executing and fetching the results:
def query_db(query, args=(), one=False):
cur = get_db().execute(query, args)
rv = cur.fetchall()
cur.close()
return (rv[0] if rv else None) if one else rv
This handy little function, in combination with a row factory, makes working with the database much more pleasant than it is by just using the raw cursor and connection objects.
Here is how you can use it:
for user in query_db('select * from users'):
print user['username'], 'has the id', user['user_id']
Or if you just want a single result:
user = query_db('select * from users where username = ?',
[the_username], one=True)
if user is None:
print 'No such user'
else:
print the_username, 'has the id', user['user_id']
To pass variable parts to the SQL statement, use a question mark in the statement and pass in the arguments as a list. Never directly add them to the SQL statement with string formatting because this makes it possible to attack the application using SQL Injections.
Initial Schemas¶
Relational databases need schemas, so applications often ship a schema.sql file that creates the database. It’s a good idea to provide a function that creates the database based on that schema. This function can do that for you:
def init_db():
with app.app_context():
db = get_db()
with app.open_resource('schema.sql', mode='r') as f:
db.cursor().executescript(f.read())
db.commit()
You can then create such a database from the Python shell:
>>> from yourapplication import init_db
>>> init_db()
SQLAlchemy in Flask¶
Many people prefer SQLAlchemy for database access. In this case it’s encouraged to use a package instead of a module for your flask application and drop the models into a separate module (Larger Applications). While that is not necessary, it makes a lot of sense.
There are four very common ways to use SQLAlchemy. I will outline each of them here:
Flask-SQLAlchemy Extension¶
Because SQLAlchemy is a common database abstraction layer and object relational mapper that requires a little bit of configuration effort, there is a Flask extension that handles that for you. This is recommended if you want to get started quickly.
You can download Flask-SQLAlchemy from PyPI.
Declarative¶
The declarative extension in SQLAlchemy is the most recent method of using SQLAlchemy. It allows you to define tables and models in one go, similar to how Django works. In addition to the following text I recommend the official documentation on the declarative extension.
Here’s the example database.py
module for your application:
from sqlalchemy import create_engine
from sqlalchemy.orm import scoped_session, sessionmaker
from sqlalchemy.ext.declarative import declarative_base
engine = create_engine('sqlite:////tmp/test.db', convert_unicode=True)
db_session = scoped_session(sessionmaker(autocommit=False,
autoflush=False,
bind=engine))
Base = declarative_base()
Base.query = db_session.query_property()
def init_db():
# import all modules here that might define models so that
# they will be registered properly on the metadata. Otherwise
# you will have to import them first before calling init_db()
import yourapplication.models
Base.metadata.create_all(bind=engine)
To define your models, just subclass the Base class that was created by
the code above. If you are wondering why we don’t have to care about
threads here (like we did in the SQLite3 example above with the
g
object): that’s because SQLAlchemy does that for us
already with the scoped_session
.
To use SQLAlchemy in a declarative way with your application, you just have to put the following code into your application module. Flask will automatically remove database sessions at the end of the request or when the application shuts down:
from yourapplication.database import db_session
@app.teardown_appcontext
def shutdown_session(exception=None):
db_session.remove()
Here is an example model (put this into models.py
, e.g.):
from sqlalchemy import Column, Integer, String
from yourapplication.database import Base
class User(Base):
__tablename__ = 'users'
id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)
name = Column(String(50), unique=True)
email = Column(String(120), unique=True)
def __init__(self, name=None, email=None):
self.name = name
self.email = email
def __repr__(self):
return '<User %r>' % (self.name)
To create the database you can use the init_db function:
>>> from yourapplication.database import init_db
>>> init_db()
You can insert entries into the database like this:
>>> from yourapplication.database import db_session
>>> from yourapplication.models import User
>>> u = User('admin', 'admin@localhost')
>>> db_session.add(u)
>>> db_session.commit()
Querying is simple as well:
>>> User.query.all()
[<User u'admin'>]
>>> User.query.filter(User.name == 'admin').first()
<User u'admin'>
Manual Object Relational Mapping¶
Manual object relational mapping has a few upsides and a few downsides versus the declarative approach from above. The main difference is that you define tables and classes separately and map them together. It’s more flexible but a little more to type. In general it works like the declarative approach, so make sure to also split up your application into multiple modules in a package.
Here is an example database.py
module for your application:
from sqlalchemy import create_engine, MetaData
from sqlalchemy.orm import scoped_session, sessionmaker
engine = create_engine('sqlite:////tmp/test.db', convert_unicode=True)
metadata = MetaData()
db_session = scoped_session(sessionmaker(autocommit=False,
autoflush=False,
bind=engine))
def init_db():
metadata.create_all(bind=engine)
As in the declarative approach, you need to close the session after each request or application context shutdown. Put this into your application module:
from yourapplication.database import db_session
@app.teardown_appcontext
def shutdown_session(exception=None):
db_session.remove()
Here is an example table and model (put this into models.py
):
from sqlalchemy import Table, Column, Integer, String
from sqlalchemy.orm import mapper
from yourapplication.database import metadata, db_session
class User(object):
query = db_session.query_property()
def __init__(self, name=None, email=None):
self.name = name
self.email = email
def __repr__(self):
return '<User %r>' % (self.name)
users = Table('users', metadata,
Column('id', Integer, primary_key=True),
Column('name', String(50), unique=True),
Column('email', String(120), unique=True)
)
mapper(User, users)
Querying and inserting works exactly the same as in the example above.
SQL Abstraction Layer¶
If you just want to use the database system (and SQL) abstraction layer you basically only need the engine:
from sqlalchemy import create_engine, MetaData, Table
engine = create_engine('sqlite:////tmp/test.db', convert_unicode=True)
metadata = MetaData(bind=engine)
Then you can either declare the tables in your code like in the examples above, or automatically load them:
from sqlalchemy import Table
users = Table('users', metadata, autoload=True)
To insert data you can use the insert method. We have to get a connection first so that we can use a transaction:
>>> con = engine.connect()
>>> con.execute(users.insert(), name='admin', email='admin@localhost')
SQLAlchemy will automatically commit for us.
To query your database, you use the engine directly or use a connection:
>>> users.select(users.c.id == 1).execute().first()
(1, u'admin', u'admin@localhost')
These results are also dict-like tuples:
>>> r = users.select(users.c.id == 1).execute().first()
>>> r['name']
u'admin'
You can also pass strings of SQL statements to the
execute()
method:
>>> engine.execute('select * from users where id = :1', [1]).first()
(1, u'admin', u'admin@localhost')
For more information about SQLAlchemy, head over to the website.
Uploading Files¶
Ah yes, the good old problem of file uploads. The basic idea of file uploads is actually quite simple. It basically works like this:
A
<form>
tag is marked withenctype=multipart/form-data
and an<input type=file>
is placed in that form.The application accesses the file from the
files
dictionary on the request object.use the
save()
method of the file to save the file permanently somewhere on the filesystem.
A Gentle Introduction¶
Let’s start with a very basic application that uploads a file to a specific upload folder and displays a file to the user. Let’s look at the bootstrapping code for our application:
import os
from flask import Flask, flash, request, redirect, url_for
from werkzeug.utils import secure_filename
UPLOAD_FOLDER = '/path/to/the/uploads'
ALLOWED_EXTENSIONS = {'txt', 'pdf', 'png', 'jpg', 'jpeg', 'gif'}
app = Flask(__name__)
app.config['UPLOAD_FOLDER'] = UPLOAD_FOLDER
So first we need a couple of imports. Most should be straightforward, the
werkzeug.secure_filename()
is explained a little bit later. The
UPLOAD_FOLDER
is where we will store the uploaded files and the
ALLOWED_EXTENSIONS
is the set of allowed file extensions.
Why do we limit the extensions that are allowed? You probably don’t want
your users to be able to upload everything there if the server is directly
sending out the data to the client. That way you can make sure that users
are not able to upload HTML files that would cause XSS problems (see
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)). Also make sure to disallow .php
files if the server
executes them, but who has PHP installed on their server, right? :)
Next the functions that check if an extension is valid and that uploads the file and redirects the user to the URL for the uploaded file:
def allowed_file(filename):
return '.' in filename and \
filename.rsplit('.', 1)[1].lower() in ALLOWED_EXTENSIONS
@app.route('/', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def upload_file():
if request.method == 'POST':
# check if the post request has the file part
if 'file' not in request.files:
flash('No file part')
return redirect(request.url)
file = request.files['file']
# if user does not select file, browser also
# submit an empty part without filename
if file.filename == '':
flash('No selected file')
return redirect(request.url)
if file and allowed_file(file.filename):
filename = secure_filename(file.filename)
file.save(os.path.join(app.config['UPLOAD_FOLDER'], filename))
return redirect(url_for('uploaded_file',
filename=filename))
return '''
<!doctype html>
<title>Upload new File</title>
<h1>Upload new File</h1>
<form method=post enctype=multipart/form-data>
<input type=file name=file>
<input type=submit value=Upload>
</form>
'''
So what does that secure_filename()
function actually do?
Now the problem is that there is that principle called “never trust user
input”. This is also true for the filename of an uploaded file. All
submitted form data can be forged, and filenames can be dangerous. For
the moment just remember: always use that function to secure a filename
before storing it directly on the filesystem.
Information for the Pros
So you’re interested in what that secure_filename()
function does and what the problem is if you’re not using it? So just
imagine someone would send the following information as filename to
your application:
filename = "../../../../home/username/.bashrc"
Assuming the number of ../
is correct and you would join this with
the UPLOAD_FOLDER
the user might have the ability to modify a file on
the server’s filesystem he or she should not modify. This does require some
knowledge about how the application looks like, but trust me, hackers
are patient :)
Now let’s look how that function works:
>>> secure_filename('../../../../home/username/.bashrc')
'home_username_.bashrc'
Now one last thing is missing: the serving of the uploaded files. In the
upload_file()
we redirect the user to
url_for('uploaded_file', filename=filename)
, that is, /uploads/filename
.
So we write the uploaded_file()
function to return the file of that name. As
of Flask 0.5 we can use a function that does that for us:
from flask import send_from_directory
@app.route('/uploads/<filename>')
def uploaded_file(filename):
return send_from_directory(app.config['UPLOAD_FOLDER'],
filename)
Alternatively you can register uploaded_file as build_only rule and
use the SharedDataMiddleware
. This also works with
older versions of Flask:
from werkzeug.middleware.shared_data import SharedDataMiddleware
app.add_url_rule('/uploads/<filename>', 'uploaded_file',
build_only=True)
app.wsgi_app = SharedDataMiddleware(app.wsgi_app, {
'/uploads': app.config['UPLOAD_FOLDER']
})
If you now run the application everything should work as expected.
Improving Uploads¶
Changelog
New in version 0.6.
So how exactly does Flask handle uploads? Well it will store them in the
webserver’s memory if the files are reasonable small otherwise in a
temporary location (as returned by tempfile.gettempdir()
). But how
do you specify the maximum file size after which an upload is aborted? By
default Flask will happily accept file uploads to an unlimited amount of
memory, but you can limit that by setting the MAX_CONTENT_LENGTH
config key:
from flask import Flask, Request
app = Flask(__name__)
app.config['MAX_CONTENT_LENGTH'] = 16 * 1024 * 1024
The code above will limit the maximum allowed payload to 16 megabytes.
If a larger file is transmitted, Flask will raise a
RequestEntityTooLarge
exception.
Connection Reset Issue
When using the local development server, you may get a connection reset error instead of a 413 response. You will get the correct status response when running the app with a production WSGI server.
This feature was added in Flask 0.6 but can be achieved in older versions as well by subclassing the request object. For more information on that consult the Werkzeug documentation on file handling.
Upload Progress Bars¶
A while ago many developers had the idea to read the incoming file in small chunks and store the upload progress in the database to be able to poll the progress with JavaScript from the client. Long story short: the client asks the server every 5 seconds how much it has transmitted already. Do you realize the irony? The client is asking for something it should already know.
An Easier Solution¶
Now there are better solutions that work faster and are more reliable. There are JavaScript libraries like jQuery that have form plugins to ease the construction of progress bar.
Because the common pattern for file uploads exists almost unchanged in all applications dealing with uploads, there is also a Flask extension called Flask-Uploads that implements a full fledged upload mechanism with white and blacklisting of extensions and more.
Caching¶
When your application runs slow, throw some caches in. Well, at least it’s the easiest way to speed up things. What does a cache do? Say you have a function that takes some time to complete but the results would still be good enough if they were 5 minutes old. So then the idea is that you actually put the result of that calculation into a cache for some time.
Flask itself does not provide caching for you, but Flask-Caching, an extension for Flask does. Flask-Caching supports various backends, and it is even possible to develop your own caching backend.
View Decorators¶
Python has a really interesting feature called function decorators. This
allows some really neat things for web applications. Because each view in
Flask is a function, decorators can be used to inject additional
functionality to one or more functions. The route()
decorator is the one you probably used already. But there are use cases
for implementing your own decorator. For instance, imagine you have a
view that should only be used by people that are logged in. If a user
goes to the site and is not logged in, they should be redirected to the
login page. This is a good example of a use case where a decorator is an
excellent solution.
Login Required Decorator¶
So let’s implement such a decorator. A decorator is a function that
wraps and replaces another function. Since the original function is
replaced, you need to remember to copy the original function’s information
to the new function. Use functools.wraps()
to handle this for you.
This example assumes that the login page is called 'login'
and that
the current user is stored in g.user
and is None
if there is no-one
logged in.
from functools import wraps
from flask import g, request, redirect, url_for
def login_required(f):
@wraps(f)
def decorated_function(*args, **kwargs):
if g.user is None:
return redirect(url_for('login', next=request.url))
return f(*args, **kwargs)
return decorated_function
To use the decorator, apply it as innermost decorator to a view function.
When applying further decorators, always remember
that the route()
decorator is the outermost.
@app.route('/secret_page')
@login_required
def secret_page():
pass
Note
The next
value will exist in request.args
after a GET
request for
the login page. You’ll have to pass it along when sending the POST
request
from the login form. You can do this with a hidden input tag, then retrieve it
from request.form
when logging the user in.
<input type="hidden" value="{{ request.args.get('next', '') }}"/>
Caching Decorator¶
Imagine you have a view function that does an expensive calculation and because of that you would like to cache the generated results for a certain amount of time. A decorator would be nice for that. We’re assuming you have set up a cache like mentioned in Caching.
Here is an example cache function. It generates the cache key from a specific prefix (actually a format string) and the current path of the request. Notice that we are using a function that first creates the decorator that then decorates the function. Sounds awful? Unfortunately it is a little bit more complex, but the code should still be straightforward to read.
The decorated function will then work as follows
get the unique cache key for the current request based on the current path.
get the value for that key from the cache. If the cache returned something we will return that value.
otherwise the original function is called and the return value is stored in the cache for the timeout provided (by default 5 minutes).
Here the code:
from functools import wraps
from flask import request
def cached(timeout=5 * 60, key='view/%s'):
def decorator(f):
@wraps(f)
def decorated_function(*args, **kwargs):
cache_key = key % request.path
rv = cache.get(cache_key)
if rv is not None:
return rv
rv = f(*args, **kwargs)
cache.set(cache_key, rv, timeout=timeout)
return rv
return decorated_function
return decorator
Notice that this assumes an instantiated cache object is available, see Caching for more information.
Templating Decorator¶
A common pattern invented by the TurboGears guys a while back is a templating decorator. The idea of that decorator is that you return a dictionary with the values passed to the template from the view function and the template is automatically rendered. With that, the following three examples do exactly the same:
@app.route('/')
def index():
return render_template('index.html', value=42)
@app.route('/')
@templated('index.html')
def index():
return dict(value=42)
@app.route('/')
@templated()
def index():
return dict(value=42)
As you can see, if no template name is provided it will use the endpoint
of the URL map with dots converted to slashes + '.html'
. Otherwise
the provided template name is used. When the decorated function returns,
the dictionary returned is passed to the template rendering function. If
None
is returned, an empty dictionary is assumed, if something else than
a dictionary is returned we return it from the function unchanged. That
way you can still use the redirect function or return simple strings.
Here is the code for that decorator:
from functools import wraps
from flask import request, render_template
def templated(template=None):
def decorator(f):
@wraps(f)
def decorated_function(*args, **kwargs):
template_name = template
if template_name is None:
template_name = request.endpoint \
.replace('.', '/') + '.html'
ctx = f(*args, **kwargs)
if ctx is None:
ctx = {}
elif not isinstance(ctx, dict):
return ctx
return render_template(template_name, **ctx)
return decorated_function
return decorator
Endpoint Decorator¶
When you want to use the werkzeug routing system for more flexibility you
need to map the endpoint as defined in the Rule
to a view function. This is possible with this decorator. For example:
from flask import Flask
from werkzeug.routing import Rule
app = Flask(__name__)
app.url_map.add(Rule('/', endpoint='index'))
@app.endpoint('index')
def my_index():
return "Hello world"
Form Validation with WTForms¶
When you have to work with form data submitted by a browser view, code quickly becomes very hard to read. There are libraries out there designed to make this process easier to manage. One of them is WTForms which we will handle here. If you find yourself in the situation of having many forms, you might want to give it a try.
When you are working with WTForms you have to define your forms as classes first. I recommend breaking up the application into multiple modules (Larger Applications) for that and adding a separate module for the forms.
Getting the most out of WTForms with an Extension
The Flask-WTF extension expands on this pattern and adds a few little helpers that make working with forms and Flask more fun. You can get it from PyPI.
The Forms¶
This is an example form for a typical registration page:
from wtforms import Form, BooleanField, StringField, PasswordField, validators
class RegistrationForm(Form):
username = StringField('Username', [validators.Length(min=4, max=25)])
email = StringField('Email Address', [validators.Length(min=6, max=35)])
password = PasswordField('New Password', [
validators.DataRequired(),
validators.EqualTo('confirm', message='Passwords must match')
])
confirm = PasswordField('Repeat Password')
accept_tos = BooleanField('I accept the TOS', [validators.DataRequired()])
In the View¶
In the view function, the usage of this form looks like this:
@app.route('/register', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def register():
form = RegistrationForm(request.form)
if request.method == 'POST' and form.validate():
user = User(form.username.data, form.email.data,
form.password.data)
db_session.add(user)
flash('Thanks for registering')
return redirect(url_for('login'))
return render_template('register.html', form=form)
Notice we’re implying that the view is using SQLAlchemy here (SQLAlchemy in Flask), but that’s not a requirement, of course. Adapt the code as necessary.
Things to remember:
create the form from the request
form
value if the data is submitted via the HTTPPOST
method andargs
if the data is submitted asGET
.to validate the data, call the
validate()
method, which will returnTrue
if the data validates,False
otherwise.to access individual values from the form, access form.<NAME>.data.
Forms in Templates¶
Now to the template side. When you pass the form to the templates, you can easily render them there. Look at the following example template to see how easy this is. WTForms does half the form generation for us already. To make it even nicer, we can write a macro that renders a field with label and a list of errors if there are any.
Here’s an example _formhelpers.html
template with such a macro:
{% macro render_field(field) %}
<dt>{{ field.label }}
<dd>{{ field(**kwargs)|safe }}
{% if field.errors %}
<ul class=errors>
{% for error in field.errors %}
<li>{{ error }}</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
{% endif %}
</dd>
{% endmacro %}
This macro accepts a couple of keyword arguments that are forwarded to
WTForm’s field function, which renders the field for us. The keyword
arguments will be inserted as HTML attributes. So, for example, you can
call render_field(form.username, class='username')
to add a class to
the input element. Note that WTForms returns standard Python unicode
strings, so we have to tell Jinja2 that this data is already HTML-escaped
with the |safe
filter.
Here is the register.html
template for the function we used above, which
takes advantage of the _formhelpers.html
template:
{% from "_formhelpers.html" import render_field %}
<form method=post>
<dl>
{{ render_field(form.username) }}
{{ render_field(form.email) }}
{{ render_field(form.password) }}
{{ render_field(form.confirm) }}
{{ render_field(form.accept_tos) }}
</dl>
<p><input type=submit value=Register>
</form>
For more information about WTForms, head over to the WTForms website.
Template Inheritance¶
The most powerful part of Jinja is template inheritance. Template inheritance allows you to build a base “skeleton” template that contains all the common elements of your site and defines blocks that child templates can override.
Sounds complicated but is very basic. It’s easiest to understand it by starting with an example.
Base Template¶
This template, which we’ll call layout.html
, defines a simple HTML skeleton
document that you might use for a simple two-column page. It’s the job of
“child” templates to fill the empty blocks with content:
<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
{% block head %}
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ url_for('static', filename='style.css') }}">
<title>{% block title %}{% endblock %} - My Webpage</title>
{% endblock %}
</head>
<body>
<div id="content">{% block content %}{% endblock %}</div>
<div id="footer">
{% block footer %}
© Copyright 2010 by <a href="http://domain.invalid/">you</a>.
{% endblock %}
</div>
</body>
</html>
In this example, the {% block %}
tags define four blocks that child templates
can fill in. All the block tag does is tell the template engine that a
child template may override those portions of the template.
Child Template¶
A child template might look like this:
{% extends "layout.html" %}
{% block title %}Index{% endblock %}
{% block head %}
{{ super() }}
<style type="text/css">
.important { color: #336699; }
</style>
{% endblock %}
{% block content %}
<h1>Index</h1>
<p class="important">
Welcome on my awesome homepage.
{% endblock %}
The {% extends %}
tag is the key here. It tells the template engine that
this template “extends” another template. When the template system evaluates
this template, first it locates the parent. The extends tag must be the
first tag in the template. To render the contents of a block defined in
the parent template, use {{ super() }}
.
Message Flashing¶
Good applications and user interfaces are all about feedback. If the user does not get enough feedback they will probably end up hating the application. Flask provides a really simple way to give feedback to a user with the flashing system. The flashing system basically makes it possible to record a message at the end of a request and access it next request and only next request. This is usually combined with a layout template that does this. Note that browsers and sometimes web servers enforce a limit on cookie sizes. This means that flashing messages that are too large for session cookies causes message flashing to fail silently.
Simple Flashing¶
So here is a full example:
from flask import Flask, flash, redirect, render_template, \
request, url_for
app = Flask(__name__)
app.secret_key = b'_5#y2L"F4Q8z\n\xec]/'
@app.route('/')
def index():
return render_template('index.html')
@app.route('/login', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def login():
error = None
if request.method == 'POST':
if request.form['username'] != 'admin' or \
request.form['password'] != 'secret':
error = 'Invalid credentials'
else:
flash('You were successfully logged in')
return redirect(url_for('index'))
return render_template('login.html', error=error)
And here is the layout.html
template which does the magic:
<!doctype html>
<title>My Application</title>
{% with messages = get_flashed_messages() %}
{% if messages %}
<ul class=flashes>
{% for message in messages %}
<li>{{ message }}</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
{% endif %}
{% endwith %}
{% block body %}{% endblock %}
Here is the index.html
template which inherits from layout.html
:
{% extends "layout.html" %}
{% block body %}
<h1>Overview</h1>
<p>Do you want to <a href="{{ url_for('login') }}">log in?</a>
{% endblock %}
And here is the login.html
template which also inherits from
layout.html
:
{% extends "layout.html" %}
{% block body %}
<h1>Login</h1>
{% if error %}
<p class=error><strong>Error:</strong> {{ error }}
{% endif %}
<form method=post>
<dl>
<dt>Username:
<dd><input type=text name=username value="{{
request.form.username }}">
<dt>Password:
<dd><input type=password name=password>
</dl>
<p><input type=submit value=Login>
</form>
{% endblock %}
Flashing With Categories¶
Changelog
New in version 0.3.
It is also possible to provide categories when flashing a message. The
default category if nothing is provided is 'message'
. Alternative
categories can be used to give the user better feedback. For example
error messages could be displayed with a red background.
To flash a message with a different category, just use the second argument
to the flash()
function:
flash(u'Invalid password provided', 'error')
Inside the template you then have to tell the
get_flashed_messages()
function to also return the
categories. The loop looks slightly different in that situation then:
{% with messages = get_flashed_messages(with_categories=true) %}
{% if messages %}
<ul class=flashes>
{% for category, message in messages %}
<li class="{{ category }}">{{ message }}</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
{% endif %}
{% endwith %}
This is just one example of how to render these flashed messages. One
might also use the category to add a prefix such as
<strong>Error:</strong>
to the message.
Filtering Flash Messages¶
Changelog
New in version 0.9.
Optionally you can pass a list of categories which filters the results of
get_flashed_messages()
. This is useful if you wish to
render each category in a separate block.
{% with errors = get_flashed_messages(category_filter=["error"]) %}
{% if errors %}
<div class="alert-message block-message error">
<a class="close" href="#">×</a>
<ul>
{%- for msg in errors %}
<li>{{ msg }}</li>
{% endfor -%}
</ul>
</div>
{% endif %}
{% endwith %}
AJAX with jQuery¶
jQuery is a small JavaScript library commonly used to simplify working with the DOM and JavaScript in general. It is the perfect tool to make web applications more dynamic by exchanging JSON between server and client.
JSON itself is a very lightweight transport format, very similar to how Python primitives (numbers, strings, dicts and lists) look like which is widely supported and very easy to parse. It became popular a few years ago and quickly replaced XML as transport format in web applications.
Loading jQuery¶
In order to use jQuery, you have to download it first and place it in the
static folder of your application and then ensure it’s loaded. Ideally
you have a layout template that is used for all pages where you just have
to add a script statement to the bottom of your <body>
to load jQuery:
<script type=text/javascript src="{{
url_for('static', filename='jquery.js') }}"></script>
Another method is using Google’s AJAX Libraries API to load jQuery:
<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script>window.jQuery || document.write('<script src="{{
url_for('static', filename='jquery.js') }}">\x3C/script>')</script>
In this case you have to put jQuery into your static folder as a fallback, but it will first try to load it directly from Google. This has the advantage that your website will probably load faster for users if they went to at least one other website before using the same jQuery version from Google because it will already be in the browser cache.
Where is My Site?¶
Do you know where your application is? If you are developing the answer
is quite simple: it’s on localhost port something and directly on the root
of that server. But what if you later decide to move your application to
a different location? For example to http://example.com/myapp
? On
the server side this never was a problem because we were using the handy
url_for()
function that could answer that question for
us, but if we are using jQuery we should not hardcode the path to
the application but make that dynamic, so how can we do that?
A simple method would be to add a script tag to our page that sets a global variable to the prefix to the root of the application. Something like this:
<script type=text/javascript>
$SCRIPT_ROOT = {{ request.script_root|tojson|safe }};
</script>
The |safe
is necessary in Flask before 0.10 so that Jinja does not
escape the JSON encoded string with HTML rules. Usually this would be
necessary, but we are inside a script
block here where different rules
apply.
Information for Pros
In HTML the script
tag is declared CDATA
which means that entities
will not be parsed. Everything until </script>
is handled as script.
This also means that there must never be any </
between the script
tags. |tojson
is kind enough to do the right thing here and
escape slashes for you ({{ "</script>"|tojson|safe }}
is rendered as
"<\/script>"
).
In Flask 0.10 it goes a step further and escapes all HTML tags with unicode escapes. This makes it possible for Flask to automatically mark the result as HTML safe.
JSON View Functions¶
Now let’s create a server side function that accepts two URL arguments of numbers which should be added together and then sent back to the application in a JSON object. This is a really ridiculous example and is something you usually would do on the client side alone, but a simple example that shows how you would use jQuery and Flask nonetheless:
from flask import Flask, jsonify, render_template, request
app = Flask(__name__)
@app.route('/_add_numbers')
def add_numbers():
a = request.args.get('a', 0, type=int)
b = request.args.get('b', 0, type=int)
return jsonify(result=a + b)
@app.route('/')
def index():
return render_template('index.html')
As you can see I also added an index method here that renders a template. This template will load jQuery as above and have a little form where we can add two numbers and a link to trigger the function on the server side.
Note that we are using the get()
method here
which will never fail. If the key is missing a default value (here 0
)
is returned. Furthermore it can convert values to a specific type (like
in our case int). This is especially handy for code that is
triggered by a script (APIs, JavaScript etc.) because you don’t need
special error reporting in that case.
The HTML¶
Your index.html template either has to extend a layout.html
template with
jQuery loaded and the $SCRIPT_ROOT variable set, or do that on the top.
Here’s the HTML code needed for our little application (index.html
).
Notice that we also drop the script directly into the HTML here. It is
usually a better idea to have that in a separate script file:
<script type=text/javascript>
$(function() {
$('a#calculate').bind('click', function() {
$.getJSON($SCRIPT_ROOT + '/_add_numbers', {
a: $('input[name="a"]').val(),
b: $('input[name="b"]').val()
}, function(data) {
$("#result").text(data.result);
});
return false;
});
});
</script>
<h1>jQuery Example</h1>
<p><input type=text size=5 name=a> +
<input type=text size=5 name=b> =
<span id=result>?</span>
<p><a href=# id=calculate>calculate server side</a>
I won’t go into detail here about how jQuery works, just a very quick explanation of the little bit of code above:
$(function() { ... })
specifies code that should run once the browser is done loading the basic parts of the page.$('selector')
selects an element and lets you operate on it.element.bind('event', func)
specifies a function that should run when the user clicked on the element. If that function returns false, the default behavior will not kick in (in this case, navigate to the # URL).$.getJSON(url, data, func)
sends aGET
request to url and will send the contents of the data object as query parameters. Once the data arrived, it will call the given function with the return value as argument. Note that we can use the $SCRIPT_ROOT variable here that we set earlier.
Check out the example source for a full
application demonstrating the code on this page, as well as the same
thing using XMLHttpRequest
and fetch
.
Custom Error Pages¶
Flask comes with a handy abort()
function that aborts a
request with an HTTP error code early. It will also provide a plain black
and white error page for you with a basic description, but nothing fancy.
Depending on the error code it is less or more likely for the user to actually see such an error.
Common Error Codes¶
The following error codes are some that are often displayed to the user, even if the application behaves correctly:
- 404 Not Found
The good old “chap, you made a mistake typing that URL” message. So common that even novices to the internet know that 404 means: damn, the thing I was looking for is not there. It’s a very good idea to make sure there is actually something useful on a 404 page, at least a link back to the index.
- 403 Forbidden
If you have some kind of access control on your website, you will have to send a 403 code for disallowed resources. So make sure the user is not lost when they try to access a forbidden resource.
- 410 Gone
Did you know that there the “404 Not Found” has a brother named “410 Gone”? Few people actually implement that, but the idea is that resources that previously existed and got deleted answer with 410 instead of 404. If you are not deleting documents permanently from the database but just mark them as deleted, do the user a favour and use the 410 code instead and display a message that what they were looking for was deleted for all eternity.
- 500 Internal Server Error
Usually happens on programming errors or if the server is overloaded. A terribly good idea is to have a nice page there, because your application will fail sooner or later (see also: Application Errors).
Error Handlers¶
An error handler is a function that returns a response when a type of error is
raised, similar to how a view is a function that returns a response when a
request URL is matched. It is passed the instance of the error being handled,
which is most likely a HTTPException
. An error
handler for “500 Internal Server Error” will be passed uncaught exceptions in
addition to explicit 500 errors.
An error handler is registered with the errorhandler()
decorator or the register_error_handler()
method. A handler
can be registered for a status code, like 404, or for an exception class.
The status code of the response will not be set to the handler’s code. Make sure to provide the appropriate HTTP status code when returning a response from a handler.
A handler for “500 Internal Server Error” will not be used when running in debug mode. Instead, the interactive debugger will be shown.
Here is an example implementation for a “404 Page Not Found” exception:
from flask import render_template
@app.errorhandler(404)
def page_not_found(e):
# note that we set the 404 status explicitly
return render_template('404.html'), 404
When using the application factory pattern:
from flask import Flask, render_template
def page_not_found(e):
return render_template('404.html'), 404
def create_app(config_filename):
app = Flask(__name__)
app.register_error_handler(404, page_not_found)
return app
An example template might be this:
{% extends "layout.html" %}
{% block title %}Page Not Found{% endblock %}
{% block body %}
<h1>Page Not Found</h1>
<p>What you were looking for is just not there.
<p><a href="{{ url_for('index') }}">go somewhere nice</a>
{% endblock %}
Returning API errors as JSON¶
When using Flask for web APIs, you can use the same techniques as above
to return JSON responses to API errors. abort()
is called
with a description
parameter. The errorhandler()
will
use that as the JSON error message, and set the status code to 404.
from flask import abort, jsonify
@app.errorhandler(404)
def resource_not_found(e):
return jsonify(error=str(e)), 404
@app.route("/cheese")
def get_one_cheese():
resource = get_resource()
if resource is None:
abort(404, description="Resource not found")
return jsonify(resource)
Lazily Loading Views¶
Flask is usually used with the decorators. Decorators are simple and you have the URL right next to the function that is called for that specific URL. However there is a downside to this approach: it means all your code that uses decorators has to be imported upfront or Flask will never actually find your function.
This can be a problem if your application has to import quick. It might have to do that on systems like Google’s App Engine or other systems. So if you suddenly notice that your application outgrows this approach you can fall back to a centralized URL mapping.
The system that enables having a central URL map is the
add_url_rule()
function. Instead of using decorators,
you have a file that sets up the application with all URLs.
Converting to Centralized URL Map¶
Imagine the current application looks somewhat like this:
from flask import Flask
app = Flask(__name__)
@app.route('/')
def index():
pass
@app.route('/user/<username>')
def user(username):
pass
Then, with the centralized approach you would have one file with the views
(views.py
) but without any decorator:
def index():
pass
def user(username):
pass
And then a file that sets up an application which maps the functions to URLs:
from flask import Flask
from yourapplication import views
app = Flask(__name__)
app.add_url_rule('/', view_func=views.index)
app.add_url_rule('/user/<username>', view_func=views.user)
Loading Late¶
So far we only split up the views and the routing, but the module is still loaded upfront. The trick is to actually load the view function as needed. This can be accomplished with a helper class that behaves just like a function but internally imports the real function on first use:
from werkzeug.utils import import_string, cached_property
class LazyView(object):
def __init__(self, import_name):
self.__module__, self.__name__ = import_name.rsplit('.', 1)
self.import_name = import_name
@cached_property
def view(self):
return import_string(self.import_name)
def __call__(self, *args, **kwargs):
return self.view(*args, **kwargs)
What’s important here is is that __module__ and __name__ are properly set. This is used by Flask internally to figure out how to name the URL rules in case you don’t provide a name for the rule yourself.
Then you can define your central place to combine the views like this:
from flask import Flask
from yourapplication.helpers import LazyView
app = Flask(__name__)
app.add_url_rule('/',
view_func=LazyView('yourapplication.views.index'))
app.add_url_rule('/user/<username>',
view_func=LazyView('yourapplication.views.user'))
You can further optimize this in terms of amount of keystrokes needed to
write this by having a function that calls into
add_url_rule()
by prefixing a string with the project
name and a dot, and by wrapping view_func in a LazyView as needed.
def url(import_name, url_rules=[], **options):
view = LazyView('yourapplication.' + import_name)
for url_rule in url_rules:
app.add_url_rule(url_rule, view_func=view, **options)
# add a single route to the index view
url('views.index', ['/'])
# add two routes to a single function endpoint
url_rules = ['/user/','/user/<username>']
url('views.user', url_rules)
One thing to keep in mind is that before and after request handlers have to be in a file that is imported upfront to work properly on the first request. The same goes for any kind of remaining decorator.
MongoDB with MongoEngine¶
Using a document database like MongoDB is a common alternative to relational SQL databases. This pattern shows how to use MongoEngine, a document mapper library, to integrate with MongoDB.
A running MongoDB server and Flask-MongoEngine are required.
pip install flask-mongoengine
Configuration¶
Basic setup can be done by defining MONGODB_SETTINGS
on
app.config
and creating a MongoEngine
instance.
from flask import Flask
from flask_mongoengine import MongoEngine
app = Flask(__name__)
app.config['MONGODB_SETTINGS'] = {
"db": "myapp",
}
db = MongoEngine(app)
Mapping Documents¶
To declare a model that represents a Mongo document, create a class that
inherits from Document
and declare each of the fields.
import mongoengine as me
class Movie(me.Document):
title = me.StringField(required=True)
year = me.IntField()
rated = me.StringField()
director = me.StringField()
actors = me.ListField()
If the document has nested fields, use EmbeddedDocument
to
defined the fields of the embedded document and
EmbeddedDocumentField
to declare it on the parent document.
class Imdb(me.EmbeddedDocument):
imdb_id = me.StringField()
rating = me.DecimalField()
votes = me.IntField()
class Movie(me.Document):
...
imdb = me.EmbeddedDocumentField(Imdb)
Creating Data¶
Instantiate your document class with keyword arguments for the fields.
You can also assign values to the field attributes after instantiation.
Then call doc.save()
.
bttf = Movie(title="Back To The Future", year=1985)
bttf.actors = [
"Michael J. Fox",
"Christopher Lloyd"
]
bttf.imdb = Imdb(imdb_id="tt0088763", rating=8.5)
bttf.save()
Queries¶
Use the class objects
attribute to make queries. A keyword argument
looks for an equal value on the field.
bttf = Movies.objects(title="Back To The Future").get_or_404()
Query operators may be used by concatenating them with the field name
using a double-underscore. objects
, and queries returned by
calling it, are iterable.
some_theron_movie = Movie.objects(actors__in=["Charlize Theron"]).first()
for recents in Movie.objects(year__gte=2017):
print(recents.title)
Documentation¶
There are many more ways to define and query documents with MongoEngine. For more information, check out the official documentation.
Flask-MongoEngine adds helpful utilities on top of MongoEngine. Check out their documentation as well.
Adding a favicon¶
A “favicon” is an icon used by browsers for tabs and bookmarks. This helps to distinguish your website and to give it a unique brand.
A common question is how to add a favicon to a Flask application. First, of
course, you need an icon. It should be 16 × 16 pixels and in the ICO file
format. This is not a requirement but a de-facto standard supported by all
relevant browsers. Put the icon in your static directory as
favicon.ico
.
Now, to get browsers to find your icon, the correct way is to add a link tag in your HTML. So, for example:
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="{{ url_for('static', filename='favicon.ico') }}">
That’s all you need for most browsers, however some really old ones do not support this standard. The old de-facto standard is to serve this file, with this name, at the website root. If your application is not mounted at the root path of the domain you either need to configure the web server to serve the icon at the root or if you can’t do that you’re out of luck. If however your application is the root you can simply route a redirect:
app.add_url_rule('/favicon.ico',
redirect_to=url_for('static', filename='favicon.ico'))
If you want to save the extra redirect request you can also write a view
using send_from_directory()
:
import os
from flask import send_from_directory
@app.route('/favicon.ico')
def favicon():
return send_from_directory(os.path.join(app.root_path, 'static'),
'favicon.ico', mimetype='image/vnd.microsoft.icon')
We can leave out the explicit mimetype and it will be guessed, but we may as well specify it to avoid the extra guessing, as it will always be the same.
The above will serve the icon via your application and if possible it’s better to configure your dedicated web server to serve it; refer to the web server’s documentation.
See also¶
The Favicon article on Wikipedia
Streaming Contents¶
Sometimes you want to send an enormous amount of data to the client, much more than you want to keep in memory. When you are generating the data on the fly though, how do you send that back to the client without the roundtrip to the filesystem?
The answer is by using generators and direct responses.
Basic Usage¶
This is a basic view function that generates a lot of CSV data on the fly. The trick is to have an inner function that uses a generator to generate data and to then invoke that function and pass it to a response object:
from flask import Response
@app.route('/large.csv')
def generate_large_csv():
def generate():
for row in iter_all_rows():
yield ','.join(row) + '\n'
return Response(generate(), mimetype='text/csv')
Each yield
expression is directly sent to the browser. Note though
that some WSGI middlewares might break streaming, so be careful there in
debug environments with profilers and other things you might have enabled.
Streaming from Templates¶
The Jinja2 template engine also supports rendering templates piece by piece. This functionality is not directly exposed by Flask because it is quite uncommon, but you can easily do it yourself:
from flask import Response
def stream_template(template_name, **context):
app.update_template_context(context)
t = app.jinja_env.get_template(template_name)
rv = t.stream(context)
rv.enable_buffering(5)
return rv
@app.route('/my-large-page.html')
def render_large_template():
rows = iter_all_rows()
return Response(stream_template('the_template.html', rows=rows))
The trick here is to get the template object from the Jinja2 environment
on the application and to call stream()
instead of
render()
which returns a stream object instead of a
string. Since we’re bypassing the Flask template render functions and
using the template object itself we have to make sure to update the render
context ourselves by calling update_template_context()
.
The template is then evaluated as the stream is iterated over. Since each
time you do a yield the server will flush the content to the client you
might want to buffer up a few items in the template which you can do with
rv.enable_buffering(size)
. 5
is a sane default.
Streaming with Context¶
Changelog
New in version 0.9.
Note that when you stream data, the request context is already gone the moment the function executes. Flask 0.9 provides you with a helper that can keep the request context around during the execution of the generator:
from flask import stream_with_context, request, Response
@app.route('/stream')
def streamed_response():
def generate():
yield 'Hello '
yield request.args['name']
yield '!'
return Response(stream_with_context(generate()))
Without the stream_with_context()
function you would get a
RuntimeError
at that point.
Deferred Request Callbacks¶
One of the design principles of Flask is that response objects are created and passed down a chain of potential callbacks that can modify them or replace them. When the request handling starts, there is no response object yet. It is created as necessary either by a view function or by some other component in the system.
What happens if you want to modify the response at a point where the response
does not exist yet? A common example for that would be a
before_request()
callback that wants to set a cookie on the
response object.
One way is to avoid the situation. Very often that is possible. For instance
you can try to move that logic into a after_request()
callback instead. However, sometimes moving code there makes it more
more complicated or awkward to reason about.
As an alternative, you can use after_this_request()
to register
callbacks that will execute after only the current request. This way you can
defer code execution from anywhere in the application, based on the current
request.
At any time during a request, we can register a function to be called at the
end of the request. For example you can remember the current language of the
user in a cookie in a before_request()
callback:
from flask import request, after_this_request
@app.before_request
def detect_user_language():
language = request.cookies.get('user_lang')
if language is None:
language = guess_language_from_request()
# when the response exists, set a cookie with the language
@after_this_request
def remember_language(response):
response.set_cookie('user_lang', language)
return response
g.language = language
Adding HTTP Method Overrides¶
Some HTTP proxies do not support arbitrary HTTP methods or newer HTTP methods (such as PATCH). In that case it’s possible to “proxy” HTTP methods through another HTTP method in total violation of the protocol.
The way this works is by letting the client do an HTTP POST request and
set the X-HTTP-Method-Override
header. Then the method is replaced
with the header value before being passed to Flask.
This can be accomplished with an HTTP middleware:
class HTTPMethodOverrideMiddleware(object):
allowed_methods = frozenset([
'GET',
'HEAD',
'POST',
'DELETE',
'PUT',
'PATCH',
'OPTIONS'
])
bodyless_methods = frozenset(['GET', 'HEAD', 'OPTIONS', 'DELETE'])
def __init__(self, app):
self.app = app
def __call__(self, environ, start_response):
method = environ.get('HTTP_X_HTTP_METHOD_OVERRIDE', '').upper()
if method in self.allowed_methods:
environ['REQUEST_METHOD'] = method
if method in self.bodyless_methods:
environ['CONTENT_LENGTH'] = '0'
return self.app(environ, start_response)
To use this with Flask, wrap the app object with the middleware:
from flask import Flask
app = Flask(__name__)
app.wsgi_app = HTTPMethodOverrideMiddleware(app.wsgi_app)
Request Content Checksums¶
Various pieces of code can consume the request data and preprocess it. For instance JSON data ends up on the request object already read and processed, form data ends up there as well but goes through a different code path. This seems inconvenient when you want to calculate the checksum of the incoming request data. This is necessary sometimes for some APIs.
Fortunately this is however very simple to change by wrapping the input stream.
The following example calculates the SHA1 checksum of the incoming data as it gets read and stores it in the WSGI environment:
import hashlib
class ChecksumCalcStream(object):
def __init__(self, stream):
self._stream = stream
self._hash = hashlib.sha1()
def read(self, bytes):
rv = self._stream.read(bytes)
self._hash.update(rv)
return rv
def readline(self, size_hint):
rv = self._stream.readline(size_hint)
self._hash.update(rv)
return rv
def generate_checksum(request):
env = request.environ
stream = ChecksumCalcStream(env['wsgi.input'])
env['wsgi.input'] = stream
return stream._hash
To use this, all you need to do is to hook the calculating stream in
before the request starts consuming data. (Eg: be careful accessing
request.form
or anything of that nature. before_request_handlers
for instance should be careful not to access it).
Example usage:
@app.route('/special-api', methods=['POST'])
def special_api():
hash = generate_checksum(request)
# Accessing this parses the input stream
files = request.files
# At this point the hash is fully constructed.
checksum = hash.hexdigest()
return 'Hash was: %s' % checksum
Celery Background Tasks¶
If your application has a long running task, such as processing some uploaded data or sending email, you don’t want to wait for it to finish during a request. Instead, use a task queue to send the necessary data to another process that will run the task in the background while the request returns immediately.
Celery is a powerful task queue that can be used for simple background tasks as well as complex multi-stage programs and schedules. This guide will show you how to configure Celery using Flask, but assumes you’ve already read the First Steps with Celery guide in the Celery documentation.
Install¶
Celery is a separate Python package. Install it from PyPI using pip:
$ pip install celery
Configure¶
The first thing you need is a Celery instance, this is called the celery
application. It serves the same purpose as the Flask
object in Flask, just for Celery. Since this instance is used as the
entry-point for everything you want to do in Celery, like creating tasks
and managing workers, it must be possible for other modules to import it.
For instance you can place this in a tasks
module. While you can use
Celery without any reconfiguration with Flask, it becomes a bit nicer by
subclassing tasks and adding support for Flask’s application contexts and
hooking it up with the Flask configuration.
This is all that is necessary to properly integrate Celery with Flask:
from celery import Celery
def make_celery(app):
celery = Celery(
app.import_name,
backend=app.config['CELERY_RESULT_BACKEND'],
broker=app.config['CELERY_BROKER_URL']
)
celery.conf.update(app.config)
class ContextTask(celery.Task):
def __call__(self, *args, **kwargs):
with app.app_context():
return self.run(*args, **kwargs)
celery.Task = ContextTask
return celery
The function creates a new Celery object, configures it with the broker from the application config, updates the rest of the Celery config from the Flask config and then creates a subclass of the task that wraps the task execution in an application context.
An example task¶
Let’s write a task that adds two numbers together and returns the result. We
configure Celery’s broker and backend to use Redis, create a celery
application using the factor from above, and then use it to define the task.
from flask import Flask
flask_app = Flask(__name__)
flask_app.config.update(
CELERY_BROKER_URL='redis://localhost:6379',
CELERY_RESULT_BACKEND='redis://localhost:6379'
)
celery = make_celery(flask_app)
@celery.task()
def add_together(a, b):
return a + b
This task can now be called in the background:
result = add_together.delay(23, 42)
result.wait() # 65
Run a worker¶
If you jumped in and already executed the above code you will be
disappointed to learn that .wait()
will never actually return.
That’s because you also need to run a Celery worker to receive and execute the
task.
$ celery -A your_application.celery worker
The your_application
string has to point to your application’s package
or module that creates the celery
object.
Now that the worker is running, wait
will return the result once the task
is finished.
Subclassing Flask¶
The Flask
class is designed for subclassing.
For example, you may want to override how request parameters are handled to preserve their order:
from flask import Flask, Request
from werkzeug.datastructures import ImmutableOrderedMultiDict
class MyRequest(Request):
"""Request subclass to override request parameter storage"""
parameter_storage_class = ImmutableOrderedMultiDict
class MyFlask(Flask):
"""Flask subclass using the custom request class"""
request_class = MyRequest
This is the recommended approach for overriding or augmenting Flask’s internal functionality.
Single-Page Applications¶
Flask can be used to serve Single-Page Applications (SPA) by placing static files produced by your frontend framework in a subfolder inside of your project. You will also need to create a catch-all endpoint that routes all requests to your SPA.
The following example demonstrates how to serve an SPA along with an API:
from flask import Flask, jsonify
app = Flask(__name__, static_folder='app', static_url_path="/app")
@app.route("/heartbeat")
def heartbeat():
return jsonify({"status": "healthy"})
@app.route('/', defaults={'path': ''})
@app.route('/<path:path>')
def catch_all(path):
return app.send_static_file("index.html")
Deployment Options¶
While lightweight and easy to use, Flask’s built-in server is not suitable for production as it doesn’t scale well. Some of the options available for properly running Flask in production are documented here.
If you want to deploy your Flask application to a WSGI server not listed here,
look up the server documentation about how to use a WSGI app with it. Just
remember that your Flask
application object is the actual WSGI
application.
Hosted options¶
Self-hosted options¶
Standalone WSGI Containers¶
There are popular servers written in Python that contain WSGI applications and serve HTTP. These servers stand alone when they run; you can proxy to them from your web server. Note the section on Proxy Setups if you run into issues.
Gunicorn¶
Gunicorn ‘Green Unicorn’ is a WSGI HTTP Server for UNIX. It’s a pre-fork worker model ported from Ruby’s Unicorn project. It supports both eventlet and greenlet. Running a Flask application on this server is quite simple:
$ gunicorn myproject:app
Gunicorn provides many command-line options – see gunicorn -h
.
For example, to run a Flask application with 4 worker processes (-w
4
) binding to localhost port 4000 (-b 127.0.0.1:4000
):
$ gunicorn -w 4 -b 127.0.0.1:4000 myproject:app
The gunicorn
command expects the names of your application module or
package and the application instance within the module. If you use the
application factory pattern, you can pass a call to that:
$ gunicorn "myproject:create_app()"
uWSGI¶
uWSGI is a fast application server written in C. It is very configurable which makes it more complicated to setup than gunicorn.
Running uWSGI HTTP Router:
$ uwsgi --http 127.0.0.1:5000 --module myproject:app
For a more optimized setup, see configuring uWSGI and NGINX.
Gevent¶
Gevent is a coroutine-based Python networking library that uses greenlet to provide a high-level synchronous API on top of libev event loop:
from gevent.pywsgi import WSGIServer
from yourapplication import app
http_server = WSGIServer(('', 5000), app)
http_server.serve_forever()
Twisted Web¶
Twisted Web is the web server shipped with Twisted, a mature,
non-blocking event-driven networking library. Twisted Web comes with a
standard WSGI container which can be controlled from the command line using
the twistd
utility:
$ twistd web --wsgi myproject.app
This example will run a Flask application called app
from a module named
myproject
.
Twisted Web supports many flags and options, and the twistd
utility does
as well; see twistd -h
and twistd web -h
for more information. For
example, to run a Twisted Web server in the foreground, on port 8080, with an
application from myproject
:
$ twistd -n web --port tcp:8080 --wsgi myproject.app
Proxy Setups¶
If you deploy your application using one of these servers behind an HTTP proxy
you will need to rewrite a few headers in order for the application to work.
The two problematic values in the WSGI environment usually are REMOTE_ADDR
and HTTP_HOST
. You can configure your httpd to pass these headers, or you
can fix them in middleware. Werkzeug ships a fixer that will solve some common
setups, but you might want to write your own WSGI middleware for specific
setups.
Here’s a simple nginx configuration which proxies to an application served on localhost at port 8000, setting appropriate headers:
server {
listen 80;
server_name _;
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
location / {
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8000/;
proxy_redirect off;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
}
}
If your httpd is not providing these headers, the most common setup invokes the
host being set from X-Forwarded-Host
and the remote address from
X-Forwarded-For
:
from werkzeug.middleware.proxy_fix import ProxyFix
app.wsgi_app = ProxyFix(app.wsgi_app, x_proto=1, x_host=1)
Trusting Headers
Please keep in mind that it is a security issue to use such a middleware in a non-proxy setup because it will blindly trust the incoming headers which might be forged by malicious clients.
If you want to rewrite the headers from another header, you might want to use a fixer like this:
class CustomProxyFix(object):
def __init__(self, app):
self.app = app
def __call__(self, environ, start_response):
host = environ.get('HTTP_X_FHOST', '')
if host:
environ['HTTP_HOST'] = host
return self.app(environ, start_response)
app.wsgi_app = CustomProxyFix(app.wsgi_app)
uWSGI¶
uWSGI is a deployment option on servers like nginx, lighttpd, and cherokee; see FastCGI and Standalone WSGI Containers for other options. To use your WSGI application with uWSGI protocol you will need a uWSGI server first. uWSGI is both a protocol and an application server; the application server can serve uWSGI, FastCGI, and HTTP protocols.
The most popular uWSGI server is uwsgi, which we will use for this guide. Make sure to have it installed to follow along.
Watch Out
Please make sure in advance that any app.run()
calls you might
have in your application file are inside an if __name__ ==
'__main__':
block or moved to a separate file. Just make sure it’s
not called because this will always start a local WSGI server which
we do not want if we deploy that application to uWSGI.
Starting your app with uwsgi¶
uwsgi is designed to operate on WSGI callables found in python modules.
Given a flask application in myapp.py, use the following command:
$ uwsgi -s /tmp/yourapplication.sock --manage-script-name --mount /yourapplication=myapp:app
The --manage-script-name
will move the handling of SCRIPT_NAME
to uwsgi, since it is smarter about that.
It is used together with the --mount
directive which will make
requests to /yourapplication
be directed to myapp:app
.
If your application is accessible at root level, you can use a
single /
instead of /yourapplication
. myapp
refers to the name of
the file of your flask application (without extension) or the module which
provides app
. app
is the callable inside of your application (usually
the line reads app = Flask(__name__)
.
If you want to deploy your flask application inside of a virtual environment,
you need to also add --virtualenv /path/to/virtual/environment
. You might
also need to add --plugin python
or --plugin python3
depending on which
python version you use for your project.
Configuring nginx¶
A basic flask nginx configuration looks like this:
location = /yourapplication { rewrite ^ /yourapplication/; }
location /yourapplication { try_files $uri @yourapplication; }
location @yourapplication {
include uwsgi_params;
uwsgi_pass unix:/tmp/yourapplication.sock;
}
This configuration binds the application to /yourapplication
. If you want
to have it in the URL root its a bit simpler:
location / { try_files $uri @yourapplication; }
location @yourapplication {
include uwsgi_params;
uwsgi_pass unix:/tmp/yourapplication.sock;
}
mod_wsgi (Apache)¶
If you are using the Apache webserver, consider using mod_wsgi.
Watch Out
Please make sure in advance that any app.run()
calls you might
have in your application file are inside an if __name__ ==
'__main__':
block or moved to a separate file. Just make sure it’s
not called because this will always start a local WSGI server which
we do not want if we deploy that application to mod_wsgi.
Installing mod_wsgi¶
If you don’t have mod_wsgi installed yet you have to either install it using a package manager or compile it yourself. The mod_wsgi installation instructions cover source installations on UNIX systems.
If you are using Ubuntu/Debian you can apt-get it and activate it as follows:
$ apt-get install libapache2-mod-wsgi-py3
If you are using a yum based distribution (Fedora, OpenSUSE, etc..) you can install it as follows:
$ yum install mod_wsgi
On FreeBSD install mod_wsgi by compiling the www/mod_wsgi port or by using pkg_add:
$ pkg install ap24-py37-mod_wsgi
If you are using pkgsrc you can install mod_wsgi by compiling the www/ap2-wsgi package.
If you encounter segfaulting child processes after the first apache reload you can safely ignore them. Just restart the server.
Creating a .wsgi file¶
To run your application you need a yourapplication.wsgi
file.
This file contains the code mod_wsgi is executing on startup
to get the application object. The object called application
in that file is then used as application.
For most applications the following file should be sufficient:
from yourapplication import app as application
If a factory function is used in a __init__.py
file, then the function should be imported:
from yourapplication import create_app
application = create_app()
If you don’t have a factory function for application creation but a singleton instance you can directly import that one as application.
Store that file somewhere that you will find it again (e.g.:
/var/www/yourapplication
) and make sure that yourapplication and all
the libraries that are in use are on the python load path. If you don’t
want to install it system wide consider using a virtual python
instance. Keep in mind that you will have to actually install your
application into the virtualenv as well. Alternatively there is the
option to just patch the path in the .wsgi
file before the import:
import sys
sys.path.insert(0, '/path/to/the/application')
Configuring Apache¶
The last thing you have to do is to create an Apache configuration file for your application. In this example we are telling mod_wsgi to execute the application under a different user for security reasons:
<VirtualHost *>
ServerName example.com
WSGIDaemonProcess yourapplication user=user1 group=group1 threads=5
WSGIScriptAlias / /var/www/yourapplication/yourapplication.wsgi
<Directory /var/www/yourapplication>
WSGIProcessGroup yourapplication
WSGIApplicationGroup %{GLOBAL}
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Note: WSGIDaemonProcess isn’t implemented in Windows and Apache will refuse to run with the above configuration. On a Windows system, eliminate those lines:
<VirtualHost *>
ServerName example.com
WSGIScriptAlias / C:\yourdir\yourapp.wsgi
<Directory C:\yourdir>
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Note: There have been some changes in access control configuration for Apache 2.4.
Most notably, the syntax for directory permissions has changed from httpd 2.2
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
to httpd 2.4 syntax
Require all granted
For more information consult the mod_wsgi documentation.
Troubleshooting¶
If your application does not run, follow this guide to troubleshoot:
- Problem: application does not run, errorlog shows SystemExit ignored
You have an
app.run()
call in your application file that is not guarded by anif __name__ == '__main__':
condition. Either remove thatrun()
call from the file and move it into a separaterun.py
file or put it into such an if block.- Problem: application gives permission errors
Probably caused by your application running as the wrong user. Make sure the folders the application needs access to have the proper privileges set and the application runs as the correct user (
user
andgroup
parameter to the WSGIDaemonProcess directive)- Problem: application dies with an error on print
Keep in mind that mod_wsgi disallows doing anything with
sys.stdout
andsys.stderr
. You can disable this protection from the config by setting the WSGIRestrictStdout tooff
:WSGIRestrictStdout Off
Alternatively you can also replace the standard out in the .wsgi file with a different stream:
import sys sys.stdout = sys.stderr
- Problem: accessing resources gives IO errors
Your application probably is a single .py file you symlinked into the site-packages folder. Please be aware that this does not work, instead you either have to put the folder into the pythonpath the file is stored in, or convert your application into a package.
The reason for this is that for non-installed packages, the module filename is used to locate the resources and for symlinks the wrong filename is picked up.
Support for Automatic Reloading¶
To help deployment tools you can activate support for automatic
reloading. Whenever something changes the .wsgi
file, mod_wsgi will
reload all the daemon processes for us.
For that, just add the following directive to your Directory section:
WSGIScriptReloading On
Working with Virtual Environments¶
Virtual environments have the advantage that they never install the
required dependencies system wide so you have a better control over what
is used where. If you want to use a virtual environment with mod_wsgi
you have to modify your .wsgi
file slightly.
Add the following lines to the top of your .wsgi
file:
activate_this = '/path/to/env/bin/activate_this.py'
execfile(activate_this, dict(__file__=activate_this))
For Python 3 add the following lines to the top of your .wsgi
file:
activate_this = '/path/to/env/bin/activate_this.py'
with open(activate_this) as file_:
exec(file_.read(), dict(__file__=activate_this))
This sets up the load paths according to the settings of the virtual environment. Keep in mind that the path has to be absolute.
FastCGI¶
FastCGI is a deployment option on servers like nginx, lighttpd, and cherokee; see uWSGI and Standalone WSGI Containers for other options. To use your WSGI application with any of them you will need a FastCGI server first. The most popular one is flup which we will use for this guide. Make sure to have it installed to follow along.
Watch Out
Please make sure in advance that any app.run()
calls you might
have in your application file are inside an if __name__ ==
'__main__':
block or moved to a separate file. Just make sure it’s
not called because this will always start a local WSGI server which
we do not want if we deploy that application to FastCGI.
Creating a .fcgi file¶
First you need to create the FastCGI server file. Let’s call it yourapplication.fcgi:
#!/usr/bin/python
from flup.server.fcgi import WSGIServer
from yourapplication import app
if __name__ == '__main__':
WSGIServer(app).run()
This is enough for Apache to work, however nginx and older versions of
lighttpd need a socket to be explicitly passed to communicate with the
FastCGI server. For that to work you need to pass the path to the
socket to the WSGIServer
:
WSGIServer(application, bindAddress='/path/to/fcgi.sock').run()
The path has to be the exact same path you define in the server config.
Save the yourapplication.fcgi
file somewhere you will find it again.
It makes sense to have that in /var/www/yourapplication
or something
similar.
Make sure to set the executable bit on that file so that the servers can execute it:
$ chmod +x /var/www/yourapplication/yourapplication.fcgi
Configuring Apache¶
The example above is good enough for a basic Apache deployment but your
.fcgi file will appear in your application URL e.g.
example.com/yourapplication.fcgi/news/
. There are few ways to configure
your application so that yourapplication.fcgi does not appear in the URL.
A preferable way is to use the ScriptAlias and SetHandler configuration
directives to route requests to the FastCGI server. The following example
uses FastCgiServer to start 5 instances of the application which will
handle all incoming requests:
LoadModule fastcgi_module /usr/lib64/httpd/modules/mod_fastcgi.so
FastCgiServer /var/www/html/yourapplication/app.fcgi -idle-timeout 300 -processes 5
<VirtualHost *>
ServerName webapp1.mydomain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/yourapplication
AddHandler fastcgi-script fcgi
ScriptAlias / /var/www/html/yourapplication/app.fcgi/
<Location />
SetHandler fastcgi-script
</Location>
</VirtualHost>
These processes will be managed by Apache. If you’re using a standalone FastCGI server, you can use the FastCgiExternalServer directive instead. Note that in the following the path is not real, it’s simply used as an identifier to other directives such as AliasMatch:
FastCgiServer /var/www/html/yourapplication -host 127.0.0.1:3000
If you cannot set ScriptAlias, for example on a shared web host, you can use WSGI middleware to remove yourapplication.fcgi from the URLs. Set .htaccess:
<IfModule mod_fcgid.c>
AddHandler fcgid-script .fcgi
<Files ~ (\.fcgi)>
SetHandler fcgid-script
Options +FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI
</Files>
</IfModule>
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ yourapplication.fcgi/$1 [QSA,L]
</IfModule>
Set yourapplication.fcgi:
#!/usr/bin/python
#: optional path to your local python site-packages folder
import sys
sys.path.insert(0, '<your_local_path>/lib/python<your_python_version>/site-packages')
from flup.server.fcgi import WSGIServer
from yourapplication import app
class ScriptNameStripper(object):
def __init__(self, app):
self.app = app
def __call__(self, environ, start_response):
environ['SCRIPT_NAME'] = ''
return self.app(environ, start_response)
app = ScriptNameStripper(app)
if __name__ == '__main__':
WSGIServer(app).run()
Configuring lighttpd¶
A basic FastCGI configuration for lighttpd looks like that:
fastcgi.server = ("/yourapplication.fcgi" =>
((
"socket" => "/tmp/yourapplication-fcgi.sock",
"bin-path" => "/var/www/yourapplication/yourapplication.fcgi",
"check-local" => "disable",
"max-procs" => 1
))
)
alias.url = (
"/static/" => "/path/to/your/static/"
)
url.rewrite-once = (
"^(/static($|/.*))$" => "$1",
"^(/.*)$" => "/yourapplication.fcgi$1"
)
Remember to enable the FastCGI, alias and rewrite modules. This configuration
binds the application to /yourapplication
. If you want the application to
work in the URL root you have to work around a lighttpd bug with the
LighttpdCGIRootFix
middleware.
Make sure to apply it only if you are mounting the application the URL root. Also, see the Lighty docs for more information on FastCGI and Python (note that explicitly passing a socket to run() is no longer necessary).
Configuring nginx¶
Installing FastCGI applications on nginx is a bit different because by default no FastCGI parameters are forwarded.
A basic Flask FastCGI configuration for nginx looks like this:
location = /yourapplication { rewrite ^ /yourapplication/ last; }
location /yourapplication { try_files $uri @yourapplication; }
location @yourapplication {
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(/yourapplication)(.*)$;
fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME $fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_pass unix:/tmp/yourapplication-fcgi.sock;
}
This configuration binds the application to /yourapplication
. If you
want to have it in the URL root it’s a bit simpler because you don’t
have to figure out how to calculate PATH_INFO
and SCRIPT_NAME
:
location / { try_files $uri @yourapplication; }
location @yourapplication {
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME "";
fastcgi_pass unix:/tmp/yourapplication-fcgi.sock;
}
Running FastCGI Processes¶
Since nginx and others do not load FastCGI apps, you have to do it by
yourself. Supervisor can manage FastCGI processes.
You can look around for other FastCGI process managers or write a script
to run your .fcgi file at boot, e.g. using a SysV init.d
script.
For a temporary solution, you can always run the .fcgi
script inside
GNU screen. See man screen
for details, and note that this is a
manual solution which does not persist across system restart:
$ screen
$ /var/www/yourapplication/yourapplication.fcgi
Debugging¶
FastCGI deployments tend to be hard to debug on most web servers. Very often the only thing the server log tells you is something along the lines of “premature end of headers”. In order to debug the application the only thing that can really give you ideas why it breaks is switching to the correct user and executing the application by hand.
This example assumes your application is called application.fcgi and that your web server user is www-data:
$ su www-data
$ cd /var/www/yourapplication
$ python application.fcgi
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "yourapplication.fcgi", line 4, in <module>
ImportError: No module named yourapplication
In this case the error seems to be “yourapplication” not being on the python path. Common problems are:
Relative paths being used. Don’t rely on the current working directory.
The code depending on environment variables that are not set by the web server.
Different python interpreters being used.
CGI¶
If all other deployment methods do not work, CGI will work for sure. CGI is supported by all major servers but usually has a sub-optimal performance.
This is also the way you can use a Flask application on Google’s App Engine, where execution happens in a CGI-like environment.
Watch Out
Please make sure in advance that any app.run()
calls you might
have in your application file are inside an if __name__ ==
'__main__':
block or moved to a separate file. Just make sure it’s
not called because this will always start a local WSGI server which
we do not want if we deploy that application to CGI / app engine.
With CGI, you will also have to make sure that your code does not contain
any print
statements, or that sys.stdout
is overridden by something
that doesn’t write into the HTTP response.
Creating a .cgi file¶
First you need to create the CGI application file. Let’s call it
yourapplication.cgi
:
#!/usr/bin/python
from wsgiref.handlers import CGIHandler
from yourapplication import app
CGIHandler().run(app)
Server Setup¶
Usually there are two ways to configure the server. Either just copy the
.cgi
into a cgi-bin
(and use mod_rewrite or something similar to
rewrite the URL) or let the server point to the file directly.
In Apache for example you can put something like this into the config:
ScriptAlias /app /path/to/the/application.cgi
On shared webhosting, though, you might not have access to your Apache config.
In this case, a file called .htaccess
, sitting in the public directory
you want your app to be available, works too but the ScriptAlias
directive
won’t work in that case:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f # Don't interfere with static files
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /path/to/the/application.cgi/$1 [L]
For more information consult the documentation of your webserver.
Becoming Big¶
Here are your options when growing your codebase or scaling your application.
Read the Source.¶
Flask started in part to demonstrate how to build your own framework on top of existing well-used tools Werkzeug (WSGI) and Jinja (templating), and as it developed, it became useful to a wide audience. As you grow your codebase, don’t just use Flask – understand it. Read the source. Flask’s code is written to be read; its documentation is published so you can use its internal APIs. Flask sticks to documented APIs in upstream libraries, and documents its internal utilities so that you can find the hook points needed for your project.
Hook. Extend.¶
The API docs are full of available overrides, hook points, and Signals. You can provide custom classes for things like the request and response objects. Dig deeper on the APIs you use, and look for the customizations which are available out of the box in a Flask release. Look for ways in which your project can be refactored into a collection of utilities and Flask extensions. Explore the many Extensions in the community, and look for patterns to build your own extensions if you do not find the tools you need.
Subclass.¶
The Flask
class has many methods designed for subclassing. You
can quickly add or customize behavior by subclassing Flask
(see
the linked method docs) and using that subclass wherever you instantiate an
application class. This works well with Application Factories.
See Subclassing Flask for an example.
Wrap with middleware.¶
The Application Dispatching chapter shows in detail how to apply middleware. You can introduce WSGI middleware to wrap your Flask instances and introduce fixes and changes at the layer between your Flask application and your HTTP server. Werkzeug includes several middlewares.
Fork.¶
If none of the above options work, fork Flask. The majority of code of Flask is within Werkzeug and Jinja2. These libraries do the majority of the work. Flask is just the paste that glues those together. For every project there is the point where the underlying framework gets in the way (due to assumptions the original developers had). This is natural because if this would not be the case, the framework would be a very complex system to begin with which causes a steep learning curve and a lot of user frustration.
This is not unique to Flask. Many people use patched and modified versions of their framework to counter shortcomings. This idea is also reflected in the license of Flask. You don’t have to contribute any changes back if you decide to modify the framework.
The downside of forking is of course that Flask extensions will most likely break because the new framework has a different import name. Furthermore integrating upstream changes can be a complex process, depending on the number of changes. Because of that, forking should be the very last resort.
Scale like a pro.¶
For many web applications the complexity of the code is less an issue than the scaling for the number of users or data entries expected. Flask by itself is only limited in terms of scaling by your application code, the data store you want to use and the Python implementation and webserver you are running on.
Scaling well means for example that if you double the amount of servers you get about twice the performance. Scaling bad means that if you add a new server the application won’t perform any better or would not even support a second server.
There is only one limiting factor regarding scaling in Flask which are the context local proxies. They depend on context which in Flask is defined as being either a thread, process or greenlet. If your server uses some kind of concurrency that is not based on threads or greenlets, Flask will no longer be able to support these global proxies. However the majority of servers are using either threads, greenlets or separate processes to achieve concurrency which are all methods well supported by the underlying Werkzeug library.
Discuss with the community.¶
The Flask developers keep the framework accessible to users with codebases big and small. If you find an obstacle in your way, caused by Flask, don’t hesitate to contact the developers on the mailing list or Discord server. The best way for the Flask and Flask extension developers to improve the tools for larger applications is getting feedback from users.
API Reference¶
If you are looking for information on a specific function, class or method, this part of the documentation is for you.
API¶
This part of the documentation covers all the interfaces of Flask. For parts where Flask depends on external libraries, we document the most important right here and provide links to the canonical documentation.
Application Object¶
-
class
flask.
Flask
(import_name, static_url_path=None, static_folder='static', static_host=None, host_matching=False, subdomain_matching=False, template_folder='templates', instance_path=None, instance_relative_config=False, root_path=None)¶ The flask object implements a WSGI application and acts as the central object. It is passed the name of the module or package of the application. Once it is created it will act as a central registry for the view functions, the URL rules, template configuration and much more.
The name of the package is used to resolve resources from inside the package or the folder the module is contained in depending on if the package parameter resolves to an actual python package (a folder with an
__init__.py
file inside) or a standard module (just a.py
file).For more information about resource loading, see
open_resource()
.Usually you create a
Flask
instance in your main module or in the__init__.py
file of your package like this:from flask import Flask app = Flask(__name__)
About the First Parameter
The idea of the first parameter is to give Flask an idea of what belongs to your application. This name is used to find resources on the filesystem, can be used by extensions to improve debugging information and a lot more.
So it’s important what you provide there. If you are using a single module, __name__ is always the correct value. If you however are using a package, it’s usually recommended to hardcode the name of your package there.
For example if your application is defined in
yourapplication/app.py
you should create it with one of the two versions below:app = Flask('yourapplication') app = Flask(__name__.split('.')[0])
Why is that? The application will work even with __name__, thanks to how resources are looked up. However it will make debugging more painful. Certain extensions can make assumptions based on the import name of your application. For example the Flask-SQLAlchemy extension will look for the code in your application that triggered an SQL query in debug mode. If the import name is not properly set up, that debugging information is lost. (For example it would only pick up SQL queries in yourapplication.app and not yourapplication.views.frontend)
Changelog
New in version 1.0: The
host_matching
andstatic_host
parameters were added.New in version 1.0: The
subdomain_matching
parameter was added. Subdomain matching needs to be enabled manually now. SettingSERVER_NAME
does not implicitly enable it.New in version 0.11: The root_path parameter was added.
New in version 0.8: The instance_path and instance_relative_config parameters were added.
New in version 0.7: The static_url_path, static_folder, and template_folder parameters were added.
- Parameters
import_name – the name of the application package
static_url_path – can be used to specify a different path for the static files on the web. Defaults to the name of the static_folder folder.
static_folder – The folder with static files that is served at
static_url_path
. Relative to the applicationroot_path
or an absolute path. Defaults to'static'
.static_host – the host to use when adding the static route. Defaults to None. Required when using
host_matching=True
with astatic_folder
configured.host_matching – set
url_map.host_matching
attribute. Defaults to False.subdomain_matching – consider the subdomain relative to
SERVER_NAME
when matching routes. Defaults to False.template_folder – the folder that contains the templates that should be used by the application. Defaults to
'templates'
folder in the root path of the application.instance_path – An alternative instance path for the application. By default the folder
'instance'
next to the package or module is assumed to be the instance path.instance_relative_config – if set to
True
relative filenames for loading the config are assumed to be relative to the instance path instead of the application root.root_path – Flask by default will automatically calculate the path to the root of the application. In certain situations this cannot be achieved (for instance if the package is a Python 3 namespace package) and needs to be manually defined.
-
add_template_filter
(f, name=None)¶ Register a custom template filter. Works exactly like the
template_filter()
decorator.- Parameters
name – the optional name of the filter, otherwise the function name will be used.
-
add_template_global
(f, name=None)¶ Register a custom template global function. Works exactly like the
template_global()
decorator.Changelog
New in version 0.10.
- Parameters
name – the optional name of the global function, otherwise the function name will be used.
-
add_template_test
(f, name=None)¶ Register a custom template test. Works exactly like the
template_test()
decorator.Changelog
New in version 0.10.
- Parameters
name – the optional name of the test, otherwise the function name will be used.
-
add_url_rule
(rule, endpoint=None, view_func=None, provide_automatic_options=None, **options)¶ Connects a URL rule. Works exactly like the
route()
decorator. If a view_func is provided it will be registered with the endpoint.Basically this example:
@app.route('/') def index(): pass
Is equivalent to the following:
def index(): pass app.add_url_rule('/', 'index', index)
If the view_func is not provided you will need to connect the endpoint to a view function like so:
app.view_functions['index'] = index
Internally
route()
invokesadd_url_rule()
so if you want to customize the behavior via subclassing you only need to change this method.For more information refer to URL Route Registrations.
Changelog
Changed in version 0.6:
OPTIONS
is added automatically as method.Changed in version 0.2: view_func parameter added.
- Parameters
rule – the URL rule as string
endpoint – the endpoint for the registered URL rule. Flask itself assumes the name of the view function as endpoint
view_func – the function to call when serving a request to the provided endpoint
provide_automatic_options – controls whether the
OPTIONS
method should be added automatically. This can also be controlled by setting theview_func.provide_automatic_options = False
before adding the rule.options – the options to be forwarded to the underlying
Rule
object. A change to Werkzeug is handling of method options. methods is a list of methods this rule should be limited to (GET
,POST
etc.). By default a rule just listens forGET
(and implicitlyHEAD
). Starting with Flask 0.6,OPTIONS
is implicitly added and handled by the standard request handling.
-
after_request
(f)¶ Register a function to be run after each request.
Your function must take one parameter, an instance of
response_class
and return a new response object or the same (seeprocess_response()
).As of Flask 0.7 this function might not be executed at the end of the request in case an unhandled exception occurred.
-
after_request_funcs
= None¶ A dictionary with lists of functions that should be called after each request. The key of the dictionary is the name of the blueprint this function is active for,
None
for all requests. This can for example be used to close database connections. To register a function here, use theafter_request()
decorator.
-
app_context
()¶ Create an
AppContext
. Use as awith
block to push the context, which will makecurrent_app
point at this application.An application context is automatically pushed by
RequestContext.push()
when handling a request, and when running a CLI command. Use this to manually create a context outside of these situations.with app.app_context(): init_db()
Changelog
New in version 0.9.
-
app_ctx_globals_class
¶ alias of
flask.ctx._AppCtxGlobals
-
auto_find_instance_path
()¶ Tries to locate the instance path if it was not provided to the constructor of the application class. It will basically calculate the path to a folder named
instance
next to your main file or the package.Changelog
New in version 0.8.
-
before_first_request
(f)¶ Registers a function to be run before the first request to this instance of the application.
The function will be called without any arguments and its return value is ignored.
Changelog
New in version 0.8.
-
before_first_request_funcs
= None¶ A list of functions that will be called at the beginning of the first request to this instance. To register a function, use the
before_first_request()
decorator.Changelog
New in version 0.8.
-
before_request
(f)¶ Registers a function to run before each request.
For example, this can be used to open a database connection, or to load the logged in user from the session.
The function will be called without any arguments. If it returns a non-None value, the value is handled as if it was the return value from the view, and further request handling is stopped.
-
before_request_funcs
= None¶ A dictionary with lists of functions that will be called at the beginning of each request. The key of the dictionary is the name of the blueprint this function is active for, or
None
for all requests. To register a function, use thebefore_request()
decorator.
-
blueprints
= None¶ all the attached blueprints in a dictionary by name. Blueprints can be attached multiple times so this dictionary does not tell you how often they got attached.
Changelog
New in version 0.7.
-
config
= None¶ The configuration dictionary as
Config
. This behaves exactly like a regular dictionary but supports additional methods to load a config from files.
-
config_class
¶ alias of
flask.config.Config
-
context_processor
(f)¶ Registers a template context processor function.
-
create_global_jinja_loader
()¶ Creates the loader for the Jinja2 environment. Can be used to override just the loader and keeping the rest unchanged. It’s discouraged to override this function. Instead one should override the
jinja_loader()
function instead.The global loader dispatches between the loaders of the application and the individual blueprints.
Changelog
New in version 0.7.
-
create_jinja_environment
()¶ Create the Jinja environment based on
jinja_options
and the various Jinja-related methods of the app. Changingjinja_options
after this will have no effect. Also adds Flask-related globals and filters to the environment.Changelog
Changed in version 0.11:
Environment.auto_reload
set in accordance withTEMPLATES_AUTO_RELOAD
configuration option.New in version 0.5.
-
create_url_adapter
(request)¶ Creates a URL adapter for the given request. The URL adapter is created at a point where the request context is not yet set up so the request is passed explicitly.
Changelog
Changed in version 1.0:
SERVER_NAME
no longer implicitly enables subdomain matching. Usesubdomain_matching
instead.Changed in version 0.9: This can now also be called without a request object when the URL adapter is created for the application context.
New in version 0.6.
-
property
debug
¶ Whether debug mode is enabled. When using
flask run
to start the development server, an interactive debugger will be shown for unhandled exceptions, and the server will be reloaded when code changes. This maps to theDEBUG
config key. This is enabled whenenv
is'development'
and is overridden by theFLASK_DEBUG
environment variable. It may not behave as expected if set in code.Do not enable debug mode when deploying in production.
Default:
True
ifenv
is'development'
, orFalse
otherwise.
-
default_config
= {'APPLICATION_ROOT': '/', 'DEBUG': None, 'ENV': None, 'EXPLAIN_TEMPLATE_LOADING': False, 'JSONIFY_MIMETYPE': 'application/json', 'JSONIFY_PRETTYPRINT_REGULAR': False, 'JSON_AS_ASCII': True, 'JSON_SORT_KEYS': True, 'MAX_CONTENT_LENGTH': None, 'MAX_COOKIE_SIZE': 4093, 'PERMANENT_SESSION_LIFETIME': datetime.timedelta(days=31), 'PREFERRED_URL_SCHEME': 'http', 'PRESERVE_CONTEXT_ON_EXCEPTION': None, 'PROPAGATE_EXCEPTIONS': None, 'SECRET_KEY': None, 'SEND_FILE_MAX_AGE_DEFAULT': datetime.timedelta(seconds=43200), 'SERVER_NAME': None, 'SESSION_COOKIE_DOMAIN': None, 'SESSION_COOKIE_HTTPONLY': True, 'SESSION_COOKIE_NAME': 'session', 'SESSION_COOKIE_PATH': None, 'SESSION_COOKIE_SAMESITE': None, 'SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE': False, 'SESSION_REFRESH_EACH_REQUEST': True, 'TEMPLATES_AUTO_RELOAD': None, 'TESTING': False, 'TRAP_BAD_REQUEST_ERRORS': None, 'TRAP_HTTP_EXCEPTIONS': False, 'USE_X_SENDFILE': False}¶ Default configuration parameters.
-
dispatch_request
()¶ Does the request dispatching. Matches the URL and returns the return value of the view or error handler. This does not have to be a response object. In order to convert the return value to a proper response object, call
make_response()
.Changelog
Changed in version 0.7: This no longer does the exception handling, this code was moved to the new
full_dispatch_request()
.
-
do_teardown_appcontext
(exc=<object object>)¶ Called right before the application context is popped.
When handling a request, the application context is popped after the request context. See
do_teardown_request()
.This calls all functions decorated with
teardown_appcontext()
. Then theappcontext_tearing_down
signal is sent.This is called by
AppContext.pop()
.Changelog
New in version 0.9.
-
do_teardown_request
(exc=<object object>)¶ Called after the request is dispatched and the response is returned, right before the request context is popped.
This calls all functions decorated with
teardown_request()
, andBlueprint.teardown_request()
if a blueprint handled the request. Finally, therequest_tearing_down
signal is sent.This is called by
RequestContext.pop()
, which may be delayed during testing to maintain access to resources.- Parameters
exc – An unhandled exception raised while dispatching the request. Detected from the current exception information if not passed. Passed to each teardown function.
Changelog
Changed in version 0.9: Added the
exc
argument.
-
endpoint
(endpoint)¶ A decorator to register a function as an endpoint. Example:
@app.endpoint('example.endpoint') def example(): return "example"
- Parameters
endpoint – the name of the endpoint
-
env
¶ What environment the app is running in. Flask and extensions may enable behaviors based on the environment, such as enabling debug mode. This maps to the
ENV
config key. This is set by theFLASK_ENV
environment variable and may not behave as expected if set in code.Do not enable development when deploying in production.
Default:
'production'
-
error_handler_spec
= None¶ A dictionary of all registered error handlers. The key is
None
for error handlers active on the application, otherwise the key is the name of the blueprint. Each key points to another dictionary where the key is the status code of the http exception. The special keyNone
points to a list of tuples where the first item is the class for the instance check and the second the error handler function.To register an error handler, use the
errorhandler()
decorator.
-
errorhandler
(code_or_exception)¶ Register a function to handle errors by code or exception class.
A decorator that is used to register a function given an error code. Example:
@app.errorhandler(404) def page_not_found(error): return 'This page does not exist', 404
You can also register handlers for arbitrary exceptions:
@app.errorhandler(DatabaseError) def special_exception_handler(error): return 'Database connection failed', 500
Changelog
New in version 0.7: Use
register_error_handler()
instead of modifyingerror_handler_spec
directly, for application wide error handlers.New in version 0.7: One can now additionally also register custom exception types that do not necessarily have to be a subclass of the
HTTPException
class.- Parameters
code_or_exception – the code as integer for the handler, or an arbitrary exception
-
extensions
= None¶ a place where extensions can store application specific state. For example this is where an extension could store database engines and similar things. For backwards compatibility extensions should register themselves like this:
if not hasattr(app, 'extensions'): app.extensions = {} app.extensions['extensionname'] = SomeObject()
The key must match the name of the extension module. For example in case of a “Flask-Foo” extension in flask_foo, the key would be
'foo'
.Changelog
New in version 0.7.
-
full_dispatch_request
()¶ Dispatches the request and on top of that performs request pre and postprocessing as well as HTTP exception catching and error handling.
Changelog
New in version 0.7.
-
get_send_file_max_age
(filename)¶ Provides default cache_timeout for the
send_file()
functions.By default, this function returns
SEND_FILE_MAX_AGE_DEFAULT
from the configuration ofcurrent_app
.Static file functions such as
send_from_directory()
use this function, andsend_file()
calls this function oncurrent_app
when the given cache_timeout isNone
. If a cache_timeout is given insend_file()
, that timeout is used; otherwise, this method is called.This allows subclasses to change the behavior when sending files based on the filename. For example, to set the cache timeout for .js files to 60 seconds:
class MyFlask(flask.Flask): def get_send_file_max_age(self, name): if name.lower().endswith('.js'): return 60 return flask.Flask.get_send_file_max_age(self, name)
Changelog
New in version 0.9.
-
property
got_first_request
¶ This attribute is set to
True
if the application started handling the first request.Changelog
New in version 0.8.
-
handle_exception
(e)¶ Handle an exception that did not have an error handler associated with it, or that was raised from an error handler. This always causes a 500
InternalServerError
.Always sends the
got_request_exception
signal.If
propagate_exceptions
isTrue
, such as in debug mode, the error will be re-raised so that the debugger can display it. Otherwise, the original exception is logged, and anInternalServerError
is returned.If an error handler is registered for
InternalServerError
or500
, it will be used. For consistency, the handler will always receive theInternalServerError
. The original unhandled exception is available ase.original_exception
.Note
Prior to Werkzeug 1.0.0,
InternalServerError
will not always have anoriginal_exception
attribute. Usegetattr(e, "original_exception", None)
to simulate the behavior for compatibility.Changed in version 1.1.0: Always passes the
InternalServerError
instance to the handler, settingoriginal_exception
to the unhandled error.Changed in version 1.1.0:
after_request
functions and other finalization is done even for the default 500 response when there is no handler.Changelog
New in version 0.3.
-
handle_http_exception
(e)¶ Handles an HTTP exception. By default this will invoke the registered error handlers and fall back to returning the exception as response.
Changelog
Changed in version 1.0.3:
RoutingException
, used internally for actions such as slash redirects during routing, is not passed to error handlers.Changed in version 1.0: Exceptions are looked up by code and by MRO, so
HTTPExcpetion
subclasses can be handled with a catch-all handler for the baseHTTPException
.New in version 0.3.
-
handle_user_exception
(e)¶ This method is called whenever an exception occurs that should be handled. A special case is
HTTPException
which is forwarded to thehandle_http_exception()
method. This function will either return a response value or reraise the exception with the same traceback.Changelog
Changed in version 1.0: Key errors raised from request data like
form
show the bad key in debug mode rather than a generic bad request message.New in version 0.7.
-
property
has_static_folder
¶ This is
True
if the package bound object’s container has a folder for static files.Changelog
New in version 0.5.
-
import_name
= None¶ The name of the package or module that this app belongs to. Do not change this once it is set by the constructor.
-
inject_url_defaults
(endpoint, values)¶ Injects the URL defaults for the given endpoint directly into the values dictionary passed. This is used internally and automatically called on URL building.
Changelog
New in version 0.7.
-
instance_path
= None¶ Holds the path to the instance folder.
Changelog
New in version 0.8.
-
iter_blueprints
()¶ Iterates over all blueprints by the order they were registered.
Changelog
New in version 0.11.
-
jinja_env
¶ The Jinja environment used to load templates.
The environment is created the first time this property is accessed. Changing
jinja_options
after that will have no effect.
-
jinja_environment
¶ alias of
flask.templating.Environment
-
jinja_loader
¶ The Jinja loader for this package bound object.
Changelog
New in version 0.5.
-
jinja_options
= {'extensions': ['jinja2.ext.autoescape', 'jinja2.ext.with_']}¶ Options that are passed to the Jinja environment in
create_jinja_environment()
. Changing these options after the environment is created (accessingjinja_env
) will have no effect.Changed in version 1.1.0: This is a
dict
instead of anImmutableDict
to allow easier configuration.
-
json_decoder
¶ alias of
flask.json.JSONDecoder
-
json_encoder
¶ alias of
flask.json.JSONEncoder
-
log_exception
(exc_info)¶ Logs an exception. This is called by
handle_exception()
if debugging is disabled and right before the handler is called. The default implementation logs the exception as error on thelogger
.Changelog
New in version 0.8.
-
logger
¶ A standard Python
Logger
for the app, with the same name asname
.In debug mode, the logger’s
level
will be set toDEBUG
.If there are no handlers configured, a default handler will be added. See Logging for more information.
Changed in version 1.1.0: The logger takes the same name as
name
rather than hard-coding"flask.app"
.Changelog
Changed in version 1.0.0: Behavior was simplified. The logger is always named
"flask.app"
. The level is only set during configuration, it doesn’t checkapp.debug
each time. Only one format is used, not different ones depending onapp.debug
. No handlers are removed, and a handler is only added if no handlers are already configured.New in version 0.3.
-
make_config
(instance_relative=False)¶ Used to create the config attribute by the Flask constructor. The instance_relative parameter is passed in from the constructor of Flask (there named instance_relative_config) and indicates if the config should be relative to the instance path or the root path of the application.
Changelog
New in version 0.8.
-
make_default_options_response
()¶ This method is called to create the default
OPTIONS
response. This can be changed through subclassing to change the default behavior ofOPTIONS
responses.Changelog
New in version 0.7.
-
make_null_session
()¶ Creates a new instance of a missing session. Instead of overriding this method we recommend replacing the
session_interface
.Changelog
New in version 0.7.
-
make_response
(rv)¶ Convert the return value from a view function to an instance of
response_class
.- Parameters
rv –
the return value from the view function. The view function must return a response. Returning
None
, or the view ending without returning, is not allowed. The following types are allowed forview_rv
:str
(unicode
in Python 2)A response object is created with the string encoded to UTF-8 as the body.
bytes
(str
in Python 2)A response object is created with the bytes as the body.
dict
A dictionary that will be jsonify’d before being returned.
tuple
Either
(body, status, headers)
,(body, status)
, or(body, headers)
, wherebody
is any of the other types allowed here,status
is a string or an integer, andheaders
is a dictionary or a list of(key, value)
tuples. Ifbody
is aresponse_class
instance,status
overwrites the exiting value andheaders
are extended.response_class
The object is returned unchanged.
- other
Response
class The object is coerced to
response_class
.callable()
The function is called as a WSGI application. The result is used to create a response object.
Changelog
Changed in version 0.9: Previously a tuple was interpreted as the arguments for the response object.
-
make_shell_context
()¶ Returns the shell context for an interactive shell for this application. This runs all the registered shell context processors.
Changelog
New in version 0.11.
-
name
¶ The name of the application. This is usually the import name with the difference that it’s guessed from the run file if the import name is main. This name is used as a display name when Flask needs the name of the application. It can be set and overridden to change the value.
Changelog
New in version 0.8.
-
open_instance_resource
(resource, mode='rb')¶ Opens a resource from the application’s instance folder (
instance_path
). Otherwise works likeopen_resource()
. Instance resources can also be opened for writing.- Parameters
resource – the name of the resource. To access resources within subfolders use forward slashes as separator.
mode – resource file opening mode, default is ‘rb’.
-
open_resource
(resource, mode='rb')¶ Opens a resource from the application’s resource folder. To see how this works, consider the following folder structure:
/myapplication.py /schema.sql /static /style.css /templates /layout.html /index.html
If you want to open the
schema.sql
file you would do the following:with app.open_resource('schema.sql') as f: contents = f.read() do_something_with(contents)
- Parameters
resource – the name of the resource. To access resources within subfolders use forward slashes as separator.
mode – Open file in this mode. Only reading is supported, valid values are “r” (or “rt”) and “rb”.
-
open_session
(request)¶ Creates or opens a new session. Default implementation stores all session data in a signed cookie. This requires that the
secret_key
is set. Instead of overriding this method we recommend replacing thesession_interface
.- Parameters
request – an instance of
request_class
.
-
permanent_session_lifetime
¶ A
timedelta
which is used to set the expiration date of a permanent session. The default is 31 days which makes a permanent session survive for roughly one month.This attribute can also be configured from the config with the
PERMANENT_SESSION_LIFETIME
configuration key. Defaults totimedelta(days=31)
-
preprocess_request
()¶ Called before the request is dispatched. Calls
url_value_preprocessors
registered with the app and the current blueprint (if any). Then callsbefore_request_funcs
registered with the app and the blueprint.If any
before_request()
handler returns a non-None value, the value is handled as if it was the return value from the view, and further request handling is stopped.
-
property
preserve_context_on_exception
¶ Returns the value of the
PRESERVE_CONTEXT_ON_EXCEPTION
configuration value in case it’s set, otherwise a sensible default is returned.Changelog
New in version 0.7.
-
process_response
(response)¶ Can be overridden in order to modify the response object before it’s sent to the WSGI server. By default this will call all the
after_request()
decorated functions.Changelog
Changed in version 0.5: As of Flask 0.5 the functions registered for after request execution are called in reverse order of registration.
- Parameters
response – a
response_class
object.- Returns
a new response object or the same, has to be an instance of
response_class
.
-
property
propagate_exceptions
¶ Returns the value of the
PROPAGATE_EXCEPTIONS
configuration value in case it’s set, otherwise a sensible default is returned.Changelog
New in version 0.7.
-
register_blueprint
(blueprint, **options)¶ Register a
Blueprint
on the application. Keyword arguments passed to this method will override the defaults set on the blueprint.Calls the blueprint’s
register()
method after recording the blueprint in the application’sblueprints
.- Parameters
blueprint – The blueprint to register.
url_prefix – Blueprint routes will be prefixed with this.
subdomain – Blueprint routes will match on this subdomain.
url_defaults – Blueprint routes will use these default values for view arguments.
options – Additional keyword arguments are passed to
BlueprintSetupState
. They can be accessed inrecord()
callbacks.
Changelog
New in version 0.7.
-
register_error_handler
(code_or_exception, f)¶ Alternative error attach function to the
errorhandler()
decorator that is more straightforward to use for non decorator usage.Changelog
New in version 0.7.
-
request_class
¶ alias of
flask.wrappers.Request
-
request_context
(environ)¶ Create a
RequestContext
representing a WSGI environment. Use awith
block to push the context, which will makerequest
point at this request.See The Request Context.
Typically you should not call this from your own code. A request context is automatically pushed by the
wsgi_app()
when handling a request. Usetest_request_context()
to create an environment and context instead of this method.- Parameters
environ – a WSGI environment
-
response_class
¶ alias of
flask.wrappers.Response
-
root_path
= None¶ Absolute path to the package on the filesystem. Used to look up resources contained in the package.
-
route
(rule, **options)¶ A decorator that is used to register a view function for a given URL rule. This does the same thing as
add_url_rule()
but is intended for decorator usage:@app.route('/') def index(): return 'Hello World'
For more information refer to URL Route Registrations.
- Parameters
rule – the URL rule as string
endpoint – the endpoint for the registered URL rule. Flask itself assumes the name of the view function as endpoint
options – the options to be forwarded to the underlying
Rule
object. A change to Werkzeug is handling of method options. methods is a list of methods this rule should be limited to (GET
,POST
etc.). By default a rule just listens forGET
(and implicitlyHEAD
). Starting with Flask 0.6,OPTIONS
is implicitly added and handled by the standard request handling.
-
run
(host=None, port=None, debug=None, load_dotenv=True, **options)¶ Runs the application on a local development server.
Do not use
run()
in a production setting. It is not intended to meet security and performance requirements for a production server. Instead, see Deployment Options for WSGI server recommendations.If the
debug
flag is set the server will automatically reload for code changes and show a debugger in case an exception happened.If you want to run the application in debug mode, but disable the code execution on the interactive debugger, you can pass
use_evalex=False
as parameter. This will keep the debugger’s traceback screen active, but disable code execution.It is not recommended to use this function for development with automatic reloading as this is badly supported. Instead you should be using the flask command line script’s
run
support.Keep in Mind
Flask will suppress any server error with a generic error page unless it is in debug mode. As such to enable just the interactive debugger without the code reloading, you have to invoke
run()
withdebug=True
anduse_reloader=False
. Settinguse_debugger
toTrue
without being in debug mode won’t catch any exceptions because there won’t be any to catch.- Parameters
host – the hostname to listen on. Set this to
'0.0.0.0'
to have the server available externally as well. Defaults to'127.0.0.1'
or the host in theSERVER_NAME
config variable if present.port – the port of the webserver. Defaults to
5000
or the port defined in theSERVER_NAME
config variable if present.debug – if given, enable or disable debug mode. See
debug
.load_dotenv – Load the nearest
.env
and.flaskenv
files to set environment variables. Will also change the working directory to the directory containing the first file found.options – the options to be forwarded to the underlying Werkzeug server. See
werkzeug.serving.run_simple()
for more information.
Changelog
Changed in version 1.0: If installed, python-dotenv will be used to load environment variables from
.env
and.flaskenv
files.If set, the
FLASK_ENV
andFLASK_DEBUG
environment variables will overrideenv
anddebug
.Threaded mode is enabled by default.
Changed in version 0.10: The default port is now picked from the
SERVER_NAME
variable.
-
save_session
(session, response)¶ Saves the session if it needs updates. For the default implementation, check
open_session()
. Instead of overriding this method we recommend replacing thesession_interface
.- Parameters
session – the session to be saved (a
SecureCookie
object)response – an instance of
response_class
-
secret_key
¶ If a secret key is set, cryptographic components can use this to sign cookies and other things. Set this to a complex random value when you want to use the secure cookie for instance.
This attribute can also be configured from the config with the
SECRET_KEY
configuration key. Defaults toNone
.
-
select_jinja_autoescape
(filename)¶ Returns
True
if autoescaping should be active for the given template name. If no template name is given, returns True.Changelog
New in version 0.5.
-
send_file_max_age_default
¶ A
timedelta
which is used as default cache_timeout for thesend_file()
functions. The default is 12 hours.This attribute can also be configured from the config with the
SEND_FILE_MAX_AGE_DEFAULT
configuration key. This configuration variable can also be set with an integer value used as seconds. Defaults totimedelta(hours=12)
-
send_static_file
(filename)¶ Function used internally to send static files from the static folder to the browser.
Changelog
New in version 0.5.
-
session_cookie_name
¶ The secure cookie uses this for the name of the session cookie.
This attribute can also be configured from the config with the
SESSION_COOKIE_NAME
configuration key. Defaults to'session'
-
session_interface
= <flask.sessions.SecureCookieSessionInterface object>¶ the session interface to use. By default an instance of
SecureCookieSessionInterface
is used here.Changelog
New in version 0.8.
-
shell_context_processor
(f)¶ Registers a shell context processor function.
Changelog
New in version 0.11.
-
shell_context_processors
= None¶ A list of shell context processor functions that should be run when a shell context is created.
Changelog
New in version 0.11.
-
should_ignore_error
(error)¶ This is called to figure out if an error should be ignored or not as far as the teardown system is concerned. If this function returns
True
then the teardown handlers will not be passed the error.Changelog
New in version 0.10.
-
property
static_folder
¶ The absolute path to the configured static folder.
-
property
static_url_path
¶ The URL prefix that the static route will be accessible from.
If it was not configured during init, it is derived from
static_folder
.
-
teardown_appcontext
(f)¶ Registers a function to be called when the application context ends. These functions are typically also called when the request context is popped.
Example:
ctx = app.app_context() ctx.push() ... ctx.pop()
When
ctx.pop()
is executed in the above example, the teardown functions are called just before the app context moves from the stack of active contexts. This becomes relevant if you are using such constructs in tests.Since a request context typically also manages an application context it would also be called when you pop a request context.
When a teardown function was called because of an unhandled exception it will be passed an error object. If an
errorhandler()
is registered, it will handle the exception and the teardown will not receive it.The return values of teardown functions are ignored.
Changelog
New in version 0.9.
-
teardown_appcontext_funcs
= None¶ A list of functions that are called when the application context is destroyed. Since the application context is also torn down if the request ends this is the place to store code that disconnects from databases.
Changelog
New in version 0.9.
-
teardown_request
(f)¶ Register a function to be run at the end of each request, regardless of whether there was an exception or not. These functions are executed when the request context is popped, even if not an actual request was performed.
Example:
ctx = app.test_request_context() ctx.push() ... ctx.pop()
When
ctx.pop()
is executed in the above example, the teardown functions are called just before the request context moves from the stack of active contexts. This becomes relevant if you are using such constructs in tests.Generally teardown functions must take every necessary step to avoid that they will fail. If they do execute code that might fail they will have to surround the execution of these code by try/except statements and log occurring errors.
When a teardown function was called because of an exception it will be passed an error object.
The return values of teardown functions are ignored.
Debug Note
In debug mode Flask will not tear down a request on an exception immediately. Instead it will keep it alive so that the interactive debugger can still access it. This behavior can be controlled by the
PRESERVE_CONTEXT_ON_EXCEPTION
configuration variable.
-
teardown_request_funcs
= None¶ A dictionary with lists of functions that are called after each request, even if an exception has occurred. The key of the dictionary is the name of the blueprint this function is active for,
None
for all requests. These functions are not allowed to modify the request, and their return values are ignored. If an exception occurred while processing the request, it gets passed to each teardown_request function. To register a function here, use theteardown_request()
decorator.Changelog
New in version 0.7.
-
template_context_processors
= None¶ A dictionary with list of functions that are called without argument to populate the template context. The key of the dictionary is the name of the blueprint this function is active for,
None
for all requests. Each returns a dictionary that the template context is updated with. To register a function here, use thecontext_processor()
decorator.
-
template_filter
(name=None)¶ A decorator that is used to register custom template filter. You can specify a name for the filter, otherwise the function name will be used. Example:
@app.template_filter() def reverse(s): return s[::-1]
- Parameters
name – the optional name of the filter, otherwise the function name will be used.
-
template_folder
= None¶ Location of the template files to be added to the template lookup.
None
if templates should not be added.
-
template_global
(name=None)¶ A decorator that is used to register a custom template global function. You can specify a name for the global function, otherwise the function name will be used. Example:
@app.template_global() def double(n): return 2 * n
Changelog
New in version 0.10.
- Parameters
name – the optional name of the global function, otherwise the function name will be used.
-
template_test
(name=None)¶ A decorator that is used to register custom template test. You can specify a name for the test, otherwise the function name will be used. Example:
@app.template_test() def is_prime(n): if n == 2: return True for i in range(2, int(math.ceil(math.sqrt(n))) + 1): if n % i == 0: return False return True
Changelog
New in version 0.10.
- Parameters
name – the optional name of the test, otherwise the function name will be used.
-
property
templates_auto_reload
¶ Reload templates when they are changed. Used by
create_jinja_environment()
.This attribute can be configured with
TEMPLATES_AUTO_RELOAD
. If not set, it will be enabled in debug mode.Changelog
New in version 1.0: This property was added but the underlying config and behavior already existed.
-
test_cli_runner
(**kwargs)¶ Create a CLI runner for testing CLI commands. See Testing CLI Commands.
Returns an instance of
test_cli_runner_class
, by defaultFlaskCliRunner
. The Flask app object is passed as the first argument.Changelog
New in version 1.0.
-
test_cli_runner_class
= None¶ The
CliRunner
subclass, by defaultFlaskCliRunner
that is used bytest_cli_runner()
. Its__init__
method should take a Flask app object as the first argument.Changelog
New in version 1.0.
-
test_client
(use_cookies=True, **kwargs)¶ Creates a test client for this application. For information about unit testing head over to Testing Flask Applications.
Note that if you are testing for assertions or exceptions in your application code, you must set
app.testing = True
in order for the exceptions to propagate to the test client. Otherwise, the exception will be handled by the application (not visible to the test client) and the only indication of an AssertionError or other exception will be a 500 status code response to the test client. See thetesting
attribute. For example:app.testing = True client = app.test_client()
The test client can be used in a
with
block to defer the closing down of the context until the end of thewith
block. This is useful if you want to access the context locals for testing:with app.test_client() as c: rv = c.get('/?vodka=42') assert request.args['vodka'] == '42'
Additionally, you may pass optional keyword arguments that will then be passed to the application’s
test_client_class
constructor. For example:from flask.testing import FlaskClient class CustomClient(FlaskClient): def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs): self._authentication = kwargs.pop("authentication") super(CustomClient,self).__init__( *args, **kwargs) app.test_client_class = CustomClient client = app.test_client(authentication='Basic ....')
See
FlaskClient
for more information.Changelog
Changed in version 0.11: Added **kwargs to support passing additional keyword arguments to the constructor of
test_client_class
.New in version 0.7: The use_cookies parameter was added as well as the ability to override the client to be used by setting the
test_client_class
attribute.Changed in version 0.4: added support for
with
block usage for the client.
-
test_client_class
= None¶ the test client that is used with when test_client is used.
Changelog
New in version 0.7.
-
test_request_context
(*args, **kwargs)¶ Create a
RequestContext
for a WSGI environment created from the given values. This is mostly useful during testing, where you may want to run a function that uses request data without dispatching a full request.See The Request Context.
Use a
with
block to push the context, which will makerequest
point at the request for the created environment.with test_request_context(...): generate_report()
When using the shell, it may be easier to push and pop the context manually to avoid indentation.
ctx = app.test_request_context(...) ctx.push() ... ctx.pop()
Takes the same arguments as Werkzeug’s
EnvironBuilder
, with some defaults from the application. See the linked Werkzeug docs for most of the available arguments. Flask-specific behavior is listed here.- Parameters
path – URL path being requested.
base_url – Base URL where the app is being served, which
path
is relative to. If not given, built fromPREFERRED_URL_SCHEME
,subdomain
,SERVER_NAME
, andAPPLICATION_ROOT
.subdomain – Subdomain name to append to
SERVER_NAME
.url_scheme – Scheme to use instead of
PREFERRED_URL_SCHEME
.data – The request body, either as a string or a dict of form keys and values.
json – If given, this is serialized as JSON and passed as
data
. Also defaultscontent_type
toapplication/json
.args – other positional arguments passed to
EnvironBuilder
.kwargs – other keyword arguments passed to
EnvironBuilder
.
-
testing
¶ The testing flag. Set this to
True
to enable the test mode of Flask extensions (and in the future probably also Flask itself). For example this might activate test helpers that have an additional runtime cost which should not be enabled by default.If this is enabled and PROPAGATE_EXCEPTIONS is not changed from the default it’s implicitly enabled.
This attribute can also be configured from the config with the
TESTING
configuration key. Defaults toFalse
.
-
trap_http_exception
(e)¶ Checks if an HTTP exception should be trapped or not. By default this will return
False
for all exceptions except for a bad request key error ifTRAP_BAD_REQUEST_ERRORS
is set toTrue
. It also returnsTrue
ifTRAP_HTTP_EXCEPTIONS
is set toTrue
.This is called for all HTTP exceptions raised by a view function. If it returns
True
for any exception the error handler for this exception is not called and it shows up as regular exception in the traceback. This is helpful for debugging implicitly raised HTTP exceptions.Changelog
Changed in version 1.0: Bad request errors are not trapped by default in debug mode.
New in version 0.8.
-
update_template_context
(context)¶ Update the template context with some commonly used variables. This injects request, session, config and g into the template context as well as everything template context processors want to inject. Note that the as of Flask 0.6, the original values in the context will not be overridden if a context processor decides to return a value with the same key.
- Parameters
context – the context as a dictionary that is updated in place to add extra variables.
-
url_build_error_handlers
= None¶ A list of functions that are called when
url_for()
raises aBuildError
. Each function registered here is called with error, endpoint and values. If a function returnsNone
or raises aBuildError
the next function is tried.Changelog
New in version 0.9.
-
url_default_functions
= None¶ A dictionary with lists of functions that can be used as URL value preprocessors. The key
None
here is used for application wide callbacks, otherwise the key is the name of the blueprint. Each of these functions has the chance to modify the dictionary of URL values before they are used as the keyword arguments of the view function. For each function registered this one should also provide aurl_defaults()
function that adds the parameters automatically again that were removed that way.Changelog
New in version 0.7.
-
url_defaults
(f)¶ Callback function for URL defaults for all view functions of the application. It’s called with the endpoint and values and should update the values passed in place.
-
url_map
= None¶ The
Map
for this instance. You can use this to change the routing converters after the class was created but before any routes are connected. Example:from werkzeug.routing import BaseConverter class ListConverter(BaseConverter): def to_python(self, value): return value.split(',') def to_url(self, values): return ','.join(super(ListConverter, self).to_url(value) for value in values) app = Flask(__name__) app.url_map.converters['list'] = ListConverter
-
url_map_class
¶ alias of
werkzeug.routing.Map
-
url_rule_class
¶ alias of
werkzeug.routing.Rule
-
url_value_preprocessor
(f)¶ Register a URL value preprocessor function for all view functions in the application. These functions will be called before the
before_request()
functions.The function can modify the values captured from the matched url before they are passed to the view. For example, this can be used to pop a common language code value and place it in
g
rather than pass it to every view.The function is passed the endpoint name and values dict. The return value is ignored.
-
url_value_preprocessors
= None¶ A dictionary with lists of functions that are called before the
before_request_funcs
functions. The key of the dictionary is the name of the blueprint this function is active for, orNone
for all requests. To register a function, useurl_value_preprocessor()
.Changelog
New in version 0.7.
-
use_x_sendfile
¶ Enable this if you want to use the X-Sendfile feature. Keep in mind that the server has to support this. This only affects files sent with the
send_file()
method.Changelog
New in version 0.2.
This attribute can also be configured from the config with the
USE_X_SENDFILE
configuration key. Defaults toFalse
.
-
view_functions
= None¶ A dictionary of all view functions registered. The keys will be function names which are also used to generate URLs and the values are the function objects themselves. To register a view function, use the
route()
decorator.
-
wsgi_app
(environ, start_response)¶ The actual WSGI application. This is not implemented in
__call__()
so that middlewares can be applied without losing a reference to the app object. Instead of doing this:app = MyMiddleware(app)
It’s a better idea to do this instead:
app.wsgi_app = MyMiddleware(app.wsgi_app)
Then you still have the original application object around and can continue to call methods on it.
Changelog
Changed in version 0.7: Teardown events for the request and app contexts are called even if an unhandled error occurs. Other events may not be called depending on when an error occurs during dispatch. See Callbacks and Errors.
- Parameters
environ – A WSGI environment.
start_response – A callable accepting a status code, a list of headers, and an optional exception context to start the response.
Blueprint Objects¶
-
class
flask.
Blueprint
(name, import_name, static_folder=None, static_url_path=None, template_folder=None, url_prefix=None, subdomain=None, url_defaults=None, root_path=None, cli_group=<object object>)¶ Represents a blueprint, a collection of routes and other app-related functions that can be registered on a real application later.
A blueprint is an object that allows defining application functions without requiring an application object ahead of time. It uses the same decorators as
Flask
, but defers the need for an application by recording them for later registration.Decorating a function with a blueprint creates a deferred function that is called with
BlueprintSetupState
when the blueprint is registered on an application.See Modular Applications with Blueprints for more information.
Changed in version 1.1.0: Blueprints have a
cli
group to register nested CLI commands. Thecli_group
parameter controls the name of the group under theflask
command.Changelog
New in version 0.7.
- Parameters
name – The name of the blueprint. Will be prepended to each endpoint name.
import_name – The name of the blueprint package, usually
__name__
. This helps locate theroot_path
for the blueprint.static_folder – A folder with static files that should be served by the blueprint’s static route. The path is relative to the blueprint’s root path. Blueprint static files are disabled by default.
static_url_path – The url to serve static files from. Defaults to
static_folder
. If the blueprint does not have aurl_prefix
, the app’s static route will take precedence, and the blueprint’s static files won’t be accessible.template_folder – A folder with templates that should be added to the app’s template search path. The path is relative to the blueprint’s root path. Blueprint templates are disabled by default. Blueprint templates have a lower precedence than those in the app’s templates folder.
url_prefix – A path to prepend to all of the blueprint’s URLs, to make them distinct from the rest of the app’s routes.
subdomain – A subdomain that blueprint routes will match on by default.
url_defaults – A dict of default values that blueprint routes will receive by default.
root_path – By default, the blueprint will automatically this based on
import_name
. In certain situations this automatic detection can fail, so the path can be specified manually instead.
-
add_app_template_filter
(f, name=None)¶ Register a custom template filter, available application wide. Like
Flask.add_template_filter()
but for a blueprint. Works exactly like theapp_template_filter()
decorator.- Parameters
name – the optional name of the filter, otherwise the function name will be used.
-
add_app_template_global
(f, name=None)¶ Register a custom template global, available application wide. Like
Flask.add_template_global()
but for a blueprint. Works exactly like theapp_template_global()
decorator.Changelog
New in version 0.10.
- Parameters
name – the optional name of the global, otherwise the function name will be used.
-
add_app_template_test
(f, name=None)¶ Register a custom template test, available application wide. Like
Flask.add_template_test()
but for a blueprint. Works exactly like theapp_template_test()
decorator.Changelog
New in version 0.10.
- Parameters
name – the optional name of the test, otherwise the function name will be used.
-
add_url_rule
(rule, endpoint=None, view_func=None, **options)¶ Like
Flask.add_url_rule()
but for a blueprint. The endpoint for theurl_for()
function is prefixed with the name of the blueprint.
-
after_app_request
(f)¶ Like
Flask.after_request()
but for a blueprint. Such a function is executed after each request, even if outside of the blueprint.
-
after_request
(f)¶ Like
Flask.after_request()
but for a blueprint. This function is only executed after each request that is handled by a function of that blueprint.
-
app_context_processor
(f)¶ Like
Flask.context_processor()
but for a blueprint. Such a function is executed each request, even if outside of the blueprint.
-
app_errorhandler
(code)¶ Like
Flask.errorhandler()
but for a blueprint. This handler is used for all requests, even if outside of the blueprint.
-
app_template_filter
(name=None)¶ Register a custom template filter, available application wide. Like
Flask.template_filter()
but for a blueprint.- Parameters
name – the optional name of the filter, otherwise the function name will be used.
-
app_template_global
(name=None)¶ Register a custom template global, available application wide. Like
Flask.template_global()
but for a blueprint.Changelog
New in version 0.10.
- Parameters
name – the optional name of the global, otherwise the function name will be used.
-
app_template_test
(name=None)¶ Register a custom template test, available application wide. Like
Flask.template_test()
but for a blueprint.Changelog
New in version 0.10.
- Parameters
name – the optional name of the test, otherwise the function name will be used.
-
app_url_defaults
(f)¶ Same as
url_defaults()
but application wide.
-
app_url_value_preprocessor
(f)¶ Same as
url_value_preprocessor()
but application wide.
-
before_app_first_request
(f)¶ Like
Flask.before_first_request()
. Such a function is executed before the first request to the application.
-
before_app_request
(f)¶ Like
Flask.before_request()
. Such a function is executed before each request, even if outside of a blueprint.
-
before_request
(f)¶ Like
Flask.before_request()
but for a blueprint. This function is only executed before each request that is handled by a function of that blueprint.
-
context_processor
(f)¶ Like
Flask.context_processor()
but for a blueprint. This function is only executed for requests handled by a blueprint.
-
endpoint
(endpoint)¶ Like
Flask.endpoint()
but for a blueprint. This does not prefix the endpoint with the blueprint name, this has to be done explicitly by the user of this method. If the endpoint is prefixed with a . it will be registered to the current blueprint, otherwise it’s an application independent endpoint.
-
errorhandler
(code_or_exception)¶ Registers an error handler that becomes active for this blueprint only. Please be aware that routing does not happen local to a blueprint so an error handler for 404 usually is not handled by a blueprint unless it is caused inside a view function. Another special case is the 500 internal server error which is always looked up from the application.
Otherwise works as the
errorhandler()
decorator of theFlask
object.
-
get_send_file_max_age
(filename)¶ Provides default cache_timeout for the
send_file()
functions.By default, this function returns
SEND_FILE_MAX_AGE_DEFAULT
from the configuration ofcurrent_app
.Static file functions such as
send_from_directory()
use this function, andsend_file()
calls this function oncurrent_app
when the given cache_timeout isNone
. If a cache_timeout is given insend_file()
, that timeout is used; otherwise, this method is called.This allows subclasses to change the behavior when sending files based on the filename. For example, to set the cache timeout for .js files to 60 seconds:
class MyFlask(flask.Flask): def get_send_file_max_age(self, name): if name.lower().endswith('.js'): return 60 return flask.Flask.get_send_file_max_age(self, name)
Changelog
New in version 0.9.
-
property
has_static_folder
¶ This is
True
if the package bound object’s container has a folder for static files.Changelog
New in version 0.5.
-
import_name
= None¶ The name of the package or module that this app belongs to. Do not change this once it is set by the constructor.
-
jinja_loader
¶ The Jinja loader for this package bound object.
Changelog
New in version 0.5.
-
json_decoder
= None¶ Blueprint local JSON decoder class to use. Set to
None
to use the app’sjson_decoder
.
-
json_encoder
= None¶ Blueprint local JSON decoder class to use. Set to
None
to use the app’sjson_encoder
.
-
make_setup_state
(app, options, first_registration=False)¶ Creates an instance of
BlueprintSetupState()
object that is later passed to the register callback functions. Subclasses can override this to return a subclass of the setup state.
-
open_resource
(resource, mode='rb')¶ Opens a resource from the application’s resource folder. To see how this works, consider the following folder structure:
/myapplication.py /schema.sql /static /style.css /templates /layout.html /index.html
If you want to open the
schema.sql
file you would do the following:with app.open_resource('schema.sql') as f: contents = f.read() do_something_with(contents)
- Parameters
resource – the name of the resource. To access resources within subfolders use forward slashes as separator.
mode – Open file in this mode. Only reading is supported, valid values are “r” (or “rt”) and “rb”.
-
record
(func)¶ Registers a function that is called when the blueprint is registered on the application. This function is called with the state as argument as returned by the
make_setup_state()
method.
-
record_once
(func)¶ Works like
record()
but wraps the function in another function that will ensure the function is only called once. If the blueprint is registered a second time on the application, the function passed is not called.
-
register
(app, options, first_registration=False)¶ Called by
Flask.register_blueprint()
to register all views and callbacks registered on the blueprint with the application. Creates aBlueprintSetupState
and calls eachrecord()
callback with it.- Parameters
app – The application this blueprint is being registered with.
options – Keyword arguments forwarded from
register_blueprint()
.first_registration – Whether this is the first time this blueprint has been registered on the application.
-
register_error_handler
(code_or_exception, f)¶ Non-decorator version of the
errorhandler()
error attach function, akin to theregister_error_handler()
application-wide function of theFlask
object but for error handlers limited to this blueprint.Changelog
New in version 0.11.
-
root_path
= None¶ Absolute path to the package on the filesystem. Used to look up resources contained in the package.
-
route
(rule, **options)¶ Like
Flask.route()
but for a blueprint. The endpoint for theurl_for()
function is prefixed with the name of the blueprint.
-
send_static_file
(filename)¶ Function used internally to send static files from the static folder to the browser.
Changelog
New in version 0.5.
-
property
static_folder
¶ The absolute path to the configured static folder.
-
property
static_url_path
¶ The URL prefix that the static route will be accessible from.
If it was not configured during init, it is derived from
static_folder
.
-
teardown_app_request
(f)¶ Like
Flask.teardown_request()
but for a blueprint. Such a function is executed when tearing down each request, even if outside of the blueprint.
-
teardown_request
(f)¶ Like
Flask.teardown_request()
but for a blueprint. This function is only executed when tearing down requests handled by a function of that blueprint. Teardown request functions are executed when the request context is popped, even when no actual request was performed.
-
template_folder
= None¶ Location of the template files to be added to the template lookup.
None
if templates should not be added.
-
url_defaults
(f)¶ Callback function for URL defaults for this blueprint. It’s called with the endpoint and values and should update the values passed in place.
-
url_value_preprocessor
(f)¶ Registers a function as URL value preprocessor for this blueprint. It’s called before the view functions are called and can modify the url values provided.
Incoming Request Data¶
-
class
flask.
Request
(environ, populate_request=True, shallow=False)¶ The request object used by default in Flask. Remembers the matched endpoint and view arguments.
It is what ends up as
request
. If you want to replace the request object used you can subclass this and setrequest_class
to your subclass.The request object is a
Request
subclass and provides all of the attributes Werkzeug defines plus a few Flask specific ones.-
environ
¶ The underlying WSGI environment.
-
path
¶
-
full_path
¶
-
script_root
¶
-
url
¶
-
base_url
¶
-
url_root
¶ Provides different ways to look at the current RFC 3987. Imagine your application is listening on the following application root:
http://www.example.com/myapplication
And a user requests the following URI:
http://www.example.com/myapplication/%CF%80/page.html?x=y
In this case the values of the above mentioned attributes would be the following:
path
u'/π/page.html'
full_path
u'/π/page.html?x=y'
script_root
u'/myapplication'
base_url
u'http://www.example.com/myapplication/π/page.html'
url
u'http://www.example.com/myapplication/π/page.html?x=y'
url_root
u'http://www.example.com/myapplication/'
-
property
accept_charsets
¶ List of charsets this client supports as
CharsetAccept
object.
-
property
accept_encodings
¶ List of encodings this client accepts. Encodings in a HTTP term are compression encodings such as gzip. For charsets have a look at
accept_charset
.
-
property
accept_languages
¶ List of languages this client accepts as
LanguageAccept
object.
-
property
accept_mimetypes
¶ List of mimetypes this client supports as
MIMEAccept
object.
-
access_control_request_headers
¶ Sent with a preflight request to indicate which headers will be sent with the cross origin request. Set
access_control_allow_headers
on the response to indicate which headers are allowed.
-
access_control_request_method
¶ Sent with a preflight request to indicate which method will be used for the cross origin request. Set
access_control_allow_methods
on the response to indicate which methods are allowed.
-
property
access_route
¶ If a forwarded header exists this is a list of all ip addresses from the client ip to the last proxy server.
-
classmethod
application
(f)¶ Decorate a function as responder that accepts the request as the last argument. This works like the
responder()
decorator but the function is passed the request object as the last argument and the request object will be closed automatically:@Request.application def my_wsgi_app(request): return Response('Hello World!')
As of Werkzeug 0.14 HTTP exceptions are automatically caught and converted to responses instead of failing.
- Parameters
f – the WSGI callable to decorate
- Returns
a new WSGI callable
-
property
args
¶ The parsed URL parameters (the part in the URL after the question mark).
By default an
ImmutableMultiDict
is returned from this function. This can be changed by settingparameter_storage_class
to a different type. This might be necessary if the order of the form data is important.
-
property
authorization
¶ The Authorization object in parsed form.
-
property
base_url
Like
url
but without the querystring See also:trusted_hosts
.
-
property
blueprint
¶ The name of the current blueprint
-
property
cache_control
¶ A
RequestCacheControl
object for the incoming cache control headers.
-
close
()¶ Closes associated resources of this request object. This closes all file handles explicitly. You can also use the request object in a with statement which will automatically close it.
Changelog
New in version 0.9.
-
content_encoding
¶ The Content-Encoding entity-header field is used as a modifier to the media-type. When present, its value indicates what additional content codings have been applied to the entity-body, and thus what decoding mechanisms must be applied in order to obtain the media-type referenced by the Content-Type header field.
Changelog
New in version 0.9.
-
property
content_length
¶ The Content-Length entity-header field indicates the size of the entity-body in bytes or, in the case of the HEAD method, the size of the entity-body that would have been sent had the request been a GET.
-
content_md5
¶ The Content-MD5 entity-header field, as defined in RFC 1864, is an MD5 digest of the entity-body for the purpose of providing an end-to-end message integrity check (MIC) of the entity-body. (Note: a MIC is good for detecting accidental modification of the entity-body in transit, but is not proof against malicious attacks.)
Changelog
New in version 0.9.
-
content_type
¶ The Content-Type entity-header field indicates the media type of the entity-body sent to the recipient or, in the case of the HEAD method, the media type that would have been sent had the request been a GET.
-
property
data
¶ Contains the incoming request data as string in case it came with a mimetype Werkzeug does not handle.
-
date
¶ The Date general-header field represents the date and time at which the message was originated, having the same semantics as orig-date in RFC 822.
-
dict_storage_class
¶
-
property
endpoint
¶ The endpoint that matched the request. This in combination with
view_args
can be used to reconstruct the same or a modified URL. If an exception happened when matching, this will beNone
.
-
property
files
¶ MultiDict
object containing all uploaded files. Each key infiles
is the name from the<input type="file" name="">
. Each value infiles
is a WerkzeugFileStorage
object.It basically behaves like a standard file object you know from Python, with the difference that it also has a
save()
function that can store the file on the filesystem.Note that
files
will only contain data if the request method was POST, PUT or PATCH and the<form>
that posted to the request hadenctype="multipart/form-data"
. It will be empty otherwise.See the
MultiDict
/FileStorage
documentation for more details about the used data structure.
-
property
form
¶ The form parameters. By default an
ImmutableMultiDict
is returned from this function. This can be changed by settingparameter_storage_class
to a different type. This might be necessary if the order of the form data is important.Please keep in mind that file uploads will not end up here, but instead in the
files
attribute.Changelog
Changed in version 0.9: Previous to Werkzeug 0.9 this would only contain form data for POST and PUT requests.
-
form_data_parser_class
¶ alias of
werkzeug.formparser.FormDataParser
-
classmethod
from_values
(*args, **kwargs)¶ Create a new request object based on the values provided. If environ is given missing values are filled from there. This method is useful for small scripts when you need to simulate a request from an URL. Do not use this method for unittesting, there is a full featured client object (
Client
) that allows to create multipart requests, support for cookies etc.This accepts the same options as the
EnvironBuilder
.Changelog
Changed in version 0.5: This method now accepts the same arguments as
EnvironBuilder
. Because of this the environ parameter is now called environ_overrides.- Returns
request object
-
property
full_path
Requested path as unicode, including the query string.
-
get_data
(cache=True, as_text=False, parse_form_data=False)¶ This reads the buffered incoming data from the client into one bytestring. By default this is cached but that behavior can be changed by setting cache to False.
Usually it’s a bad idea to call this method without checking the content length first as a client could send dozens of megabytes or more to cause memory problems on the server.
Note that if the form data was already parsed this method will not return anything as form data parsing does not cache the data like this method does. To implicitly invoke form data parsing function set parse_form_data to True. When this is done the return value of this method will be an empty string if the form parser handles the data. This generally is not necessary as if the whole data is cached (which is the default) the form parser will used the cached data to parse the form data. Please be generally aware of checking the content length first in any case before calling this method to avoid exhausting server memory.
If as_text is set to True the return value will be a decoded unicode string.
Changelog
New in version 0.9.
-
get_json
(force=False, silent=False, cache=True)¶ Parse
data
as JSON.If the mimetype does not indicate JSON (application/json, see
is_json()
), this returnsNone
.If parsing fails,
on_json_loading_failed()
is called and its return value is used as the return value.- Parameters
force – Ignore the mimetype and always try to parse JSON.
silent – Silence parsing errors and return
None
instead.cache – Store the parsed JSON to return for subsequent calls.
-
property
headers
¶ The headers from the WSGI environ as immutable
EnvironHeaders
.
-
property
host
¶ Just the host including the port if available. See also:
trusted_hosts
.
-
property
host_url
¶ Just the host with scheme as IRI. See also:
trusted_hosts
.
-
property
if_modified_since
¶ The parsed If-Modified-Since header as datetime object.
-
property
if_none_match
¶ An object containing all the etags in the If-None-Match header.
- Return type
-
property
if_unmodified_since
¶ The parsed If-Unmodified-Since header as datetime object.
-
property
is_json
¶ Check if the mimetype indicates JSON data, either application/json or application/*+json.
-
is_multiprocess
¶ boolean that is True if the application is served by a WSGI server that spawns multiple processes.
-
is_multithread
¶ boolean that is True if the application is served by a multithreaded WSGI server.
-
is_run_once
¶ boolean that is True if the application will be executed only once in a process lifetime. This is the case for CGI for example, but it’s not guaranteed that the execution only happens one time.
-
property
is_secure
¶ True if the request is secure.
-
property
json
¶ The parsed JSON data if
mimetype
indicates JSON (application/json, seeis_json()
).Calls
get_json()
with default arguments.
-
json_module
= <module 'flask.json' from '/home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/flask/envs/1.1.x/lib/python3.7/site-packages/Flask-1.1.4-py3.7.egg/flask/json/__init__.py'>¶
-
list_storage_class
¶
-
make_form_data_parser
()¶ Creates the form data parser. Instantiates the
form_data_parser_class
with some parameters.Changelog
New in version 0.8.
-
property
max_content_length
¶ Read-only view of the
MAX_CONTENT_LENGTH
config key.
-
max_forwards
¶ The Max-Forwards request-header field provides a mechanism with the TRACE and OPTIONS methods to limit the number of proxies or gateways that can forward the request to the next inbound server.
-
method
¶ The request method. (For example
'GET'
or'POST'
).
-
property
mimetype
¶ Like
content_type
, but without parameters (eg, without charset, type etc.) and always lowercase. For example if the content type istext/HTML; charset=utf-8
the mimetype would be'text/html'
.
-
property
mimetype_params
¶ The mimetype parameters as dict. For example if the content type is
text/html; charset=utf-8
the params would be{'charset': 'utf-8'}
.
-
on_json_loading_failed
(e)¶ Called if
get_json()
parsing fails and isn’t silenced. If this method returns a value, it is used as the return value forget_json()
. The default implementation raisesBadRequest
.
-
origin
¶ The host that the request originated from. Set
access_control_allow_origin
on the response to indicate which origins are allowed.
-
parameter_storage_class
¶
-
property
path
Requested path as unicode. This works a bit like the regular path info in the WSGI environment but will always include a leading slash, even if the URL root is accessed.
-
property
pragma
¶ The Pragma general-header field is used to include implementation-specific directives that might apply to any recipient along the request/response chain. All pragma directives specify optional behavior from the viewpoint of the protocol; however, some systems MAY require that behavior be consistent with the directives.
-
query_string
¶ The URL parameters as raw bytestring.
-
referrer
¶ The Referer[sic] request-header field allows the client to specify, for the server’s benefit, the address (URI) of the resource from which the Request-URI was obtained (the “referrer”, although the header field is misspelled).
-
property
remote_addr
¶ The remote address of the client.
-
remote_user
¶ If the server supports user authentication, and the script is protected, this attribute contains the username the user has authenticated as.
-
routing_exception
= None¶ If matching the URL failed, this is the exception that will be raised / was raised as part of the request handling. This is usually a
NotFound
exception or something similar.
-
scheme
¶ URL scheme (http or https).
Changelog
New in version 0.7.
-
property
script_root
The root path of the script without the trailing slash.
-
property
stream
¶ If the incoming form data was not encoded with a known mimetype the data is stored unmodified in this stream for consumption. Most of the time it is a better idea to use
data
which will give you that data as a string. The stream only returns the data once.Unlike
input_stream
this stream is properly guarded that you can’t accidentally read past the length of the input. Werkzeug will internally always refer to this stream to read data which makes it possible to wrap this object with a stream that does filtering.Changelog
Changed in version 0.9: This stream is now always available but might be consumed by the form parser later on. Previously the stream was only set if no parsing happened.
-
property
url
The reconstructed current URL as IRI. See also:
trusted_hosts
.
-
property
url_charset
¶ The charset that is assumed for URLs. Defaults to the value of
charset
.Changelog
New in version 0.6.
-
property
url_root
The full URL root (with hostname), this is the application root as IRI. See also:
trusted_hosts
.
-
url_rule
= None¶ The internal URL rule that matched the request. This can be useful to inspect which methods are allowed for the URL from a before/after handler (
request.url_rule.methods
) etc. Though if the request’s method was invalid for the URL rule, the valid list is available inrouting_exception.valid_methods
instead (an attribute of the Werkzeug exceptionMethodNotAllowed
) because the request was never internally bound.Changelog
New in version 0.6.
-
property
user_agent
¶ The current user agent.
-
property
values
¶ A
werkzeug.datastructures.CombinedMultiDict
that combinesargs
andform
.
-
view_args
= None¶ A dict of view arguments that matched the request. If an exception happened when matching, this will be
None
.
-
property
want_form_data_parsed
¶ Returns True if the request method carries content. As of Werkzeug 0.9 this will be the case if a content type is transmitted.
Changelog
New in version 0.8.
-
-
flask.
request
¶ To access incoming request data, you can use the global request object. Flask parses incoming request data for you and gives you access to it through that global object. Internally Flask makes sure that you always get the correct data for the active thread if you are in a multithreaded environment.
This is a proxy. See Notes On Proxies for more information.
The request object is an instance of a
Request
subclass and provides all of the attributes Werkzeug defines. This just shows a quick overview of the most important ones.
Response Objects¶
-
class
flask.
Response
(response=None, status=None, headers=None, mimetype=None, content_type=None, direct_passthrough=False)¶ The response object that is used by default in Flask. Works like the response object from Werkzeug but is set to have an HTML mimetype by default. Quite often you don’t have to create this object yourself because
make_response()
will take care of that for you.If you want to replace the response object used you can subclass this and set
response_class
to your subclass.Changelog
Changed in version 1.0: JSON support is added to the response, like the request. This is useful when testing to get the test client response data as JSON.
Changed in version 1.0: Added
max_cookie_size
.-
status
¶ A string with a response status.
-
status_code
¶ The response status as integer.
-
property
data
¶ A descriptor that calls
get_data()
andset_data()
.
-
get_json
(force=False, silent=False, cache=True)¶ Parse
data
as JSON.If the mimetype does not indicate JSON (application/json, see
is_json()
), this returnsNone
.If parsing fails,
on_json_loading_failed()
is called and its return value is used as the return value.- Parameters
force – Ignore the mimetype and always try to parse JSON.
silent – Silence parsing errors and return
None
instead.cache – Store the parsed JSON to return for subsequent calls.
-
property
is_json
¶ Check if the mimetype indicates JSON data, either application/json or application/*+json.
-
property
max_cookie_size
¶ Read-only view of the
MAX_COOKIE_SIZE
config key.See
max_cookie_size
in Werkzeug’s docs.
-
property
mimetype
¶ The mimetype (content type without charset etc.)
-
set_cookie
(key, value='', max_age=None, expires=None, path='/', domain=None, secure=False, httponly=False, samesite=None)¶ Sets a cookie. The parameters are the same as in the cookie Morsel object in the Python standard library but it accepts unicode data, too.
A warning is raised if the size of the cookie header exceeds
max_cookie_size
, but the header will still be set.- Parameters
key – the key (name) of the cookie to be set.
value – the value of the cookie.
max_age – should be a number of seconds, or None (default) if the cookie should last only as long as the client’s browser session.
expires – should be a datetime object or UNIX timestamp.
path – limits the cookie to a given path, per default it will span the whole domain.
domain – if you want to set a cross-domain cookie. For example,
domain=".example.com"
will set a cookie that is readable by the domainwww.example.com
,foo.example.com
etc. Otherwise, a cookie will only be readable by the domain that set it.secure – If True, the cookie will only be available via HTTPS
httponly – disallow JavaScript to access the cookie. This is an extension to the cookie standard and probably not supported by all browsers.
samesite – Limits the scope of the cookie such that it will only be attached to requests if those requests are “same-site”.
-
Sessions¶
If you have set Flask.secret_key
(or configured it from
SECRET_KEY
) you can use sessions in Flask applications. A session makes
it possible to remember information from one request to another. The way Flask
does this is by using a signed cookie. The user can look at the session
contents, but can’t modify it unless they know the secret key, so make sure to
set that to something complex and unguessable.
To access the current session you can use the session
object:
-
class
flask.
session
¶ The session object works pretty much like an ordinary dict, with the difference that it keeps track of modifications.
This is a proxy. See Notes On Proxies for more information.
The following attributes are interesting:
-
new
¶ True
if the session is new,False
otherwise.
-
modified
¶ True
if the session object detected a modification. Be advised that modifications on mutable structures are not picked up automatically, in that situation you have to explicitly set the attribute toTrue
yourself. Here an example:# this change is not picked up because a mutable object (here # a list) is changed. session['objects'].append(42) # so mark it as modified yourself session.modified = True
-
permanent
¶ If set to
True
the session lives forpermanent_session_lifetime
seconds. The default is 31 days. If set toFalse
(which is the default) the session will be deleted when the user closes the browser.
-
Session Interface¶
Changelog
New in version 0.8.
The session interface provides a simple way to replace the session implementation that Flask is using.
-
class
flask.sessions.
SessionInterface
¶ The basic interface you have to implement in order to replace the default session interface which uses werkzeug’s securecookie implementation. The only methods you have to implement are
open_session()
andsave_session()
, the others have useful defaults which you don’t need to change.The session object returned by the
open_session()
method has to provide a dictionary like interface plus the properties and methods from theSessionMixin
. We recommend just subclassing a dict and adding that mixin:class Session(dict, SessionMixin): pass
If
open_session()
returnsNone
Flask will call intomake_null_session()
to create a session that acts as replacement if the session support cannot work because some requirement is not fulfilled. The defaultNullSession
class that is created will complain that the secret key was not set.To replace the session interface on an application all you have to do is to assign
flask.Flask.session_interface
:app = Flask(__name__) app.session_interface = MySessionInterface()
Changelog
New in version 0.8.
-
get_cookie_domain
(app)¶ Returns the domain that should be set for the session cookie.
Uses
SESSION_COOKIE_DOMAIN
if it is configured, otherwise falls back to detecting the domain based onSERVER_NAME
.Once detected (or if not set at all),
SESSION_COOKIE_DOMAIN
is updated to avoid re-running the logic.
-
get_cookie_httponly
(app)¶ Returns True if the session cookie should be httponly. This currently just returns the value of the
SESSION_COOKIE_HTTPONLY
config var.
-
get_cookie_path
(app)¶ Returns the path for which the cookie should be valid. The default implementation uses the value from the
SESSION_COOKIE_PATH
config var if it’s set, and falls back toAPPLICATION_ROOT
or uses/
if it’sNone
.
-
get_cookie_samesite
(app)¶ Return
'Strict'
or'Lax'
if the cookie should use theSameSite
attribute. This currently just returns the value of theSESSION_COOKIE_SAMESITE
setting.
-
get_cookie_secure
(app)¶ Returns True if the cookie should be secure. This currently just returns the value of the
SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE
setting.
-
get_expiration_time
(app, session)¶ A helper method that returns an expiration date for the session or
None
if the session is linked to the browser session. The default implementation returns now + the permanent session lifetime configured on the application.
-
is_null_session
(obj)¶ Checks if a given object is a null session. Null sessions are not asked to be saved.
This checks if the object is an instance of
null_session_class
by default.
-
make_null_session
(app)¶ Creates a null session which acts as a replacement object if the real session support could not be loaded due to a configuration error. This mainly aids the user experience because the job of the null session is to still support lookup without complaining but modifications are answered with a helpful error message of what failed.
This creates an instance of
null_session_class
by default.
-
null_session_class
¶ make_null_session()
will look here for the class that should be created when a null session is requested. Likewise theis_null_session()
method will perform a typecheck against this type.alias of
NullSession
-
open_session
(app, request)¶ This method has to be implemented and must either return
None
in case the loading failed because of a configuration error or an instance of a session object which implements a dictionary like interface + the methods and attributes onSessionMixin
.
-
pickle_based
= False¶ A flag that indicates if the session interface is pickle based. This can be used by Flask extensions to make a decision in regards to how to deal with the session object.
Changelog
New in version 0.10.
-
save_session
(app, session, response)¶ This is called for actual sessions returned by
open_session()
at the end of the request. This is still called during a request context so if you absolutely need access to the request you can do that.
-
should_set_cookie
(app, session)¶ Used by session backends to determine if a
Set-Cookie
header should be set for this session cookie for this response. If the session has been modified, the cookie is set. If the session is permanent and theSESSION_REFRESH_EACH_REQUEST
config is true, the cookie is always set.This check is usually skipped if the session was deleted.
Changelog
New in version 0.11.
-
-
class
flask.sessions.
SecureCookieSessionInterface
¶ The default session interface that stores sessions in signed cookies through the
itsdangerous
module.-
static
digest_method
()¶ the hash function to use for the signature. The default is sha1
-
key_derivation
= 'hmac'¶ the name of the itsdangerous supported key derivation. The default is hmac.
-
open_session
(app, request)¶ This method has to be implemented and must either return
None
in case the loading failed because of a configuration error or an instance of a session object which implements a dictionary like interface + the methods and attributes onSessionMixin
.
-
salt
= 'cookie-session'¶ the salt that should be applied on top of the secret key for the signing of cookie based sessions.
-
save_session
(app, session, response)¶ This is called for actual sessions returned by
open_session()
at the end of the request. This is still called during a request context so if you absolutely need access to the request you can do that.
-
serializer
= <flask.json.tag.TaggedJSONSerializer object>¶ A python serializer for the payload. The default is a compact JSON derived serializer with support for some extra Python types such as datetime objects or tuples.
-
session_class
¶ alias of
SecureCookieSession
-
static
-
class
flask.sessions.
SecureCookieSession
(initial=None)¶ Base class for sessions based on signed cookies.
This session backend will set the
modified
andaccessed
attributes. It cannot reliably track whether a session is new (vs. empty), sonew
remains hard coded toFalse
.-
accessed
= False¶ header, which allows caching proxies to cache different pages for different users.
-
get
(key, default=None)¶ Return the value for key if key is in the dictionary, else default.
-
modified
= False¶ When data is changed, this is set to
True
. Only the session dictionary itself is tracked; if the session contains mutable data (for example a nested dict) then this must be set toTrue
manually when modifying that data. The session cookie will only be written to the response if this isTrue
.
-
setdefault
(key, default=None)¶ Insert key with a value of default if key is not in the dictionary.
Return the value for key if key is in the dictionary, else default.
-
-
class
flask.sessions.
NullSession
(initial=None)¶ Class used to generate nicer error messages if sessions are not available. Will still allow read-only access to the empty session but fail on setting.
-
class
flask.sessions.
SessionMixin
¶ Expands a basic dictionary with session attributes.
-
accessed
= True¶ Some implementations can detect when session data is read or written and set this when that happens. The mixin default is hard coded to
True
.
-
modified
= True¶ Some implementations can detect changes to the session and set this when that happens. The mixin default is hard coded to
True
.
-
property
permanent
¶ This reflects the
'_permanent'
key in the dict.
-
Notice
The PERMANENT_SESSION_LIFETIME
config key can also be an integer
starting with Flask 0.8. Either catch this down yourself or use
the permanent_session_lifetime
attribute on the
app which converts the result to an integer automatically.
Test Client¶
-
class
flask.testing.
FlaskClient
(*args, **kwargs)¶ Works like a regular Werkzeug test client but has some knowledge about how Flask works to defer the cleanup of the request context stack to the end of a
with
body when used in awith
statement. For general information about how to use this class refer towerkzeug.test.Client
.Changelog
Changed in version 0.12: app.test_client() includes preset default environment, which can be set after instantiation of the app.test_client() object in client.environ_base.
Basic usage is outlined in the Testing Flask Applications chapter.
-
open
(*args, **kwargs)¶ Takes the same arguments as the
EnvironBuilder
class with some additions: You can provide aEnvironBuilder
or a WSGI environment as only argument instead of theEnvironBuilder
arguments and two optional keyword arguments (as_tuple, buffered) that change the type of the return value or the way the application is executed.Changelog
Changed in version 0.5: If a dict is provided as file in the dict for the data parameter the content type has to be called content_type now instead of mimetype. This change was made for consistency with
werkzeug.FileWrapper
.The follow_redirects parameter was added to
open()
.Additional parameters:
- Parameters
as_tuple – Returns a tuple in the form
(environ, result)
buffered – Set this to True to buffer the application run. This will automatically close the application for you as well.
follow_redirects – Set this to True if the Client should follow HTTP redirects.
-
session_transaction
(*args, **kwargs)¶ When used in combination with a
with
statement this opens a session transaction. This can be used to modify the session that the test client uses. Once thewith
block is left the session is stored back.with client.session_transaction() as session: session['value'] = 42
Internally this is implemented by going through a temporary test request context and since session handling could depend on request variables this function accepts the same arguments as
test_request_context()
which are directly passed through.
-
Test CLI Runner¶
-
class
flask.testing.
FlaskCliRunner
(app, **kwargs)¶ A
CliRunner
for testing a Flask app’s CLI commands. Typically created usingtest_cli_runner()
. See Testing CLI Commands.-
invoke
(cli=None, args=None, **kwargs)¶ Invokes a CLI command in an isolated environment. See
CliRunner.invoke
for full method documentation. See Testing CLI Commands for examples.If the
obj
argument is not given, passes an instance ofScriptInfo
that knows how to load the Flask app being tested.- Parameters
cli – Command object to invoke. Default is the app’s
cli
group.args – List of strings to invoke the command with.
- Returns
a
Result
object.
-
Application Globals¶
To share data that is valid for one request only from one function to
another, a global variable is not good enough because it would break in
threaded environments. Flask provides you with a special object that
ensures it is only valid for the active request and that will return
different values for each request. In a nutshell: it does the right
thing, like it does for request
and session
.
-
flask.
g
¶ A namespace object that can store data during an application context. This is an instance of
Flask.app_ctx_globals_class
, which defaults toctx._AppCtxGlobals
.This is a good place to store resources during a request. During testing, you can use the Faking Resources and Context pattern to pre-configure such resources.
This is a proxy. See Notes On Proxies for more information.
Changelog
Changed in version 0.10: Bound to the application context instead of the request context.
-
class
flask.ctx.
_AppCtxGlobals
¶ A plain object. Used as a namespace for storing data during an application context.
Creating an app context automatically creates this object, which is made available as the
g
proxy.-
'key' in g
Check whether an attribute is present.
Changelog
New in version 0.10.
-
iter(g)
Return an iterator over the attribute names.
Changelog
New in version 0.10.
-
get
(name, default=None)¶ Get an attribute by name, or a default value. Like
dict.get()
.- Parameters
name – Name of attribute to get.
default – Value to return if the attribute is not present.
Changelog
New in version 0.10.
-
pop
(name, default=<object object>)¶ Get and remove an attribute by name. Like
dict.pop()
.- Parameters
name – Name of attribute to pop.
default – Value to return if the attribute is not present, instead of raise a
KeyError
.
Changelog
New in version 0.11.
-
setdefault
(name, default=None)¶ Get the value of an attribute if it is present, otherwise set and return a default value. Like
dict.setdefault()
.- Parameters
name – Name of attribute to get.
- Param
default: Value to set and return if the attribute is not present.
Changelog
New in version 0.11.
-
Useful Functions and Classes¶
-
flask.
current_app
¶ A proxy to the application handling the current request. This is useful to access the application without needing to import it, or if it can’t be imported, such as when using the application factory pattern or in blueprints and extensions.
This is only available when an application context is pushed. This happens automatically during requests and CLI commands. It can be controlled manually with
app_context()
.This is a proxy. See Notes On Proxies for more information.
-
flask.
has_request_context
()¶ If you have code that wants to test if a request context is there or not this function can be used. For instance, you may want to take advantage of request information if the request object is available, but fail silently if it is unavailable.
class User(db.Model): def __init__(self, username, remote_addr=None): self.username = username if remote_addr is None and has_request_context(): remote_addr = request.remote_addr self.remote_addr = remote_addr
Alternatively you can also just test any of the context bound objects (such as
request
org
) for truthness:class User(db.Model): def __init__(self, username, remote_addr=None): self.username = username if remote_addr is None and request: remote_addr = request.remote_addr self.remote_addr = remote_addr
Changelog
New in version 0.7.
-
flask.
copy_current_request_context
(f)¶ A helper function that decorates a function to retain the current request context. This is useful when working with greenlets. The moment the function is decorated a copy of the request context is created and then pushed when the function is called. The current session is also included in the copied request context.
Example:
import gevent from flask import copy_current_request_context @app.route('/') def index(): @copy_current_request_context def do_some_work(): # do some work here, it can access flask.request or # flask.session like you would otherwise in the view function. ... gevent.spawn(do_some_work) return 'Regular response'
Changelog
New in version 0.10.
-
flask.
has_app_context
()¶ Works like
has_request_context()
but for the application context. You can also just do a boolean check on thecurrent_app
object instead.Changelog
New in version 0.9.
-
flask.
url_for
(endpoint, **values)¶ Generates a URL to the given endpoint with the method provided.
Variable arguments that are unknown to the target endpoint are appended to the generated URL as query arguments. If the value of a query argument is
None
, the whole pair is skipped. In case blueprints are active you can shortcut references to the same blueprint by prefixing the local endpoint with a dot (.
).This will reference the index function local to the current blueprint:
url_for('.index')
For more information, head over to the Quickstart.
Configuration values
APPLICATION_ROOT
andSERVER_NAME
are only used when generating URLs outside of a request context.To integrate applications,
Flask
has a hook to intercept URL build errors throughFlask.url_build_error_handlers
. The url_for function results in aBuildError
when the current app does not have a URL for the given endpoint and values. When it does, thecurrent_app
calls itsurl_build_error_handlers
if it is notNone
, which can return a string to use as the result of url_for (instead of url_for’s default to raise theBuildError
exception) or re-raise the exception. An example:def external_url_handler(error, endpoint, values): "Looks up an external URL when `url_for` cannot build a URL." # This is an example of hooking the build_error_handler. # Here, lookup_url is some utility function you've built # which looks up the endpoint in some external URL registry. url = lookup_url(endpoint, **values) if url is None: # External lookup did not have a URL. # Re-raise the BuildError, in context of original traceback. exc_type, exc_value, tb = sys.exc_info() if exc_value is error: raise exc_type, exc_value, tb else: raise error # url_for will use this result, instead of raising BuildError. return url app.url_build_error_handlers.append(external_url_handler)
Here, error is the instance of
BuildError
, and endpoint and values are the arguments passed into url_for. Note that this is for building URLs outside the current application, and not for handling 404 NotFound errors.Changelog
New in version 0.10: The _scheme parameter was added.
New in version 0.9: The _anchor and _method parameters were added.
New in version 0.9: Calls
Flask.handle_build_error()
onBuildError
.- Parameters
endpoint – the endpoint of the URL (name of the function)
values – the variable arguments of the URL rule
_external – if set to
True
, an absolute URL is generated. Server address can be changed viaSERVER_NAME
configuration variable which falls back to the Host header, then to the IP and port of the request._scheme – a string specifying the desired URL scheme. The _external parameter must be set to
True
or aValueError
is raised. The default behavior uses the same scheme as the current request, orPREFERRED_URL_SCHEME
from the app configuration if no request context is available. As of Werkzeug 0.10, this also can be set to an empty string to build protocol-relative URLs._anchor – if provided this is added as anchor to the URL.
_method – if provided this explicitly specifies an HTTP method.
-
flask.
abort
(status, *args, **kwargs)¶ Raises an
HTTPException
for the given status code or WSGI application.If a status code is given, it will be looked up in the list of exceptions and will raise that exception. If passed a WSGI application, it will wrap it in a proxy WSGI exception and raise that:
abort(404) # 404 Not Found abort(Response('Hello World'))
-
flask.
redirect
(location, code=302, Response=None)¶ Returns a response object (a WSGI application) that, if called, redirects the client to the target location. Supported codes are 301, 302, 303, 305, 307, and 308. 300 is not supported because it’s not a real redirect and 304 because it’s the answer for a request with a request with defined If-Modified-Since headers.
Changelog
New in version 0.10: The class used for the Response object can now be passed in.
New in version 0.6: The location can now be a unicode string that is encoded using the
iri_to_uri()
function.- Parameters
location – the location the response should redirect to.
code – the redirect status code. defaults to 302.
Response (class) – a Response class to use when instantiating a response. The default is
werkzeug.wrappers.Response
if unspecified.
-
flask.
make_response
(*args)¶ Sometimes it is necessary to set additional headers in a view. Because views do not have to return response objects but can return a value that is converted into a response object by Flask itself, it becomes tricky to add headers to it. This function can be called instead of using a return and you will get a response object which you can use to attach headers.
If view looked like this and you want to add a new header:
def index(): return render_template('index.html', foo=42)
You can now do something like this:
def index(): response = make_response(render_template('index.html', foo=42)) response.headers['X-Parachutes'] = 'parachutes are cool' return response
This function accepts the very same arguments you can return from a view function. This for example creates a response with a 404 error code:
response = make_response(render_template('not_found.html'), 404)
The other use case of this function is to force the return value of a view function into a response which is helpful with view decorators:
response = make_response(view_function()) response.headers['X-Parachutes'] = 'parachutes are cool'
Internally this function does the following things:
if no arguments are passed, it creates a new response argument
if one argument is passed,
flask.Flask.make_response()
is invoked with it.if more than one argument is passed, the arguments are passed to the
flask.Flask.make_response()
function as tuple.
Changelog
New in version 0.6.
-
flask.
after_this_request
(f)¶ Executes a function after this request. This is useful to modify response objects. The function is passed the response object and has to return the same or a new one.
Example:
@app.route('/') def index(): @after_this_request def add_header(response): response.headers['X-Foo'] = 'Parachute' return response return 'Hello World!'
This is more useful if a function other than the view function wants to modify a response. For instance think of a decorator that wants to add some headers without converting the return value into a response object.
Changelog
New in version 0.9.
-
flask.
send_file
(filename_or_fp, mimetype=None, as_attachment=False, attachment_filename=None, add_etags=True, cache_timeout=None, conditional=False, last_modified=None)¶ Sends the contents of a file to the client. This will use the most efficient method available and configured. By default it will try to use the WSGI server’s file_wrapper support. Alternatively you can set the application’s
use_x_sendfile
attribute toTrue
to directly emit anX-Sendfile
header. This however requires support of the underlying webserver forX-Sendfile
.By default it will try to guess the mimetype for you, but you can also explicitly provide one. For extra security you probably want to send certain files as attachment (HTML for instance). The mimetype guessing requires a filename or an attachment_filename to be provided.
ETags will also be attached automatically if a filename is provided. You can turn this off by setting add_etags=False.
If conditional=True and filename is provided, this method will try to upgrade the response stream to support range requests. This will allow the request to be answered with partial content response.
Please never pass filenames to this function from user sources; you should use
send_from_directory()
instead.Changelog
Changed in version 1.0: UTF-8 filenames, as specified in RFC 2231, are supported.
Changed in version 0.12: The filename is no longer automatically inferred from file objects. If you want to use automatic mimetype and etag support, pass a filepath via filename_or_fp or attachment_filename.
Changed in version 0.12: The attachment_filename is preferred over filename for MIME-type detection.
Changed in version 0.9: cache_timeout pulls its default from application config, when None.
Changed in version 0.7: mimetype guessing and etag support for file objects was deprecated because it was unreliable. Pass a filename if you are able to, otherwise attach an etag yourself. This functionality will be removed in Flask 1.0
New in version 0.5: The add_etags, cache_timeout and conditional parameters were added. The default behavior is now to attach etags.
New in version 0.2.
Changed in version 1.1: Filename may be a
PathLike
object.New in version 1.1: Partial content supports
BytesIO
.Changelog
Changed in version 1.0.3: Filenames are encoded with ASCII instead of Latin-1 for broader compatibility with WSGI servers.
- Parameters
filename_or_fp – the filename of the file to send. This is relative to the
root_path
if a relative path is specified. Alternatively a file object might be provided in which caseX-Sendfile
might not work and fall back to the traditional method. Make sure that the file pointer is positioned at the start of data to send before callingsend_file()
.mimetype – the mimetype of the file if provided. If a file path is given, auto detection happens as fallback, otherwise an error will be raised.
as_attachment – set to
True
if you want to send this file with aContent-Disposition: attachment
header.attachment_filename – the filename for the attachment if it differs from the file’s filename.
add_etags – set to
False
to disable attaching of etags.conditional – set to
True
to enable conditional responses.cache_timeout – the timeout in seconds for the headers. When
None
(default), this value is set byget_send_file_max_age()
ofcurrent_app
.last_modified – set the
Last-Modified
header to this value, adatetime
or timestamp. If a file was passed, this overrides its mtime.
-
flask.
send_from_directory
(directory, filename, **options)¶ Send a file from a given directory with
send_file()
. This is a secure way to quickly expose static files from an upload folder or something similar.Example usage:
@app.route('/uploads/<path:filename>') def download_file(filename): return send_from_directory(app.config['UPLOAD_FOLDER'], filename, as_attachment=True)
Sending files and Performance
It is strongly recommended to activate either
X-Sendfile
support in your webserver or (if no authentication happens) to tell the webserver to serve files for the given path on its own without calling into the web application for improved performance.Changelog
New in version 0.5.
- Parameters
directory – the directory where all the files are stored.
filename – the filename relative to that directory to download.
options – optional keyword arguments that are directly forwarded to
send_file()
.
-
flask.
safe_join
(directory, *pathnames)¶ Safely join directory and zero or more untrusted pathnames components.
Example usage:
@app.route('/wiki/<path:filename>') def wiki_page(filename): filename = safe_join(app.config['WIKI_FOLDER'], filename) with open(filename, 'rb') as fd: content = fd.read() # Read and process the file content...
- Parameters
directory – the trusted base directory.
pathnames – the untrusted pathnames relative to that directory.
- Raises
NotFound
if one or more passed paths fall out of its boundaries.
-
flask.
escape
(s: Any) → str¶
-
class
flask.
Markup
¶ -
classmethod
escape
(s: Any) → markupsafe.Markup¶ Escape a string. Calls
escape()
and ensures that for subclasses the correct type is returned.
-
striptags
() → str¶ unescape()
the markup, remove tags, and normalize whitespace to single spaces.>>> Markup("Main » <em>About</em>").striptags() 'Main » About'
-
unescape
() → str¶ Convert escaped markup back into a text string. This replaces HTML entities with the characters they represent.
>>> Markup("Main » <em>About</em>").unescape() 'Main » <em>About</em>'
-
classmethod
Message Flashing¶
-
flask.
flash
(message, category='message')¶ Flashes a message to the next request. In order to remove the flashed message from the session and to display it to the user, the template has to call
get_flashed_messages()
.Changelog
Changed in version 0.3: category parameter added.
- Parameters
message – the message to be flashed.
category – the category for the message. The following values are recommended:
'message'
for any kind of message,'error'
for errors,'info'
for information messages and'warning'
for warnings. However any kind of string can be used as category.
-
flask.
get_flashed_messages
(with_categories=False, category_filter=())¶ Pulls all flashed messages from the session and returns them. Further calls in the same request to the function will return the same messages. By default just the messages are returned, but when with_categories is set to
True
, the return value will be a list of tuples in the form(category, message)
instead.Filter the flashed messages to one or more categories by providing those categories in category_filter. This allows rendering categories in separate html blocks. The with_categories and category_filter arguments are distinct:
with_categories controls whether categories are returned with message text (
True
gives a tuple, whereFalse
gives just the message text).category_filter filters the messages down to only those matching the provided categories.
See Message Flashing for examples.
Changelog
Changed in version 0.9: category_filter parameter added.
Changed in version 0.3: with_categories parameter added.
- Parameters
with_categories – set to
True
to also receive categories.category_filter – whitelist of categories to limit return values
JSON Support¶
Flask uses simplejson
for the JSON implementation. Since simplejson
is provided by both the standard library as well as extension, Flask will
try simplejson first and then fall back to the stdlib json module. On top
of that it will delegate access to the current application’s JSON encoders
and decoders for easier customization.
So for starters instead of doing:
try:
import simplejson as json
except ImportError:
import json
You can instead just do this:
from flask import json
For usage examples, read the json
documentation in the standard
library. The following extensions are by default applied to the stdlib’s
JSON module:
datetime
objects are serialized as RFC 822 strings.Any object with an
__html__
method (likeMarkup
) will have that method called and then the return value is serialized as string.
The htmlsafe_dumps()
function of this json module is also available
as a filter called |tojson
in Jinja2. Note that in versions of Flask prior
to Flask 0.10, you must disable escaping with |safe
if you intend to use
|tojson
output inside script
tags. In Flask 0.10 and above, this
happens automatically (but it’s harmless to include |safe
anyway).
<script type=text/javascript>
doSomethingWith({{ user.username|tojson|safe }});
</script>
Auto-Sort JSON Keys
The configuration variable JSON_SORT_KEYS
(Configuration Handling) can be
set to false to stop Flask from auto-sorting keys. By default sorting
is enabled and outside of the app context sorting is turned on.
Notice that disabling key sorting can cause issues when using content based HTTP caches and Python’s hash randomization feature.
-
flask.json.
jsonify
(*args, **kwargs)¶ This function wraps
dumps()
to add a few enhancements that make life easier. It turns the JSON output into aResponse
object with the application/json mimetype. For convenience, it also converts multiple arguments into an array or multiple keyword arguments into a dict. This means that bothjsonify(1,2,3)
andjsonify([1,2,3])
serialize to[1,2,3]
.For clarity, the JSON serialization behavior has the following differences from
dumps()
:Single argument: Passed straight through to
dumps()
.Multiple arguments: Converted to an array before being passed to
dumps()
.Multiple keyword arguments: Converted to a dict before being passed to
dumps()
.Both args and kwargs: Behavior undefined and will throw an exception.
Example usage:
from flask import jsonify @app.route('/_get_current_user') def get_current_user(): return jsonify(username=g.user.username, email=g.user.email, id=g.user.id)
This will send a JSON response like this to the browser:
{ "username": "admin", "email": "admin@localhost", "id": 42 }
Changelog
Changed in version 0.11: Added support for serializing top-level arrays. This introduces a security risk in ancient browsers. See JSON Security for details.
This function’s response will be pretty printed if the
JSONIFY_PRETTYPRINT_REGULAR
config parameter is set to True or the Flask app is running in debug mode. Compressed (not pretty) formatting currently means no indents and no spaces after separators.Changelog
New in version 0.2.
-
flask.json.
dumps
(obj, app=None, **kwargs)¶ Serialize
obj
to a JSON-formatted string. If there is an app context pushed, use the current app’s configured encoder (json_encoder
), or fall back to the defaultJSONEncoder
.Takes the same arguments as the built-in
json.dumps()
, and does some extra configuration based on the application. If the simplejson package is installed, it is preferred.- Parameters
obj – Object to serialize to JSON.
app – App instance to use to configure the JSON encoder. Uses
current_app
if not given, and falls back to the default encoder when not in an app context.kwargs – Extra arguments passed to
json.dumps()
.
Changelog
Changed in version 1.0.3:
app
can be passed directly, rather than requiring an app context for configuration.
-
flask.json.
loads
(s, app=None, **kwargs)¶ Deserialize an object from a JSON-formatted string
s
. If there is an app context pushed, use the current app’s configured decoder (json_decoder
), or fall back to the defaultJSONDecoder
.Takes the same arguments as the built-in
json.loads()
, and does some extra configuration based on the application. If the simplejson package is installed, it is preferred.- Parameters
s – JSON string to deserialize.
app – App instance to use to configure the JSON decoder. Uses
current_app
if not given, and falls back to the default encoder when not in an app context.kwargs – Extra arguments passed to
json.loads()
.
Changelog
Changed in version 1.0.3:
app
can be passed directly, rather than requiring an app context for configuration.
-
class
flask.json.
JSONEncoder
(*, skipkeys=False, ensure_ascii=True, check_circular=True, allow_nan=True, sort_keys=False, indent=None, separators=None, default=None)¶ The default Flask JSON encoder. This one extends the default encoder by also supporting
datetime
,UUID
,dataclasses
, andMarkup
objects.datetime
objects are serialized as RFC 822 datetime strings. This is the same as the HTTP date format.In order to support more data types, override the
default()
method.-
default
(o)¶ Implement this method in a subclass such that it returns a serializable object for
o
, or calls the base implementation (to raise aTypeError
).For example, to support arbitrary iterators, you could implement default like this:
def default(self, o): try: iterable = iter(o) except TypeError: pass else: return list(iterable) return JSONEncoder.default(self, o)
-
-
class
flask.json.
JSONDecoder
(*, object_hook=None, parse_float=None, parse_int=None, parse_constant=None, strict=True, object_pairs_hook=None)¶ The default JSON decoder. This one does not change the behavior from the default simplejson decoder. Consult the
json
documentation for more information. This decoder is not only used for the load functions of this module but alsoRequest
.
Tagged JSON¶
A compact representation for lossless serialization of non-standard JSON types.
SecureCookieSessionInterface
uses this to serialize
the session data, but it may be useful in other places. It can be extended to
support other types.
-
class
flask.json.tag.
TaggedJSONSerializer
¶ Serializer that uses a tag system to compactly represent objects that are not JSON types. Passed as the intermediate serializer to
itsdangerous.Serializer
.The following extra types are supported:
-
default_tags
= [<class 'flask.json.tag.TagDict'>, <class 'flask.json.tag.PassDict'>, <class 'flask.json.tag.TagTuple'>, <class 'flask.json.tag.PassList'>, <class 'flask.json.tag.TagBytes'>, <class 'flask.json.tag.TagMarkup'>, <class 'flask.json.tag.TagUUID'>, <class 'flask.json.tag.TagDateTime'>]¶ Tag classes to bind when creating the serializer. Other tags can be added later using
register()
.
-
dumps
(value)¶ Tag the value and dump it to a compact JSON string.
-
loads
(value)¶ Load data from a JSON string and deserialized any tagged objects.
-
register
(tag_class, force=False, index=None)¶ Register a new tag with this serializer.
- Parameters
tag_class – tag class to register. Will be instantiated with this serializer instance.
force – overwrite an existing tag. If false (default), a
KeyError
is raised.index – index to insert the new tag in the tag order. Useful when the new tag is a special case of an existing tag. If
None
(default), the tag is appended to the end of the order.
- Raises
KeyError – if the tag key is already registered and
force
is not true.
-
tag
(value)¶ Convert a value to a tagged representation if necessary.
-
untag
(value)¶ Convert a tagged representation back to the original type.
-
-
class
flask.json.tag.
JSONTag
(serializer)¶ Base class for defining type tags for
TaggedJSONSerializer
.-
check
(value)¶ Check if the given value should be tagged by this tag.
-
key
= None¶ The tag to mark the serialized object with. If
None
, this tag is only used as an intermediate step during tagging.
-
tag
(value)¶ Convert the value to a valid JSON type and add the tag structure around it.
-
to_json
(value)¶ Convert the Python object to an object that is a valid JSON type. The tag will be added later.
-
to_python
(value)¶ Convert the JSON representation back to the correct type. The tag will already be removed.
-
Let’s seen an example that adds support for OrderedDict
.
Dicts don’t have an order in Python or JSON, so to handle this we will dump
the items as a list of [key, value]
pairs. Subclass JSONTag
and
give it the new key ' od'
to identify the type. The session serializer
processes dicts first, so insert the new tag at the front of the order since
OrderedDict
must be processed before dict
.
from flask.json.tag import JSONTag
class TagOrderedDict(JSONTag):
__slots__ = ('serializer',)
key = ' od'
def check(self, value):
return isinstance(value, OrderedDict)
def to_json(self, value):
return [[k, self.serializer.tag(v)] for k, v in iteritems(value)]
def to_python(self, value):
return OrderedDict(value)
app.session_interface.serializer.register(TagOrderedDict, index=0)
Template Rendering¶
-
flask.
render_template
(template_name_or_list, **context)¶ Renders a template from the template folder with the given context.
- Parameters
template_name_or_list – the name of the template to be rendered, or an iterable with template names the first one existing will be rendered
context – the variables that should be available in the context of the template.
-
flask.
render_template_string
(source, **context)¶ Renders a template from the given template source string with the given context. Template variables will be autoescaped.
- Parameters
source – the source code of the template to be rendered
context – the variables that should be available in the context of the template.
-
flask.
get_template_attribute
(template_name, attribute)¶ Loads a macro (or variable) a template exports. This can be used to invoke a macro from within Python code. If you for example have a template named
_cider.html
with the following contents:{% macro hello(name) %}Hello {{ name }}!{% endmacro %}
You can access this from Python code like this:
hello = get_template_attribute('_cider.html', 'hello') return hello('World')
Changelog
New in version 0.2.
- Parameters
template_name – the name of the template
attribute – the name of the variable of macro to access
Configuration¶
-
class
flask.
Config
(root_path, defaults=None)¶ Works exactly like a dict but provides ways to fill it from files or special dictionaries. There are two common patterns to populate the config.
Either you can fill the config from a config file:
app.config.from_pyfile('yourconfig.cfg')
Or alternatively you can define the configuration options in the module that calls
from_object()
or provide an import path to a module that should be loaded. It is also possible to tell it to use the same module and with that provide the configuration values just before the call:DEBUG = True SECRET_KEY = 'development key' app.config.from_object(__name__)
In both cases (loading from any Python file or loading from modules), only uppercase keys are added to the config. This makes it possible to use lowercase values in the config file for temporary values that are not added to the config or to define the config keys in the same file that implements the application.
Probably the most interesting way to load configurations is from an environment variable pointing to a file:
app.config.from_envvar('YOURAPPLICATION_SETTINGS')
In this case before launching the application you have to set this environment variable to the file you want to use. On Linux and OS X use the export statement:
export YOURAPPLICATION_SETTINGS='/path/to/config/file'
On windows use set instead.
- Parameters
root_path – path to which files are read relative from. When the config object is created by the application, this is the application’s
root_path
.defaults – an optional dictionary of default values
-
from_envvar
(variable_name, silent=False)¶ Loads a configuration from an environment variable pointing to a configuration file. This is basically just a shortcut with nicer error messages for this line of code:
app.config.from_pyfile(os.environ['YOURAPPLICATION_SETTINGS'])
- Parameters
variable_name – name of the environment variable
silent – set to
True
if you want silent failure for missing files.
- Returns
bool.
True
if able to load config,False
otherwise.
-
from_json
(filename, silent=False)¶ Updates the values in the config from a JSON file. This function behaves as if the JSON object was a dictionary and passed to the
from_mapping()
function.- Parameters
filename – the filename of the JSON file. This can either be an absolute filename or a filename relative to the root path.
silent – set to
True
if you want silent failure for missing files.
Changelog
New in version 0.11.
-
from_mapping
(*mapping, **kwargs)¶ Updates the config like
update()
ignoring items with non-upper keys.Changelog
New in version 0.11.
-
from_object
(obj)¶ Updates the values from the given object. An object can be of one of the following two types:
a string: in this case the object with that name will be imported
an actual object reference: that object is used directly
Objects are usually either modules or classes.
from_object()
loads only the uppercase attributes of the module/class. Adict
object will not work withfrom_object()
because the keys of adict
are not attributes of thedict
class.Example of module-based configuration:
app.config.from_object('yourapplication.default_config') from yourapplication import default_config app.config.from_object(default_config)
Nothing is done to the object before loading. If the object is a class and has
@property
attributes, it needs to be instantiated before being passed to this method.You should not use this function to load the actual configuration but rather configuration defaults. The actual config should be loaded with
from_pyfile()
and ideally from a location not within the package because the package might be installed system wide.See Development / Production for an example of class-based configuration using
from_object()
.- Parameters
obj – an import name or object
-
from_pyfile
(filename, silent=False)¶ Updates the values in the config from a Python file. This function behaves as if the file was imported as module with the
from_object()
function.- Parameters
filename – the filename of the config. This can either be an absolute filename or a filename relative to the root path.
silent – set to
True
if you want silent failure for missing files.
Changelog
New in version 0.7: silent parameter.
-
get_namespace
(namespace, lowercase=True, trim_namespace=True)¶ Returns a dictionary containing a subset of configuration options that match the specified namespace/prefix. Example usage:
app.config['IMAGE_STORE_TYPE'] = 'fs' app.config['IMAGE_STORE_PATH'] = '/var/app/images' app.config['IMAGE_STORE_BASE_URL'] = 'http://img.website.com' image_store_config = app.config.get_namespace('IMAGE_STORE_')
The resulting dictionary image_store_config would look like:
{ 'type': 'fs', 'path': '/var/app/images', 'base_url': 'http://img.website.com' }
This is often useful when configuration options map directly to keyword arguments in functions or class constructors.
- Parameters
namespace – a configuration namespace
lowercase – a flag indicating if the keys of the resulting dictionary should be lowercase
trim_namespace – a flag indicating if the keys of the resulting dictionary should not include the namespace
Changelog
New in version 0.11.
Stream Helpers¶
-
flask.
stream_with_context
(generator_or_function)¶ Request contexts disappear when the response is started on the server. This is done for efficiency reasons and to make it less likely to encounter memory leaks with badly written WSGI middlewares. The downside is that if you are using streamed responses, the generator cannot access request bound information any more.
This function however can help you keep the context around for longer:
from flask import stream_with_context, request, Response @app.route('/stream') def streamed_response(): @stream_with_context def generate(): yield 'Hello ' yield request.args['name'] yield '!' return Response(generate())
Alternatively it can also be used around a specific generator:
from flask import stream_with_context, request, Response @app.route('/stream') def streamed_response(): def generate(): yield 'Hello ' yield request.args['name'] yield '!' return Response(stream_with_context(generate()))
Changelog
New in version 0.9.
Useful Internals¶
-
class
flask.ctx.
RequestContext
(app, environ, request=None, session=None)¶ The request context contains all request relevant information. It is created at the beginning of the request and pushed to the _request_ctx_stack and removed at the end of it. It will create the URL adapter and request object for the WSGI environment provided.
Do not attempt to use this class directly, instead use
test_request_context()
andrequest_context()
to create this object.When the request context is popped, it will evaluate all the functions registered on the application for teardown execution (
teardown_request()
).The request context is automatically popped at the end of the request for you. In debug mode the request context is kept around if exceptions happen so that interactive debuggers have a chance to introspect the data. With 0.4 this can also be forced for requests that did not fail and outside of
DEBUG
mode. By setting'flask._preserve_context'
toTrue
on the WSGI environment the context will not pop itself at the end of the request. This is used by thetest_client()
for example to implement the deferred cleanup functionality.You might find this helpful for unittests where you need the information from the context local around for a little longer. Make sure to properly
pop()
the stack yourself in that situation, otherwise your unittests will leak memory.-
copy
()¶ Creates a copy of this request context with the same request object. This can be used to move a request context to a different greenlet. Because the actual request object is the same this cannot be used to move a request context to a different thread unless access to the request object is locked.
Changed in version 1.1: The current session object is used instead of reloading the original data. This prevents flask.session pointing to an out-of-date object.
Changelog
New in version 0.10.
-
match_request
()¶ Can be overridden by a subclass to hook into the matching of the request.
-
pop
(exc=<object object>)¶ Pops the request context and unbinds it by doing that. This will also trigger the execution of functions registered by the
teardown_request()
decorator.Changelog
Changed in version 0.9: Added the exc argument.
-
push
()¶ Binds the request context to the current context.
-
-
flask.
_request_ctx_stack
¶ The internal
LocalStack
that holdsRequestContext
instances. Typically, therequest
andsession
proxies should be accessed instead of the stack. It may be useful to access the stack in extension code.The following attributes are always present on each layer of the stack:
- app
the active Flask application.
- url_adapter
the URL adapter that was used to match the request.
- request
the current request object.
- session
the active session object.
- g
an object with all the attributes of the
flask.g
object.- flashes
an internal cache for the flashed messages.
Example usage:
from flask import _request_ctx_stack def get_session(): ctx = _request_ctx_stack.top if ctx is not None: return ctx.session
-
class
flask.ctx.
AppContext
(app)¶ The application context binds an application object implicitly to the current thread or greenlet, similar to how the
RequestContext
binds request information. The application context is also implicitly created if a request context is created but the application is not on top of the individual application context.-
pop
(exc=<object object>)¶ Pops the app context.
-
push
()¶ Binds the app context to the current context.
-
-
flask.
_app_ctx_stack
¶ The internal
LocalStack
that holdsAppContext
instances. Typically, thecurrent_app
andg
proxies should be accessed instead of the stack. Extensions can access the contexts on the stack as a namespace to store data.Changelog
New in version 0.9.
-
class
flask.blueprints.
BlueprintSetupState
(blueprint, app, options, first_registration)¶ Temporary holder object for registering a blueprint with the application. An instance of this class is created by the
make_setup_state()
method and later passed to all register callback functions.-
add_url_rule
(rule, endpoint=None, view_func=None, **options)¶ A helper method to register a rule (and optionally a view function) to the application. The endpoint is automatically prefixed with the blueprint’s name.
-
app
= None¶ a reference to the current application
-
blueprint
= None¶ a reference to the blueprint that created this setup state.
-
first_registration
= None¶ as blueprints can be registered multiple times with the application and not everything wants to be registered multiple times on it, this attribute can be used to figure out if the blueprint was registered in the past already.
-
options
= None¶ a dictionary with all options that were passed to the
register_blueprint()
method.
-
subdomain
= None¶ The subdomain that the blueprint should be active for,
None
otherwise.
-
url_defaults
= None¶ A dictionary with URL defaults that is added to each and every URL that was defined with the blueprint.
-
url_prefix
= None¶ The prefix that should be used for all URLs defined on the blueprint.
-
Signals¶
Changelog
New in version 0.6.
-
signals.
signals_available
¶ True
if the signaling system is available. This is the case when blinker is installed.
The following signals exist in Flask:
-
flask.
template_rendered
¶ This signal is sent when a template was successfully rendered. The signal is invoked with the instance of the template as template and the context as dictionary (named context).
Example subscriber:
def log_template_renders(sender, template, context, **extra): sender.logger.debug('Rendering template "%s" with context %s', template.name or 'string template', context) from flask import template_rendered template_rendered.connect(log_template_renders, app)
-
flask.
before_render_template
This signal is sent before template rendering process. The signal is invoked with the instance of the template as template and the context as dictionary (named context).
Example subscriber:
def log_template_renders(sender, template, context, **extra): sender.logger.debug('Rendering template "%s" with context %s', template.name or 'string template', context) from flask import before_render_template before_render_template.connect(log_template_renders, app)
-
flask.
request_started
¶ This signal is sent when the request context is set up, before any request processing happens. Because the request context is already bound, the subscriber can access the request with the standard global proxies such as
request
.Example subscriber:
def log_request(sender, **extra): sender.logger.debug('Request context is set up') from flask import request_started request_started.connect(log_request, app)
-
flask.
request_finished
¶ This signal is sent right before the response is sent to the client. It is passed the response to be sent named response.
Example subscriber:
def log_response(sender, response, **extra): sender.logger.debug('Request context is about to close down. ' 'Response: %s', response) from flask import request_finished request_finished.connect(log_response, app)
-
flask.
got_request_exception
¶ This signal is sent when an exception happens during request processing. It is sent before the standard exception handling kicks in and even in debug mode, where no exception handling happens. The exception itself is passed to the subscriber as exception.
Example subscriber:
def log_exception(sender, exception, **extra): sender.logger.debug('Got exception during processing: %s', exception) from flask import got_request_exception got_request_exception.connect(log_exception, app)
-
flask.
request_tearing_down
¶ This signal is sent when the request is tearing down. This is always called, even if an exception is caused. Currently functions listening to this signal are called after the regular teardown handlers, but this is not something you can rely on.
Example subscriber:
def close_db_connection(sender, **extra): session.close() from flask import request_tearing_down request_tearing_down.connect(close_db_connection, app)
As of Flask 0.9, this will also be passed an exc keyword argument that has a reference to the exception that caused the teardown if there was one.
-
flask.
appcontext_tearing_down
¶ This signal is sent when the app context is tearing down. This is always called, even if an exception is caused. Currently functions listening to this signal are called after the regular teardown handlers, but this is not something you can rely on.
Example subscriber:
def close_db_connection(sender, **extra): session.close() from flask import appcontext_tearing_down appcontext_tearing_down.connect(close_db_connection, app)
This will also be passed an exc keyword argument that has a reference to the exception that caused the teardown if there was one.
-
flask.
appcontext_pushed
¶ This signal is sent when an application context is pushed. The sender is the application. This is usually useful for unittests in order to temporarily hook in information. For instance it can be used to set a resource early onto the g object.
Example usage:
from contextlib import contextmanager from flask import appcontext_pushed @contextmanager def user_set(app, user): def handler(sender, **kwargs): g.user = user with appcontext_pushed.connected_to(handler, app): yield
And in the testcode:
def test_user_me(self): with user_set(app, 'john'): c = app.test_client() resp = c.get('/users/me') assert resp.data == 'username=john'
Changelog
New in version 0.10.
-
flask.
appcontext_popped
¶ This signal is sent when an application context is popped. The sender is the application. This usually falls in line with the
appcontext_tearing_down
signal.Changelog
New in version 0.10.
-
flask.
message_flashed
¶ This signal is sent when the application is flashing a message. The messages is sent as message keyword argument and the category as category.
Example subscriber:
recorded = [] def record(sender, message, category, **extra): recorded.append((message, category)) from flask import message_flashed message_flashed.connect(record, app)
Changelog
New in version 0.10.
-
class
signals.
Namespace
¶ An alias for
blinker.base.Namespace
if blinker is available, otherwise a dummy class that creates fake signals. This class is available for Flask extensions that want to provide the same fallback system as Flask itself.-
signal
(name, doc=None)¶ Creates a new signal for this namespace if blinker is available, otherwise returns a fake signal that has a send method that will do nothing but will fail with a
RuntimeError
for all other operations, including connecting.
-
Class-Based Views¶
Changelog
New in version 0.7.
-
class
flask.views.
View
¶ Alternative way to use view functions. A subclass has to implement
dispatch_request()
which is called with the view arguments from the URL routing system. Ifmethods
is provided the methods do not have to be passed to theadd_url_rule()
method explicitly:class MyView(View): methods = ['GET'] def dispatch_request(self, name): return 'Hello %s!' % name app.add_url_rule('/hello/<name>', view_func=MyView.as_view('myview'))
When you want to decorate a pluggable view you will have to either do that when the view function is created (by wrapping the return value of
as_view()
) or you can use thedecorators
attribute:class SecretView(View): methods = ['GET'] decorators = [superuser_required] def dispatch_request(self): ...
The decorators stored in the decorators list are applied one after another when the view function is created. Note that you can not use the class based decorators since those would decorate the view class and not the generated view function!
-
classmethod
as_view
(name, *class_args, **class_kwargs)¶ Converts the class into an actual view function that can be used with the routing system. Internally this generates a function on the fly which will instantiate the
View
on each request and call thedispatch_request()
method on it.The arguments passed to
as_view()
are forwarded to the constructor of the class.
-
decorators
= ()¶ The canonical way to decorate class-based views is to decorate the return value of as_view(). However since this moves parts of the logic from the class declaration to the place where it’s hooked into the routing system.
You can place one or more decorators in this list and whenever the view function is created the result is automatically decorated.
Changelog
New in version 0.8.
-
dispatch_request
()¶ Subclasses have to override this method to implement the actual view function code. This method is called with all the arguments from the URL rule.
-
methods
= None¶ A list of methods this view can handle.
-
provide_automatic_options
= None¶ Setting this disables or force-enables the automatic options handling.
-
classmethod
-
class
flask.views.
MethodView
¶ A class-based view that dispatches request methods to the corresponding class methods. For example, if you implement a
get
method, it will be used to handleGET
requests.class CounterAPI(MethodView): def get(self): return session.get('counter', 0) def post(self): session['counter'] = session.get('counter', 0) + 1 return 'OK' app.add_url_rule('/counter', view_func=CounterAPI.as_view('counter'))
-
dispatch_request
(*args, **kwargs)¶ Subclasses have to override this method to implement the actual view function code. This method is called with all the arguments from the URL rule.
-
URL Route Registrations¶
Generally there are three ways to define rules for the routing system:
You can use the
flask.Flask.route()
decorator.You can use the
flask.Flask.add_url_rule()
function.You can directly access the underlying Werkzeug routing system which is exposed as
flask.Flask.url_map
.
Variable parts in the route can be specified with angular brackets
(/user/<username>
). By default a variable part in the URL accepts any
string without a slash however a different converter can be specified as
well by using <converter:name>
.
Variable parts are passed to the view function as keyword arguments.
The following converters are available:
string |
accepts any text without a slash (the default) |
int |
accepts integers |
float |
like int but for floating point values |
path |
like the default but also accepts slashes |
any |
matches one of the items provided |
uuid |
accepts UUID strings |
Custom converters can be defined using flask.Flask.url_map
.
Here are some examples:
@app.route('/')
def index():
pass
@app.route('/<username>')
def show_user(username):
pass
@app.route('/post/<int:post_id>')
def show_post(post_id):
pass
An important detail to keep in mind is how Flask deals with trailing slashes. The idea is to keep each URL unique so the following rules apply:
If a rule ends with a slash and is requested without a slash by the user, the user is automatically redirected to the same page with a trailing slash attached.
If a rule does not end with a trailing slash and the user requests the page with a trailing slash, a 404 not found is raised.
This is consistent with how web servers deal with static files. This also makes it possible to use relative link targets safely.
You can also define multiple rules for the same function. They have to be unique however. Defaults can also be specified. Here for example is a definition for a URL that accepts an optional page:
@app.route('/users/', defaults={'page': 1})
@app.route('/users/page/<int:page>')
def show_users(page):
pass
This specifies that /users/
will be the URL for page one and
/users/page/N
will be the URL for page N
.
If a URL contains a default value, it will be redirected to its simpler
form with a 301 redirect. In the above example, /users/page/1
will
be redirected to /users/
. If your route handles GET
and POST
requests, make sure the default route only handles GET
, as redirects
can’t preserve form data.
@app.route('/region/', defaults={'id': 1})
@app.route('/region/<int:id>', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def region(id):
pass
Here are the parameters that route()
and
add_url_rule()
accept. The only difference is that
with the route parameter the view function is defined with the decorator
instead of the view_func parameter.
rule |
the URL rule as string |
endpoint |
the endpoint for the registered URL rule. Flask itself assumes that the name of the view function is the name of the endpoint if not explicitly stated. |
view_func |
the function to call when serving a request to the
provided endpoint. If this is not provided one can
specify the function later by storing it in the
|
defaults |
A dictionary with defaults for this rule. See the example above for how defaults work. |
subdomain |
specifies the rule for the subdomain in case subdomain matching is in use. If not specified the default subdomain is assumed. |
**options |
the options to be forwarded to the underlying
|
View Function Options¶
For internal usage the view functions can have some attributes attached to
customize behavior the view function would normally not have control over.
The following attributes can be provided optionally to either override
some defaults to add_url_rule()
or general behavior:
__name__: The name of a function is by default used as endpoint. If endpoint is provided explicitly this value is used. Additionally this will be prefixed with the name of the blueprint by default which cannot be customized from the function itself.
methods: If methods are not provided when the URL rule is added, Flask will look on the view function object itself if a methods attribute exists. If it does, it will pull the information for the methods from there.
provide_automatic_options: if this attribute is set Flask will either force enable or disable the automatic implementation of the HTTP
OPTIONS
response. This can be useful when working with decorators that want to customize theOPTIONS
response on a per-view basis.required_methods: if this attribute is set, Flask will always add these methods when registering a URL rule even if the methods were explicitly overridden in the
route()
call.
Full example:
def index():
if request.method == 'OPTIONS':
# custom options handling here
...
return 'Hello World!'
index.provide_automatic_options = False
index.methods = ['GET', 'OPTIONS']
app.add_url_rule('/', index)
Changelog
New in version 0.8: The provide_automatic_options functionality was added.
Command Line Interface¶
-
class
flask.cli.
FlaskGroup
(add_default_commands=True, create_app=None, add_version_option=True, load_dotenv=True, set_debug_flag=True, **extra)¶ Special subclass of the
AppGroup
group that supports loading more commands from the configured Flask app. Normally a developer does not have to interface with this class but there are some very advanced use cases for which it makes sense to create an instance of this.For information as of why this is useful see Custom Scripts.
- Parameters
add_default_commands – if this is True then the default run and shell commands will be added.
add_version_option – adds the
--version
option.create_app – an optional callback that is passed the script info and returns the loaded app.
load_dotenv – Load the nearest
.env
and.flaskenv
files to set environment variables. Will also change the working directory to the directory containing the first file found.set_debug_flag – Set the app’s debug flag based on the active environment
Changelog
Changed in version 1.0: If installed, python-dotenv will be used to load environment variables from
.env
and.flaskenv
files.-
get_command
(ctx, name)¶ Given a context and a command name, this returns a
Command
object if it exists or returns None.
-
list_commands
(ctx)¶ Returns a list of subcommand names in the order they should appear.
-
main
(*args, **kwargs)¶ This is the way to invoke a script with all the bells and whistles as a command line application. This will always terminate the application after a call. If this is not wanted,
SystemExit
needs to be caught.This method is also available by directly calling the instance of a
Command
.New in version 3.0: Added the standalone_mode flag to control the standalone mode.
- Parameters
args – the arguments that should be used for parsing. If not provided,
sys.argv[1:]
is used.prog_name – the program name that should be used. By default the program name is constructed by taking the file name from
sys.argv[0]
.complete_var – the environment variable that controls the bash completion support. The default is
"_<prog_name>_COMPLETE"
with prog_name in uppercase.standalone_mode – the default behavior is to invoke the script in standalone mode. Click will then handle exceptions and convert them into error messages and the function will never return but shut down the interpreter. If this is set to False they will be propagated to the caller and the return value of this function is the return value of
invoke()
.extra – extra keyword arguments are forwarded to the context constructor. See
Context
for more information.
-
class
flask.cli.
AppGroup
(name=None, commands=None, **attrs)¶ This works similar to a regular click
Group
but it changes the behavior of thecommand()
decorator so that it automatically wraps the functions inwith_appcontext()
.Not to be confused with
FlaskGroup
.-
command
(*args, **kwargs)¶ This works exactly like the method of the same name on a regular
click.Group
but it wraps callbacks inwith_appcontext()
unless it’s disabled by passingwith_appcontext=False
.
-
group
(*args, **kwargs)¶ This works exactly like the method of the same name on a regular
click.Group
but it defaults the group class toAppGroup
.
-
-
class
flask.cli.
ScriptInfo
(app_import_path=None, create_app=None, set_debug_flag=True)¶ Helper object to deal with Flask applications. This is usually not necessary to interface with as it’s used internally in the dispatching to click. In future versions of Flask this object will most likely play a bigger role. Typically it’s created automatically by the
FlaskGroup
but you can also manually create it and pass it onwards as click object.-
app_import_path
= None¶ Optionally the import path for the Flask application.
-
create_app
= None¶ Optionally a function that is passed the script info to create the instance of the application.
-
data
= None¶ A dictionary with arbitrary data that can be associated with this script info.
-
load_app
()¶ Loads the Flask app (if not yet loaded) and returns it. Calling this multiple times will just result in the already loaded app to be returned.
-
-
flask.cli.
load_dotenv
(path=None)¶ Load “dotenv” files in order of precedence to set environment variables.
If an env var is already set it is not overwritten, so earlier files in the list are preferred over later files.
Changes the current working directory to the location of the first file found, with the assumption that it is in the top level project directory and will be where the Python path should import local packages from.
This is a no-op if python-dotenv is not installed.
- Parameters
path – Load the file at this location instead of searching.
- Returns
True
if a file was loaded.
Changed in version 1.1.0: Returns
False
when python-dotenv is not installed, or when the given path isn’t a file.Changelog
New in version 1.0.
-
flask.cli.
with_appcontext
(f)¶ Wraps a callback so that it’s guaranteed to be executed with the script’s application context. If callbacks are registered directly to the
app.cli
object then they are wrapped with this function by default unless it’s disabled.
-
flask.cli.
pass_script_info
(f)¶ Marks a function so that an instance of
ScriptInfo
is passed as first argument to the click callback.
-
flask.cli.
run_command
= <Command run>¶ Run a local development server.
This server is for development purposes only. It does not provide the stability, security, or performance of production WSGI servers.
The reloader and debugger are enabled by default if FLASK_ENV=development or FLASK_DEBUG=1.
-
flask.cli.
shell_command
= <Command shell>¶ Run an interactive Python shell in the context of a given Flask application. The application will populate the default namespace of this shell according to it’s configuration.
This is useful for executing small snippets of management code without having to manually configure the application.
Additional Notes¶
Design notes, legal information and changelog are here for the interested.
Design Decisions in Flask¶
If you are curious why Flask does certain things the way it does and not differently, this section is for you. This should give you an idea about some of the design decisions that may appear arbitrary and surprising at first, especially in direct comparison with other frameworks.
The Explicit Application Object¶
A Python web application based on WSGI has to have one central callable
object that implements the actual application. In Flask this is an
instance of the Flask
class. Each Flask application has
to create an instance of this class itself and pass it the name of the
module, but why can’t Flask do that itself?
Without such an explicit application object the following code:
from flask import Flask
app = Flask(__name__)
@app.route('/')
def index():
return 'Hello World!'
Would look like this instead:
from hypothetical_flask import route
@route('/')
def index():
return 'Hello World!'
There are three major reasons for this. The most important one is that implicit application objects require that there may only be one instance at the time. There are ways to fake multiple applications with a single application object, like maintaining a stack of applications, but this causes some problems I won’t outline here in detail. Now the question is: when does a microframework need more than one application at the same time? A good example for this is unit testing. When you want to test something it can be very helpful to create a minimal application to test specific behavior. When the application object is deleted everything it allocated will be freed again.
Another thing that becomes possible when you have an explicit object lying
around in your code is that you can subclass the base class
(Flask
) to alter specific behavior. This would not be
possible without hacks if the object were created ahead of time for you
based on a class that is not exposed to you.
But there is another very important reason why Flask depends on an
explicit instantiation of that class: the package name. Whenever you
create a Flask instance you usually pass it __name__ as package name.
Flask depends on that information to properly load resources relative
to your module. With Python’s outstanding support for reflection it can
then access the package to figure out where the templates and static files
are stored (see open_resource()
). Now obviously there
are frameworks around that do not need any configuration and will still be
able to load templates relative to your application module. But they have
to use the current working directory for that, which is a very unreliable
way to determine where the application is. The current working directory
is process-wide and if you are running multiple applications in one
process (which could happen in a webserver without you knowing) the paths
will be off. Worse: many webservers do not set the working directory to
the directory of your application but to the document root which does not
have to be the same folder.
The third reason is “explicit is better than implicit”. That object is
your WSGI application, you don’t have to remember anything else. If you
want to apply a WSGI middleware, just wrap it and you’re done (though
there are better ways to do that so that you do not lose the reference
to the application object wsgi_app()
).
Furthermore this design makes it possible to use a factory function to create the application which is very helpful for unit testing and similar things (Application Factories).
The Routing System¶
Flask uses the Werkzeug routing system which was designed to automatically order routes by complexity. This means that you can declare routes in arbitrary order and they will still work as expected. This is a requirement if you want to properly implement decorator based routing since decorators could be fired in undefined order when the application is split into multiple modules.
Another design decision with the Werkzeug routing system is that routes in Werkzeug try to ensure that URLs are unique. Werkzeug will go quite far with that in that it will automatically redirect to a canonical URL if a route is ambiguous.
One Template Engine¶
Flask decides on one template engine: Jinja2. Why doesn’t Flask have a pluggable template engine interface? You can obviously use a different template engine, but Flask will still configure Jinja2 for you. While that limitation that Jinja2 is always configured will probably go away, the decision to bundle one template engine and use that will not.
Template engines are like programming languages and each of those engines has a certain understanding about how things work. On the surface they all work the same: you tell the engine to evaluate a template with a set of variables and take the return value as string.
But that’s about where similarities end. Jinja2 for example has an extensive filter system, a certain way to do template inheritance, support for reusable blocks (macros) that can be used from inside templates and also from Python code, uses Unicode for all operations, supports iterative template rendering, configurable syntax and more. On the other hand an engine like Genshi is based on XML stream evaluation, template inheritance by taking the availability of XPath into account and more. Mako on the other hand treats templates similar to Python modules.
When it comes to connecting a template engine with an application or framework there is more than just rendering templates. For instance, Flask uses Jinja2’s extensive autoescaping support. Also it provides ways to access macros from Jinja2 templates.
A template abstraction layer that would not take the unique features of the template engines away is a science on its own and a too large undertaking for a microframework like Flask.
Furthermore extensions can then easily depend on one template language being present. You can easily use your own templating language, but an extension could still depend on Jinja itself.
Micro with Dependencies¶
Why does Flask call itself a microframework and yet it depends on two libraries (namely Werkzeug and Jinja2). Why shouldn’t it? If we look over to the Ruby side of web development there we have a protocol very similar to WSGI. Just that it’s called Rack there, but besides that it looks very much like a WSGI rendition for Ruby. But nearly all applications in Ruby land do not work with Rack directly, but on top of a library with the same name. This Rack library has two equivalents in Python: WebOb (formerly Paste) and Werkzeug. Paste is still around but from my understanding it’s sort of deprecated in favour of WebOb. The development of WebOb and Werkzeug started side by side with similar ideas in mind: be a good implementation of WSGI for other applications to take advantage.
Flask is a framework that takes advantage of the work already done by Werkzeug to properly interface WSGI (which can be a complex task at times). Thanks to recent developments in the Python package infrastructure, packages with dependencies are no longer an issue and there are very few reasons against having libraries that depend on others.
Thread Locals¶
Flask uses thread local objects (context local objects in fact, they
support greenlet contexts as well) for request, session and an extra
object you can put your own things on (g
). Why is that and
isn’t that a bad idea?
Yes it is usually not such a bright idea to use thread locals. They cause troubles for servers that are not based on the concept of threads and make large applications harder to maintain. However Flask is just not designed for large applications or asynchronous servers. Flask wants to make it quick and easy to write a traditional web application.
Also see the Becoming Big section of the documentation for some inspiration for larger applications based on Flask.
What Flask is, What Flask is Not¶
Flask will never have a database layer. It will not have a form library or anything else in that direction. Flask itself just bridges to Werkzeug to implement a proper WSGI application and to Jinja2 to handle templating. It also binds to a few common standard library packages such as logging. Everything else is up for extensions.
Why is this the case? Because people have different preferences and requirements and Flask could not meet those if it would force any of this into the core. The majority of web applications will need a template engine in some sort. However not every application needs a SQL database.
The idea of Flask is to build a good foundation for all applications. Everything else is up to you or extensions.
HTML/XHTML FAQ¶
The Flask documentation and example applications are using HTML5. You may notice that in many situations, when end tags are optional they are not used, so that the HTML is cleaner and faster to load. Because there is much confusion about HTML and XHTML among developers, this document tries to answer some of the major questions.
History of XHTML¶
For a while, it appeared that HTML was about to be replaced by XHTML. However, barely any websites on the Internet are actual XHTML (which is HTML processed using XML rules). There are a couple of major reasons why this is the case. One of them is Internet Explorer’s lack of proper XHTML support. The XHTML spec states that XHTML must be served with the MIME type application/xhtml+xml, but Internet Explorer refuses to read files with that MIME type. While it is relatively easy to configure Web servers to serve XHTML properly, few people do. This is likely because properly using XHTML can be quite painful.
One of the most important causes of pain is XML’s draconian (strict and ruthless) error handling. When an XML parsing error is encountered, the browser is supposed to show the user an ugly error message, instead of attempting to recover from the error and display what it can. Most of the (X)HTML generation on the web is based on non-XML template engines (such as Jinja, the one used in Flask) which do not protect you from accidentally creating invalid XHTML. There are XML based template engines, such as Kid and the popular Genshi, but they often come with a larger runtime overhead and are not as straightforward to use because they have to obey XML rules.
The majority of users, however, assumed they were properly using XHTML.
They wrote an XHTML doctype at the top of the document and self-closed all
the necessary tags (<br>
becomes <br/>
or <br></br>
in XHTML).
However, even if the document properly validates as XHTML, what really
determines XHTML/HTML processing in browsers is the MIME type, which as
said before is often not set properly. So the valid XHTML was being treated
as invalid HTML.
XHTML also changed the way JavaScript is used. To properly work with XHTML, programmers have to use the namespaced DOM interface with the XHTML namespace to query for HTML elements.
History of HTML5¶
Development of the HTML5 specification was started in 2004 under the name “Web Applications 1.0” by the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group, or WHATWG (which was formed by the major browser vendors Apple, Mozilla, and Opera) with the goal of writing a new and improved HTML specification, based on existing browser behavior instead of unrealistic and backwards-incompatible specifications.
For example, in HTML4 <title/Hello/
theoretically parses exactly the
same as <title>Hello</title>
. However, since people were using
XHTML-like tags along the lines of <link />
, browser vendors implemented
the XHTML syntax over the syntax defined by the specification.
In 2007, the specification was adopted as the basis of a new HTML specification under the umbrella of the W3C, known as HTML5. Currently, it appears that XHTML is losing traction, as the XHTML 2 working group has been disbanded and HTML5 is being implemented by all major browser vendors.
HTML versus XHTML¶
The following table gives you a quick overview of features available in HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.1 and HTML5. (XHTML 1.0 is not included, as it was superseded by XHTML 1.1 and the barely-used XHTML5.)
HTML4.01 |
XHTML1.1 |
HTML5 |
|
---|---|---|---|
|
|||
|
|||
|
|||
should be served as text/html |
|||
should be served as application/xhtml+xml |
|||
strict error handling |
|||
inline SVG |
|||
inline MathML |
|||
|
|||
|
|||
New semantic tags like |
- 1
This is an obscure feature inherited from SGML. It is usually not supported by browsers, for reasons detailed above.
- 2
This is for compatibility with server code that generates XHTML for tags such as
<br>
. It should not be used in new code.- 3
XHTML 1.0 is the last XHTML standard that allows to be served as text/html for backwards compatibility reasons.
What does “strict” mean?¶
HTML5 has strictly defined parsing rules, but it also specifies exactly how a browser should react to parsing errors - unlike XHTML, which simply states parsing should abort. Some people are confused by apparently invalid syntax that still generates the expected results (for example, missing end tags or unquoted attribute values).
Some of these work because of the lenient error handling most browsers use when they encounter a markup error, others are actually specified. The following constructs are optional in HTML5 by standard, but have to be supported by browsers:
Wrapping the document in an
<html>
tagWrapping header elements in
<head>
or the body elements in<body>
Closing the
<p>
,<li>
,<dt>
,<dd>
,<tr>
,<td>
,<th>
,<tbody>
,<thead>
, or<tfoot>
tags.Quoting attributes, so long as they contain no whitespace or special characters (like
<
,>
,'
, or"
).Requiring boolean attributes to have a value.
This means the following page in HTML5 is perfectly valid:
<!doctype html>
<title>Hello HTML5</title>
<div class=header>
<h1>Hello HTML5</h1>
<p class=tagline>HTML5 is awesome
</div>
<ul class=nav>
<li><a href=/index>Index</a>
<li><a href=/downloads>Downloads</a>
<li><a href=/about>About</a>
</ul>
<div class=body>
<h2>HTML5 is probably the future</h2>
<p>
There might be some other things around but in terms of
browser vendor support, HTML5 is hard to beat.
<dl>
<dt>Key 1
<dd>Value 1
<dt>Key 2
<dd>Value 2
</dl>
</div>
New technologies in HTML5¶
HTML5 adds many new features that make Web applications easier to write and to use.
The
<audio>
and<video>
tags provide a way to embed audio and video without complicated add-ons like QuickTime or Flash.Semantic elements like
<article>
,<header>
,<nav>
, and<time>
that make content easier to understand.The
<canvas>
tag, which supports a powerful drawing API, reducing the need for server-generated images to present data graphically.New form control types like
<input type="date">
that allow user agents to make entering and validating values easier.Advanced JavaScript APIs like Web Storage, Web Workers, Web Sockets, geolocation, and offline applications.
Many other features have been added, as well. A good guide to new features in HTML5 is Mark Pilgrim’s soon-to-be-published book, Dive Into HTML5. Not all of them are supported in browsers yet, however, so use caution.
What should be used?¶
Currently, the answer is HTML5. There are very few reasons to use XHTML considering the latest developments in Web browsers. To summarize the reasons given above:
Internet Explorer (which, sadly, currently leads in market share) has poor support for XHTML.
Many JavaScript libraries also do not support XHTML, due to the more complicated namespacing API it requires.
HTML5 adds several new features, including semantic tags and the long-awaited
<audio>
and<video>
tags.It has the support of most browser vendors behind it.
It is much easier to write, and more compact.
For most applications, it is undoubtedly better to use HTML5 than XHTML.
Security Considerations¶
Web applications usually face all kinds of security problems and it’s very hard to get everything right. Flask tries to solve a few of these things for you, but there are a couple more you have to take care of yourself.
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)¶
Cross site scripting is the concept of injecting arbitrary HTML (and with it JavaScript) into the context of a website. To remedy this, developers have to properly escape text so that it cannot include arbitrary HTML tags. For more information on that have a look at the Wikipedia article on Cross-Site Scripting.
Flask configures Jinja2 to automatically escape all values unless explicitly told otherwise. This should rule out all XSS problems caused in templates, but there are still other places where you have to be careful:
generating HTML without the help of Jinja2
calling
Markup
on data submitted by userssending out HTML from uploaded files, never do that, use the
Content-Disposition: attachment
header to prevent that problem.sending out textfiles from uploaded files. Some browsers are using content-type guessing based on the first few bytes so users could trick a browser to execute HTML.
Another thing that is very important are unquoted attributes. While Jinja2 can protect you from XSS issues by escaping HTML, there is one thing it cannot protect you from: XSS by attribute injection. To counter this possible attack vector, be sure to always quote your attributes with either double or single quotes when using Jinja expressions in them:
<input value="{{ value }}">
Why is this necessary? Because if you would not be doing that, an attacker could easily inject custom JavaScript handlers. For example an attacker could inject this piece of HTML+JavaScript:
onmouseover=alert(document.cookie)
When the user would then move with the mouse over the input, the cookie would be presented to the user in an alert window. But instead of showing the cookie to the user, a good attacker might also execute any other JavaScript code. In combination with CSS injections the attacker might even make the element fill out the entire page so that the user would just have to have the mouse anywhere on the page to trigger the attack.
There is one class of XSS issues that Jinja’s escaping does not protect
against. The a
tag’s href
attribute can contain a javascript: URI,
which the browser will execute when clicked if not secured properly.
<a href="{{ value }}">click here</a>
<a href="javascript:alert('unsafe');">click here</a>
To prevent this, you’ll need to set the Content Security Policy (CSP) response header.
Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)¶
Another big problem is CSRF. This is a very complex topic and I won’t outline it here in detail just mention what it is and how to theoretically prevent it.
If your authentication information is stored in cookies, you have implicit state management. The state of “being logged in” is controlled by a cookie, and that cookie is sent with each request to a page. Unfortunately that includes requests triggered by 3rd party sites. If you don’t keep that in mind, some people might be able to trick your application’s users with social engineering to do stupid things without them knowing.
Say you have a specific URL that, when you sent POST
requests to will
delete a user’s profile (say http://example.com/user/delete
). If an
attacker now creates a page that sends a post request to that page with
some JavaScript they just have to trick some users to load that page and
their profiles will end up being deleted.
Imagine you were to run Facebook with millions of concurrent users and someone would send out links to images of little kittens. When users would go to that page, their profiles would get deleted while they are looking at images of fluffy cats.
How can you prevent that? Basically for each request that modifies content on the server you would have to either use a one-time token and store that in the cookie and also transmit it with the form data. After receiving the data on the server again, you would then have to compare the two tokens and ensure they are equal.
Why does Flask not do that for you? The ideal place for this to happen is the form validation framework, which does not exist in Flask.
JSON Security¶
In Flask 0.10 and lower, jsonify()
did not serialize top-level
arrays to JSON. This was because of a security vulnerability in ECMAScript 4.
ECMAScript 5 closed this vulnerability, so only extremely old browsers are
still vulnerable. All of these browsers have other more serious
vulnerabilities, so
this behavior was changed and jsonify()
now supports serializing
arrays.
Security Headers¶
Browsers recognize various response headers in order to control security. We recommend reviewing each of the headers below for use in your application. The Flask-Talisman extension can be used to manage HTTPS and the security headers for you.
HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS)¶
Tells the browser to convert all HTTP requests to HTTPS, preventing man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks.
response.headers['Strict-Transport-Security'] = 'max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains'
Content Security Policy (CSP)¶
Tell the browser where it can load various types of resource from. This header should be used whenever possible, but requires some work to define the correct policy for your site. A very strict policy would be:
response.headers['Content-Security-Policy'] = "default-src 'self'"
X-Content-Type-Options¶
Forces the browser to honor the response content type instead of trying to detect it, which can be abused to generate a cross-site scripting (XSS) attack.
response.headers['X-Content-Type-Options'] = 'nosniff'
X-Frame-Options¶
Prevents external sites from embedding your site in an iframe
. This
prevents a class of attacks where clicks in the outer frame can be translated
invisibly to clicks on your page’s elements. This is also known as
“clickjacking”.
response.headers['X-Frame-Options'] = 'SAMEORIGIN'
X-XSS-Protection¶
The browser will try to prevent reflected XSS attacks by not loading the page if the request contains something that looks like JavaScript and the response contains the same data.
response.headers['X-XSS-Protection'] = '1; mode=block'
Set-Cookie options¶
These options can be added to a Set-Cookie
header to improve their
security. Flask has configuration options to set these on the session cookie.
They can be set on other cookies too.
Secure
limits cookies to HTTPS traffic only.HttpOnly
protects the contents of cookies from being read with JavaScript.SameSite
restricts how cookies are sent with requests from external sites. Can be set to'Lax'
(recommended) or'Strict'
.Lax
prevents sending cookies with CSRF-prone requests from external sites, such as submitting a form.Strict
prevents sending cookies with all external requests, including following regular links.
app.config.update(
SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE=True,
SESSION_COOKIE_HTTPONLY=True,
SESSION_COOKIE_SAMESITE='Lax',
)
response.set_cookie('username', 'flask', secure=True, httponly=True, samesite='Lax')
Specifying Expires
or Max-Age
options, will remove the cookie after
the given time, or the current time plus the age, respectively. If neither
option is set, the cookie will be removed when the browser is closed.
# cookie expires after 10 minutes
response.set_cookie('snakes', '3', max_age=600)
For the session cookie, if session.permanent
is set, then PERMANENT_SESSION_LIFETIME
is used to set the expiration.
Flask’s default cookie implementation validates that the cryptographic
signature is not older than this value. Lowering this value may help mitigate
replay attacks, where intercepted cookies can be sent at a later time.
app.config.update(
PERMANENT_SESSION_LIFETIME=600
)
@app.route('/login', methods=['POST'])
def login():
...
session.clear()
session['user_id'] = user.id
session.permanent = True
...
Use itsdangerous.TimedSerializer
to sign and validate other cookie
values (or any values that need secure signatures).
HTTP Public Key Pinning (HPKP)¶
This tells the browser to authenticate with the server using only the specific certificate key to prevent MITM attacks.
Warning
Be careful when enabling this, as it is very difficult to undo if you set up or upgrade your key incorrectly.
Copy/Paste to Terminal¶
Hidden characters such as the backspace character (\b
, ^H
) can
cause text to render differently in HTML than how it is interpreted if
pasted into a terminal.
For example, import y\bose\bm\bi\bt\be\b
renders as
import yosemite
in HTML, but the backspaces are applied when pasted
into a terminal, and it becomes import os
.
If you expect users to copy and paste untrusted code from your site,
such as from comments posted by users on a technical blog, consider
applying extra filtering, such as replacing all \b
characters.
body = body.replace("\b", "")
Most modern terminals will warn about and remove hidden characters when pasting, so this isn’t strictly necessary. It’s also possible to craft dangerous commands in other ways that aren’t possible to filter. Depending on your site’s use case, it may be good to show a warning about copying code in general.
Unicode in Flask¶
Flask, like Jinja2 and Werkzeug, is totally Unicode based when it comes to text. Not only these libraries, also the majority of web related Python libraries that deal with text. If you don’t know Unicode so far, you should probably read The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets. This part of the documentation just tries to cover the very basics so that you have a pleasant experience with Unicode related things.
Automatic Conversion¶
Flask has a few assumptions about your application (which you can change of course) that give you basic and painless Unicode support:
the encoding for text on your website is UTF-8
internally you will always use Unicode exclusively for text except for literal strings with only ASCII character points.
encoding and decoding happens whenever you are talking over a protocol that requires bytes to be transmitted.
So what does this mean to you?
HTTP is based on bytes. Not only the protocol, also the system used to address documents on servers (so called URIs or URLs). However HTML which is usually transmitted on top of HTTP supports a large variety of character sets and which ones are used, are transmitted in an HTTP header. To not make this too complex Flask just assumes that if you are sending Unicode out you want it to be UTF-8 encoded. Flask will do the encoding and setting of the appropriate headers for you.
The same is true if you are talking to databases with the help of SQLAlchemy or a similar ORM system. Some databases have a protocol that already transmits Unicode and if they do not, SQLAlchemy or your other ORM should take care of that.
The Golden Rule¶
So the rule of thumb: if you are not dealing with binary data, work with Unicode. What does working with Unicode in Python 2.x mean?
as long as you are using ASCII code points only (basically numbers, some special characters of Latin letters without umlauts or anything fancy) you can use regular string literals (
'Hello World'
).if you need anything else than ASCII in a string you have to mark this string as Unicode string by prefixing it with a lowercase u. (like
u'Hänsel und Gretel'
)if you are using non-Unicode characters in your Python files you have to tell Python which encoding your file uses. Again, I recommend UTF-8 for this purpose. To tell the interpreter your encoding you can put the
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
into the first or second line of your Python source file.Jinja is configured to decode the template files from UTF-8. So make sure to tell your editor to save the file as UTF-8 there as well.
Encoding and Decoding Yourself¶
If you are talking with a filesystem or something that is not really based on Unicode you will have to ensure that you decode properly when working with Unicode interface. So for example if you want to load a file on the filesystem and embed it into a Jinja2 template you will have to decode it from the encoding of that file. Here the old problem that text files do not specify their encoding comes into play. So do yourself a favour and limit yourself to UTF-8 for text files as well.
Anyways. To load such a file with Unicode you can use the built-in
str.decode()
method:
def read_file(filename, charset='utf-8'):
with open(filename, 'r') as f:
return f.read().decode(charset)
To go from Unicode into a specific charset such as UTF-8 you can use the
unicode.encode()
method:
def write_file(filename, contents, charset='utf-8'):
with open(filename, 'w') as f:
f.write(contents.encode(charset))
Configuring Editors¶
Most editors save as UTF-8 by default nowadays but in case your editor is not configured to do this you have to change it. Here some common ways to set your editor to store as UTF-8:
Vim: put
set enc=utf-8
to your.vimrc
file.Emacs: either use an encoding cookie or put this into your
.emacs
file:(prefer-coding-system 'utf-8) (setq default-buffer-file-coding-system 'utf-8)
Notepad++:
Go to Settings -> Preferences …
Select the “New Document/Default Directory” tab
Select “UTF-8 without BOM” as encoding
It is also recommended to use the Unix newline format, you can select it in the same panel but this is not a requirement.
Flask Extension Development¶
Flask, being a microframework, often requires some repetitive steps to get a third party library working. Many such extensions are already available on PyPI.
If you want to create your own Flask extension for something that does not exist yet, this guide to extension development will help you get your extension running in no time and to feel like users would expect your extension to behave.
Anatomy of an Extension¶
Extensions are all located in a package called flask_something
where “something” is the name of the library you want to bridge. So for
example if you plan to add support for a library named simplexml to
Flask, you would name your extension’s package flask_simplexml
.
The name of the actual extension (the human readable name) however would
be something like “Flask-SimpleXML”. Make sure to include the name
“Flask” somewhere in that name and that you check the capitalization.
This is how users can then register dependencies to your extension in
their setup.py
files.
But what do extensions look like themselves? An extension has to ensure that it works with multiple Flask application instances at once. This is a requirement because many people will use patterns like the Application Factories pattern to create their application as needed to aid unittests and to support multiple configurations. Because of that it is crucial that your application supports that kind of behavior.
Most importantly the extension must be shipped with a setup.py
file and
registered on PyPI. Also the development checkout link should work so
that people can easily install the development version into their
virtualenv without having to download the library by hand.
Flask extensions must be licensed under a BSD, MIT or more liberal license in order to be listed in the Flask Extension Registry. Keep in mind that the Flask Extension Registry is a moderated place and libraries will be reviewed upfront if they behave as required.
“Hello Flaskext!”¶
So let’s get started with creating such a Flask extension. The extension we want to create here will provide very basic support for SQLite3.
First we create the following folder structure:
flask-sqlite3/
flask_sqlite3.py
LICENSE
README
Here’s the contents of the most important files:
setup.py¶
The next file that is absolutely required is the setup.py
file which is
used to install your Flask extension. The following contents are
something you can work with:
"""
Flask-SQLite3
-------------
This is the description for that library
"""
from setuptools import setup
setup(
name='Flask-SQLite3',
version='1.0',
url='http://example.com/flask-sqlite3/',
license='BSD',
author='Your Name',
author_email='your-email@example.com',
description='Very short description',
long_description=__doc__,
py_modules=['flask_sqlite3'],
# if you would be using a package instead use packages instead
# of py_modules:
# packages=['flask_sqlite3'],
zip_safe=False,
include_package_data=True,
platforms='any',
install_requires=[
'Flask'
],
classifiers=[
'Environment :: Web Environment',
'Intended Audience :: Developers',
'License :: OSI Approved :: BSD License',
'Operating System :: OS Independent',
'Programming Language :: Python',
'Topic :: Internet :: WWW/HTTP :: Dynamic Content',
'Topic :: Software Development :: Libraries :: Python Modules'
]
)
That’s a lot of code but you can really just copy/paste that from existing extensions and adapt.
flask_sqlite3.py¶
Now this is where your extension code goes. But how exactly should such an extension look like? What are the best practices? Continue reading for some insight.
Initializing Extensions¶
Many extensions will need some kind of initialization step. For example, consider an application that’s currently connecting to SQLite like the documentation suggests (Using SQLite 3 with Flask). So how does the extension know the name of the application object?
Quite simple: you pass it to it.
There are two recommended ways for an extension to initialize:
initialization functions:
If your extension is called helloworld you might have a function called
init_helloworld(app[, extra_args])
that initializes the extension for that application. It could attach before / after handlers etc.
classes:
Classes work mostly like initialization functions but can later be used to further change the behavior. For an example look at how the OAuth extension works: there is an OAuth object that provides some helper functions like OAuth.remote_app to create a reference to a remote application that uses OAuth.
What to use depends on what you have in mind. For the SQLite 3 extension we will use the class-based approach because it will provide users with an object that handles opening and closing database connections.
When designing your classes, it’s important to make them easily reusable at the module level. This means the object itself must not under any circumstances store any application specific state and must be shareable between different applications.
The Extension Code¶
Here’s the contents of the flask_sqlite3.py for copy/paste:
import sqlite3
from flask import current_app, _app_ctx_stack
class SQLite3(object):
def __init__(self, app=None):
self.app = app
if app is not None:
self.init_app(app)
def init_app(self, app):
app.config.setdefault('SQLITE3_DATABASE', ':memory:')
app.teardown_appcontext(self.teardown)
def connect(self):
return sqlite3.connect(current_app.config['SQLITE3_DATABASE'])
def teardown(self, exception):
ctx = _app_ctx_stack.top
if hasattr(ctx, 'sqlite3_db'):
ctx.sqlite3_db.close()
@property
def connection(self):
ctx = _app_ctx_stack.top
if ctx is not None:
if not hasattr(ctx, 'sqlite3_db'):
ctx.sqlite3_db = self.connect()
return ctx.sqlite3_db
So here’s what these lines of code do:
The
__init__
method takes an optional app object and, if supplied, will callinit_app
.The
init_app
method exists so that theSQLite3
object can be instantiated without requiring an app object. This method supports the factory pattern for creating applications. Theinit_app
will set the configuration for the database, defaulting to an in memory database if no configuration is supplied. In addition, theinit_app
method attaches theteardown
handler.Next, we define a
connect
method that opens a database connection.Finally, we add a
connection
property that on first access opens the database connection and stores it on the context. This is also the recommended way to handling resources: fetch resources lazily the first time they are used.Note here that we’re attaching our database connection to the top application context via
_app_ctx_stack.top
. Extensions should use the top context for storing their own information with a sufficiently complex name.
So why did we decide on a class-based approach here? Because using our extension looks something like this:
from flask import Flask
from flask_sqlite3 import SQLite3
app = Flask(__name__)
app.config.from_pyfile('the-config.cfg')
db = SQLite3(app)
You can then use the database from views like this:
@app.route('/')
def show_all():
cur = db.connection.cursor()
cur.execute(...)
Likewise if you are outside of a request you can use the database by pushing an app context:
with app.app_context():
cur = db.connection.cursor()
cur.execute(...)
At the end of the with
block the teardown handles will be executed
automatically.
Additionally, the init_app
method is used to support the factory pattern
for creating apps:
db = SQLite3()
# Then later on.
app = create_app('the-config.cfg')
db.init_app(app)
Keep in mind that supporting this factory pattern for creating apps is required for approved flask extensions (described below).
Note on init_app
As you noticed, init_app
does not assign app
to self
. This
is intentional! Class based Flask extensions must only store the
application on the object when the application was passed to the
constructor. This tells the extension: I am not interested in using
multiple applications.
When the extension needs to find the current application and it does
not have a reference to it, it must either use the
current_app
context local or change the API in a way
that you can pass the application explicitly.
Using _app_ctx_stack¶
In the example above, before every request, a sqlite3_db
variable is
assigned to _app_ctx_stack.top
. In a view function, this variable is
accessible using the connection
property of SQLite3
. During the
teardown of a request, the sqlite3_db
connection is closed. By using
this pattern, the same connection to the sqlite3 database is accessible
to anything that needs it for the duration of the request.
Learn from Others¶
This documentation only touches the bare minimum for extension development. If you want to learn more, it’s a very good idea to check out existing extensions on the PyPI. If you feel lost there is still the mailinglist and the Discord server to get some ideas for nice looking APIs. Especially if you do something nobody before you did, it might be a very good idea to get some more input. This not only generates useful feedback on what people might want from an extension, but also avoids having multiple developers working in isolation on pretty much the same problem.
Remember: good API design is hard, so introduce your project on the mailing list, and let other developers give you a helping hand with designing the API.
The best Flask extensions are extensions that share common idioms for the API. And this can only work if collaboration happens early.
Approved Extensions¶
Flask previously had the concept of approved extensions. These came with some vetting of support and compatibility. While this list became too difficult to maintain over time, the guidelines are still relevant to all extensions maintained and developed today, as they help the Flask ecosystem remain consistent and compatible.
An approved Flask extension requires a maintainer. In the event an extension author would like to move beyond the project, the project should find a new maintainer and transfer access to the repository, documentation, PyPI, and any other services. If no maintainer is available, give access to the Pallets core team.
The naming scheme is Flask-ExtensionName or ExtensionName-Flask. It must provide exactly one package or module named
flask_extension_name
.The extension must be BSD or MIT licensed. It must be open source and publicly available.
The extension’s API must have the following characteristics:
It must support multiple applications running in the same Python process. Use
current_app
instead ofself.app
, store configuration and state per application instance.It must be possible to use the factory pattern for creating applications. Use the
ext.init_app()
pattern.
From a clone of the repository, an extension with its dependencies must be installable with
pip install -e .
.It must ship a testing suite that can be invoked with
tox -e py
orpytest
. If not usingtox
, the test dependencies should be specified in arequirements.txt
file. The tests must be part of the sdist distribution.The documentation must use the
flask
theme from the Official Pallets Themes. A link to the documentation or project website must be in the PyPI metadata or the readme.For maximum compatibility, the extension should support the same versions of Python that Flask supports. 3.6+ is recommended as of 2020. Use
python_requires=">= 3.6"
insetup.py
to indicate supported versions.
Pocoo Styleguide¶
The Pocoo styleguide is the styleguide for all Pocoo Projects, including Flask. This styleguide is a requirement for Patches to Flask and a recommendation for Flask extensions.
In general the Pocoo Styleguide closely follows PEP 8 with some small differences and extensions.
General Layout¶
- Indentation:
4 real spaces. No tabs, no exceptions.
- Maximum line length:
79 characters with a soft limit for 84 if absolutely necessary. Try to avoid too nested code by cleverly placing break, continue and return statements.
- Continuing long statements:
To continue a statement you can use backslashes in which case you should align the next line with the last dot or equal sign, or indent four spaces:
this_is_a_very_long(function_call, 'with many parameters') \ .that_returns_an_object_with_an_attribute MyModel.query.filter(MyModel.scalar > 120) \ .order_by(MyModel.name.desc()) \ .limit(10)
If you break in a statement with parentheses or braces, align to the braces:
this_is_a_very_long(function_call, 'with many parameters', 23, 42, 'and even more')
For lists or tuples with many items, break immediately after the opening brace:
items = [ 'this is the first', 'set of items', 'with more items', 'to come in this line', 'like this' ]
- Blank lines:
Top level functions and classes are separated by two lines, everything else by one. Do not use too many blank lines to separate logical segments in code. Example:
def hello(name): print 'Hello %s!' % name def goodbye(name): print 'See you %s.' % name class MyClass(object): """This is a simple docstring""" def __init__(self, name): self.name = name def get_annoying_name(self): return self.name.upper() + '!!!!111'
Expressions and Statements¶
- General whitespace rules:
No whitespace for unary operators that are not words (e.g.:
-
,~
etc.) as well on the inner side of parentheses.Whitespace is placed between binary operators.
Good:
exp = -1.05 value = (item_value / item_count) * offset / exp value = my_list[index] value = my_dict['key']
Bad:
exp = - 1.05 value = ( item_value / item_count ) * offset / exp value = (item_value/item_count)*offset/exp value=( item_value/item_count ) * offset/exp value = my_list[ index ] value = my_dict ['key']
- Yoda statements are a no-go:
Never compare constant with variable, always variable with constant:
Good:
if method == 'md5': pass
Bad:
if 'md5' == method: pass
- Comparisons:
against arbitrary types:
==
and!=
against singletons with
is
andis not
(eg:foo is not None
)never compare something with
True
orFalse
(for example never dofoo == False
, donot foo
instead)
- Negated containment checks:
use
foo not in bar
instead ofnot foo in bar
- Instance checks:
isinstance(a, C)
instead oftype(A) is C
, but try to avoid instance checks in general. Check for features.
Naming Conventions¶
Class names:
CamelCase
, with acronyms kept uppercase (HTTPWriter
and notHttpWriter
)Variable names:
lowercase_with_underscores
Method and function names:
lowercase_with_underscores
Constants:
UPPERCASE_WITH_UNDERSCORES
precompiled regular expressions:
name_re
Protected members are prefixed with a single underscore. Double underscores are reserved for mixin classes.
On classes with keywords, trailing underscores are appended. Clashes with builtins are allowed and must not be resolved by appending an underline to the variable name. If the function needs to access a shadowed builtin, rebind the builtin to a different name instead.
- Function and method arguments:
class methods:
cls
as first parameterinstance methods:
self
as first parameterlambdas for properties might have the first parameter replaced with
x
like indisplay_name = property(lambda x: x.real_name or x.username)
Docstrings¶
- Docstring conventions:
All docstrings are formatted with reStructuredText as understood by Sphinx. Depending on the number of lines in the docstring, they are laid out differently. If it’s just one line, the closing triple quote is on the same line as the opening, otherwise the text is on the same line as the opening quote and the triple quote that closes the string on its own line:
def foo(): """This is a simple docstring""" def bar(): """This is a longer docstring with so much information in there that it spans three lines. In this case the closing triple quote is on its own line. """
- Module header:
The module header consists of a utf-8 encoding declaration (if non ASCII letters are used, but it is recommended all the time) and a standard docstring:
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*- """ package.module ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A brief description goes here. :copyright: (c) YEAR by AUTHOR. :license: LICENSE_NAME, see LICENSE_FILE for more details. """
Please keep in mind that proper copyrights and license files are a requirement for approved Flask extensions.
Upgrading to Newer Releases¶
Flask itself is changing like any software is changing over time. Most of the changes are the nice kind, the kind where you don’t have to change anything in your code to profit from a new release.
However every once in a while there are changes that do require some changes in your code or there are changes that make it possible for you to improve your own code quality by taking advantage of new features in Flask.
This section of the documentation enumerates all the changes in Flask from release to release and how you can change your code to have a painless updating experience.
Use the pip command to upgrade your existing Flask installation by
providing the --upgrade
parameter:
$ pip install --upgrade Flask
Version 0.12¶
Changes to send_file¶
The filename
is no longer automatically inferred from file-like objects.
This means that the following code will no longer automatically have
X-Sendfile
support, etag generation or MIME-type guessing:
response = send_file(open('/path/to/file.txt'))
Any of the following is functionally equivalent:
fname = '/path/to/file.txt'
# Just pass the filepath directly
response = send_file(fname)
# Set the MIME-type and ETag explicitly
response = send_file(open(fname), mimetype='text/plain')
response.set_etag(...)
# Set `attachment_filename` for MIME-type guessing
# ETag still needs to be manually set
response = send_file(open(fname), attachment_filename=fname)
response.set_etag(...)
The reason for this is that some file-like objects have an invalid or even
misleading name
attribute. Silently swallowing errors in such cases was not
a satisfying solution.
Additionally the default of falling back to application/octet-stream
has
been restricted. If Flask can’t guess one or the user didn’t provide one, the
function fails if no filename information was provided.
Version 0.11¶
0.11 is an odd release in the Flask release cycle because it was supposed to be the 1.0 release. However because there was such a long lead time up to the release we decided to push out a 0.11 release first with some changes removed to make the transition easier. If you have been tracking the master branch which was 1.0 you might see some unexpected changes.
In case you did track the master branch you will notice that flask --app is removed now. You need to use the environment variable to specify an application.
Debugging¶
Flask 0.11 removed the debug_log_format
attribute from Flask
applications. Instead the new LOGGER_HANDLER_POLICY
configuration can
be used to disable the default log handlers and custom log handlers can be
set up.
Error handling¶
The behavior of error handlers was changed.
The precedence of handlers used to be based on the decoration/call order of
errorhandler()
and
register_error_handler()
, respectively.
Now the inheritance hierarchy takes precedence and handlers for more
specific exception classes are executed instead of more general ones.
See Error handlers for specifics.
Trying to register a handler on an instance now raises ValueError
.
Note
There used to be a logic error allowing you to register handlers only for exception instances. This was unintended and plain wrong, and therefore was replaced with the intended behavior of registering handlers only using exception classes and HTTP error codes.
Templating¶
The render_template_string()
function has changed to
autoescape template variables by default. This better matches the behavior
of render_template()
.
Extension imports¶
Extension imports of the form flask.ext.foo
are deprecated, you should use
flask_foo
.
The old form still works, but Flask will issue a
flask.exthook.ExtDeprecationWarning
for each extension you import the old
way. We also provide a migration utility called flask-ext-migrate that is supposed to
automatically rewrite your imports for this.
Version 0.10¶
The biggest change going from 0.9 to 0.10 is that the cookie serialization format changed from pickle to a specialized JSON format. This change has been done in order to avoid the damage an attacker can do if the secret key is leaked. When you upgrade you will notice two major changes: all sessions that were issued before the upgrade are invalidated and you can only store a limited amount of types in the session. The new sessions are by design much more restricted to only allow JSON with a few small extensions for tuples and strings with HTML markup.
In order to not break people’s sessions it is possible to continue using the old session system by using the Flask-OldSessions extension.
Flask also started storing the flask.g
object on the application
context instead of the request context. This change should be transparent
for you but it means that you now can store things on the g
object
when there is no request context yet but an application context. The old
flask.Flask.request_globals_class
attribute was renamed to
flask.Flask.app_ctx_globals_class
.
Version 0.9¶
The behavior of returning tuples from a function was simplified. If you
return a tuple it no longer defines the arguments for the response object
you’re creating, it’s now always a tuple in the form (response, status,
headers)
where at least one item has to be provided. If you depend on
the old behavior, you can add it easily by subclassing Flask:
class TraditionalFlask(Flask):
def make_response(self, rv):
if isinstance(rv, tuple):
return self.response_class(*rv)
return Flask.make_response(self, rv)
If you maintain an extension that was using _request_ctx_stack
before, please consider changing to _app_ctx_stack
if it makes
sense for your extension. For instance, the app context stack makes sense for
extensions which connect to databases. Using the app context stack instead of
the request context stack will make extensions more readily handle use cases
outside of requests.
Version 0.8¶
Flask introduced a new session interface system. We also noticed that
there was a naming collision between flask.session
the module that
implements sessions and flask.session
which is the global session
object. With that introduction we moved the implementation details for
the session system into a new module called flask.sessions
. If you
used the previously undocumented session support we urge you to upgrade.
If invalid JSON data was submitted Flask will now raise a
BadRequest
exception instead of letting the
default ValueError
bubble up. This has the advantage that you no
longer have to handle that error to avoid an internal server error showing
up for the user. If you were catching this down explicitly in the past
as ValueError
you will need to change this.
Due to a bug in the test client Flask 0.7 did not trigger teardown handlers when the test client was used in a with statement. This was since fixed but might require some changes in your test suites if you relied on this behavior.
Version 0.7¶
In Flask 0.7 we cleaned up the code base internally a lot and did some backwards incompatible changes that make it easier to implement larger applications with Flask. Because we want to make upgrading as easy as possible we tried to counter the problems arising from these changes by providing a script that can ease the transition.
The script scans your whole application and generates a unified diff with changes it assumes are safe to apply. However as this is an automated tool it won’t be able to find all use cases and it might miss some. We internally spread a lot of deprecation warnings all over the place to make it easy to find pieces of code that it was unable to upgrade.
We strongly recommend that you hand review the generated patchfile and only apply the chunks that look good.
If you are using git as version control system for your project we
recommend applying the patch with path -p1 < patchfile.diff
and then
using the interactive commit feature to only apply the chunks that look
good.
To apply the upgrade script do the following:
Download the script: flask-07-upgrade.py
Run it in the directory of your application:
$ python flask-07-upgrade.py > patchfile.diff
Review the generated patchfile.
Apply the patch:
$ patch -p1 < patchfile.diff
If you were using per-module template folders you need to move some templates around. Previously if you had a folder named
templates
next to a blueprint namedadmin
the implicit template path automatically wasadmin/index.html
for a template file calledtemplates/index.html
. This no longer is the case. Now you need to name the templatetemplates/admin/index.html
. The tool will not detect this so you will have to do that on your own.
Please note that deprecation warnings are disabled by default starting
with Python 2.7. In order to see the deprecation warnings that might be
emitted you have to enabled them with the warnings
module.
If you are working with windows and you lack the patch
command line
utility you can get it as part of various Unix runtime environments for
windows including cygwin, msysgit or ming32. Also source control systems
like svn, hg or git have builtin support for applying unified diffs as
generated by the tool. Check the manual of your version control system
for more information.
Bug in Request Locals¶
Due to a bug in earlier implementations the request local proxies now
raise a RuntimeError
instead of an AttributeError
when they
are unbound. If you caught these exceptions with AttributeError
before, you should catch them with RuntimeError
now.
Additionally the send_file()
function is now issuing
deprecation warnings if you depend on functionality that will be removed
in Flask 0.11. Previously it was possible to use etags and mimetypes
when file objects were passed. This was unreliable and caused issues
for a few setups. If you get a deprecation warning, make sure to
update your application to work with either filenames there or disable
etag attaching and attach them yourself.
Old code:
return send_file(my_file_object)
return send_file(my_file_object)
New code:
return send_file(my_file_object, add_etags=False)
Upgrading to new Teardown Handling¶
We streamlined the behavior of the callbacks for request handling. For
things that modify the response the after_request()
decorators continue to work as expected, but for things that absolutely
must happen at the end of request we introduced the new
teardown_request()
decorator. Unfortunately that
change also made after-request work differently under error conditions.
It’s not consistently skipped if exceptions happen whereas previously it
might have been called twice to ensure it is executed at the end of the
request.
If you have database connection code that looks like this:
@app.after_request
def after_request(response):
g.db.close()
return response
You are now encouraged to use this instead:
@app.teardown_request
def after_request(exception):
if hasattr(g, 'db'):
g.db.close()
On the upside this change greatly improves the internal code flow and makes it easier to customize the dispatching and error handling. This makes it now a lot easier to write unit tests as you can prevent closing down of database connections for a while. You can take advantage of the fact that the teardown callbacks are called when the response context is removed from the stack so a test can query the database after request handling:
with app.test_client() as client:
resp = client.get('/')
# g.db is still bound if there is such a thing
# and here it's gone
Manual Error Handler Attaching¶
While it is still possible to attach error handlers to
Flask.error_handlers
it’s discouraged to do so and in fact
deprecated. In general we no longer recommend custom error handler
attaching via assignments to the underlying dictionary due to the more
complex internal handling to support arbitrary exception classes and
blueprints. See Flask.errorhandler()
for more information.
The proper upgrade is to change this:
app.error_handlers[403] = handle_error
Into this:
app.register_error_handler(403, handle_error)
Alternatively you should just attach the function with a decorator:
@app.errorhandler(403)
def handle_error(e):
...
(Note that register_error_handler()
is new in Flask 0.7)
Blueprint Support¶
Blueprints replace the previous concept of “Modules” in Flask. They provide better semantics for various features and work better with large applications. The update script provided should be able to upgrade your applications automatically, but there might be some cases where it fails to upgrade. What changed?
Blueprints need explicit names. Modules had an automatic name guessing scheme where the shortname for the module was taken from the last part of the import module. The upgrade script tries to guess that name but it might fail as this information could change at runtime.
Blueprints have an inverse behavior for
url_for()
. Previously.foo
toldurl_for()
that it should look for the endpointfoo
on the application. Now it means “relative to current module”. The script will inverse all calls tourl_for()
automatically for you. It will do this in a very eager way so you might end up with some unnecessary leading dots in your code if you’re not using modules.Blueprints do not automatically provide static folders. They will also no longer automatically export templates from a folder called
templates
next to their location however but it can be enabled from the constructor. Same with static files: if you want to continue serving static files you need to tell the constructor explicitly the path to the static folder (which can be relative to the blueprint’s module path).Rendering templates was simplified. Now the blueprints can provide template folders which are added to a general template searchpath. This means that you need to add another subfolder with the blueprint’s name into that folder if you want
blueprintname/template.html
as the template name.
If you continue to use the Module
object which is deprecated, Flask will
restore the previous behavior as good as possible. However we strongly
recommend upgrading to the new blueprints as they provide a lot of useful
improvement such as the ability to attach a blueprint multiple times,
blueprint specific error handlers and a lot more.
Version 0.6¶
Flask 0.6 comes with a backwards incompatible change which affects the order of after-request handlers. Previously they were called in the order of the registration, now they are called in reverse order. This change was made so that Flask behaves more like people expected it to work and how other systems handle request pre- and post-processing. If you depend on the order of execution of post-request functions, be sure to change the order.
Another change that breaks backwards compatibility is that context
processors will no longer override values passed directly to the template
rendering function. If for example request
is as variable passed
directly to the template, the default context processor will not override
it with the current request object. This makes it easier to extend
context processors later to inject additional variables without breaking
existing template not expecting them.
Version 0.5¶
Flask 0.5 is the first release that comes as a Python package instead of a single module. There were a couple of internal refactoring so if you depend on undocumented internal details you probably have to adapt the imports.
The following changes may be relevant to your application:
autoescaping no longer happens for all templates. Instead it is configured to only happen on files ending with
.html
,.htm
,.xml
and.xhtml
. If you have templates with different extensions you should override theselect_jinja_autoescape()
method.Flask no longer supports zipped applications in this release. This functionality might come back in future releases if there is demand for this feature. Removing support for this makes the Flask internal code easier to understand and fixes a couple of small issues that make debugging harder than necessary.
The
create_jinja_loader
function is gone. If you want to customize the Jinja loader now, use thecreate_jinja_environment()
method instead.
Version 0.4¶
For application developers there are no changes that require changes in
your code. In case you are developing on a Flask extension however, and
that extension has a unittest-mode you might want to link the activation
of that mode to the new TESTING
flag.
Version 0.3¶
Flask 0.3 introduces configuration support and logging as well as categories for flashing messages. All these are features that are 100% backwards compatible but you might want to take advantage of them.
Configuration Support¶
The configuration support makes it easier to write any kind of application that requires some sort of configuration. (Which most likely is the case for any application out there).
If you previously had code like this:
app.debug = DEBUG
app.secret_key = SECRET_KEY
You no longer have to do that, instead you can just load a configuration into the config object. How this works is outlined in Configuration Handling.
Logging Integration¶
Flask now configures a logger for you with some basic and useful defaults. If you run your application in production and want to profit from automatic error logging, you might be interested in attaching a proper log handler. Also you can start logging warnings and errors into the logger when appropriately. For more information on that, read Application Errors.
Categories for Flash Messages¶
Flash messages can now have categories attached. This makes it possible to render errors, warnings or regular messages differently for example. This is an opt-in feature because it requires some rethinking in the code.
Read all about that in the Message Flashing pattern.
Changelog¶
Version 1.1.4¶
Released 2021-05-13
Update
static_folder
to use_compat.fspath
instead ofos.fspath
to continue supporting Python < 3.6 #4050
Version 1.1.3¶
Released 2021-05-13
Version 1.1.2¶
Released 2020-04-03
Version 1.1.1¶
Released 2019-07-08
The
flask.json_available
flag was added back for compatibility with some extensions. It will raise a deprecation warning when used, and will be removed in version 2.0.0. #3288
Version 1.1.0¶
Released 2019-07-04
Bump minimum Werkzeug version to >= 0.15.
Drop support for Python 3.4.
Error handlers for
InternalServerError
or500
will always be passed an instance ofInternalServerError
. If they are invoked due to an unhandled exception, that original exception is now available ase.original_exception
rather than being passed directly to the handler. The same is true if the handler is for the baseHTTPException
. This makes error handler behavior more consistent. #3266Flask.finalize_request()
is called for all unhandled exceptions even if there is no500
error handler.
Flask.logger
takes the same name asFlask.name
(the value passed asFlask(import_name)
. This reverts 1.0’s behavior of always logging to"flask.app"
, in order to support multiple apps in the same process. A warning will be shown if old configuration is detected that needs to be moved. #2866flask.RequestContext.copy()
includes the current session object in the request context copy. This preventssession
pointing to an out-of-date object. #2935Using built-in RequestContext, unprintable Unicode characters in Host header will result in a HTTP 400 response and not HTTP 500 as previously. #2994
send_file()
supportsPathLike
objects as described in PEP 0519, to supportpathlib
in Python 3. #3059send_file()
supportsBytesIO
partial content. #2957open_resource()
accepts the “rt” file mode. This still does the same thing as “r”. #3163The
MethodView.methods
attribute set in a base class is used by subclasses. #3138Flask.jinja_options
is adict
instead of anImmutableDict
to allow easier configuration. Changes must still be made before creating the environment. #3190Flask’s
JSONMixin
for the request and response wrappers was moved into Werkzeug. Use Werkzeug’s version with Flask-specific support. This bumps the Werkzeug dependency to >= 0.15. #3125The
flask
command entry point is simplified to take advantage of Werkzeug 0.15’s better reloader support. This bumps the Werkzeug dependency to >= 0.15. #3022Support
static_url_path
that ends with a forward slash. #3134Support empty
static_folder
without requiring setting an emptystatic_url_path
as well. #3124jsonify()
supportsdataclasses.dataclass
objects. #3195Allow customizing the
Flask.url_map_class
used for routing. #3069The development server port can be set to 0, which tells the OS to pick an available port. #2926
The return value from
cli.load_dotenv()
is more consistent with the documentation. It will returnFalse
if python-dotenv is not installed, or if the given path isn’t a file. #2937Signaling support has a stub for the
connect_via
method when the Blinker library is not installed. #3208Add an
--extra-files
option to theflask run
CLI command to specify extra files that will trigger the reloader on change. #2897Allow returning a dictionary from a view function. Similar to how returning a string will produce a
text/html
response, returning a dict will calljsonify
to produce aapplication/json
response. #3111Blueprints have a
cli
Click group likeapp.cli
. CLI commands registered with a blueprint will be available as a group under theflask
command. #1357.When using the test client as a context manager (
with client:
), all preserved request contexts are popped when the block exits, ensuring nested contexts are cleaned up correctly. #3157Show a better error message when the view return type is not supported. #3214
flask.testing.make_test_environ_builder()
has been deprecated in favour of a new classflask.testing.EnvironBuilder
. #3232The
flask run
command no longer fails if Python is not built with SSL support. Using the--cert
option will show an appropriate error message. #3211URL matching now occurs after the request context is pushed, rather than when it’s created. This allows custom URL converters to access the app and request contexts, such as to query a database for an id. #3088
Version 1.0.4¶
Released 2019-07-04
The key information for
BadRequestKeyError
is no longer cleared outside debug mode, so error handlers can still access it. This requires upgrading to Werkzeug 0.15.5. #3249send_file
url quotes the “:” and “/” characters for more compatible UTF-8 filename support in some browsers. #3074Fixes for PEP451 import loaders and pytest 5.x. #3275
Show message about dotenv on stderr instead of stdout. #3285
Version 1.0.3¶
Released 2019-05-17
send_file()
encodes filenames as ASCII instead of Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1). This fixes compatibility with Gunicorn, which is stricter about header encodings than PEP 3333. #2766Allow custom CLIs using
FlaskGroup
to set the debug flag without it always being overwritten based on environment variables. #2765flask --version
outputs Werkzeug’s version and simplifies the Python version. #2825send_file()
handles anattachment_filename
that is a native Python 2 string (bytes) with UTF-8 coded bytes. #2933A catch-all error handler registered for
HTTPException
will not handleRoutingException
, which is used internally during routing. This fixes the unexpected behavior that had been introduced in 1.0. #2986Passing the
json
argument toapp.test_client
does not push/pop an extra app context. #2900
Version 1.0.2¶
Released 2018-05-02
Version 1.0.1¶
Released 2018-04-29
Fix registering partials (with no
__name__
) as view functions. #2730Don’t treat lists returned from view functions the same as tuples. Only tuples are interpreted as response data. #2736
Extra slashes between a blueprint’s
url_prefix
and a route URL are merged. This fixes some backwards compatibility issues with the change in 1.0. #2731, #2742Only trap
BadRequestKeyError
errors in debug mode, not allBadRequest
errors. This allowsabort(400)
to continue working as expected. #2735The
FLASK_SKIP_DOTENV
environment variable can be set to1
to skip automatically loading dotenv files. #2722
Version 1.0¶
Released 2018-04-26
Python 2.6 and 3.3 are no longer supported.
Bump minimum dependency versions to the latest stable versions: Werkzeug >= 0.14, Jinja >= 2.10, itsdangerous >= 0.24, Click >= 5.1. #2586
Skip
app.run
when a Flask application is run from the command line. This avoids some behavior that was confusing to debug.Change the default for
JSONIFY_PRETTYPRINT_REGULAR
toFalse
.jsonify()
returns a compact format by default, and an indented format in debug mode. #2193Flask.__init__
accepts thehost_matching
argument and sets it onurl_map
. #1559Flask.__init__
accepts thestatic_host
argument and passes it as thehost
argument when defining the static route. #1559send_file()
supports Unicode inattachment_filename
. #2223Pass
_scheme
argument fromurl_for()
tohandle_url_build_error()
. #2017add_url_rule()
accepts theprovide_automatic_options
argument to disable adding theOPTIONS
method. #1489MethodView
subclasses inherit method handlers from base classes. #1936Errors caused while opening the session at the beginning of the request are handled by the app’s error handlers. #2254
Blueprints gained
json_encoder
andjson_decoder
attributes to override the app’s encoder and decoder. #1898Flask.make_response()
raisesTypeError
instead ofValueError
for bad response types. The error messages have been improved to describe why the type is invalid. #2256Add
routes
CLI command to output routes registered on the application. #2259Show warning when session cookie domain is a bare hostname or an IP address, as these may not behave properly in some browsers, such as Chrome. #2282
Allow IP address as exact session cookie domain. #2282
SESSION_COOKIE_DOMAIN
is set if it is detected throughSERVER_NAME
. #2282Auto-detect zero-argument app factory called
create_app
ormake_app
fromFLASK_APP
. #2297Factory functions are not required to take a
script_info
parameter to work with theflask
command. If they take a single parameter or a parameter namedscript_info
, theScriptInfo
object will be passed. #2319FLASK_APP
can be set to an app factory, with arguments if needed, for exampleFLASK_APP=myproject.app:create_app('dev')
. #2326FLASK_APP
can point to local packages that are not installed in editable mode, althoughpip install -e
is still preferred. #2414The
View
class attributeprovide_automatic_options
is set inas_view()
, to be detected byadd_url_rule()
. #2316Error handling will try handlers registered for
blueprint, code
,app, code
,blueprint, exception
,app, exception
. #2314Cookie
is added to the response’sVary
header if the session is accessed at all during the request (and not deleted). #2288test_request_context()
acceptssubdomain
andurl_scheme
arguments for use when building the base URL. #1621Set
APPLICATION_ROOT
to'/'
by default. This was already the implicit default when it was set toNone
.TRAP_BAD_REQUEST_ERRORS
is enabled by default in debug mode.BadRequestKeyError
has a message with the bad key in debug mode instead of the generic bad request message. #2348Allow registering new tags with
TaggedJSONSerializer
to support storing other types in the session cookie. #2352Only open the session if the request has not been pushed onto the context stack yet. This allows
stream_with_context()
generators to access the same session that the containing view uses. #2354Add
json
keyword argument for the test client request methods. This will dump the given object as JSON and set the appropriate content type. #2358Extract JSON handling to a mixin applied to both the
Request
andResponse
classes. This adds theis_json()
andget_json()
methods to the response to make testing JSON response much easier. #2358Removed error handler caching because it caused unexpected results for some exception inheritance hierarchies. Register handlers explicitly for each exception if you want to avoid traversing the MRO. #2362
Fix incorrect JSON encoding of aware, non-UTC datetimes. #2374
Template auto reloading will honor debug mode even even if
jinja_env
was already accessed. #2373The following old deprecated code was removed. #2385
flask.ext
- import extensions directly by their name instead of through theflask.ext
namespace. For example,import flask.ext.sqlalchemy
becomesimport flask_sqlalchemy
.Flask.init_jinja_globals
- extendFlask.create_jinja_environment()
instead.Flask.error_handlers
- tracked byFlask.error_handler_spec
, useFlask.errorhandler()
to register handlers.Flask.request_globals_class
- useFlask.app_ctx_globals_class
instead.Flask.static_path
- useFlask.static_url_path
instead.Request.module
- useRequest.blueprint
instead.
The
Request.json
property is no longer deprecated. #1421Support passing a
EnvironBuilder
ordict
totest_client.open
. #2412The
flask
command andFlask.run()
will load environment variables from.env
and.flaskenv
files if python-dotenv is installed. #2416When passing a full URL to the test client, the scheme in the URL is used instead of
PREFERRED_URL_SCHEME
. #2430Flask.logger
has been simplified.LOGGER_NAME
andLOGGER_HANDLER_POLICY
config was removed. The logger is always namedflask.app
. The level is only set on first access, it doesn’t checkFlask.debug
each time. Only one format is used, not different ones depending onFlask.debug
. No handlers are removed, and a handler is only added if no handlers are already configured. #2436Blueprint view function names may not contain dots. #2450
Fix a
ValueError
caused by invalidRange
requests in some cases. #2526The development server uses threads by default. #2529
Loading config files with
silent=True
will ignoreENOTDIR
errors. #2581Pass
--cert
and--key
options toflask run
to run the development server over HTTPS. #2606Added
SESSION_COOKIE_SAMESITE
to control theSameSite
attribute on the session cookie. #2607Added
test_cli_runner()
to create a Click runner that can invoke Flask CLI commands for testing. #2636Subdomain matching is disabled by default and setting
SERVER_NAME
does not implicitly enable it. It can be enabled by passingsubdomain_matching=True
to theFlask
constructor. #2635A single trailing slash is stripped from the blueprint
url_prefix
when it is registered with the app. #2629Request.get_json()
doesn’t cache the result if parsing fails whensilent
is true. #2651Request.get_json()
no longer accepts arbitrary encodings. Incoming JSON should be encoded using UTF-8 per RFC 8259, but Flask will autodetect UTF-8, -16, or -32. #2691Added
MAX_COOKIE_SIZE
andResponse.max_cookie_size
to control when Werkzeug warns about large cookies that browsers may ignore. #2693Updated documentation theme to make docs look better in small windows. #2709
Rewrote the tutorial docs and example project to take a more structured approach to help new users avoid common pitfalls. #2676
Version 0.12.5¶
Released 2020-02-10
Pin Werkzeug to < 1.0.0. #3497
Version 0.12.4¶
Released 2018-04-29
Repackage 0.12.3 to fix package layout issue. #2728
Version 0.12.3¶
Released 2018-04-26
Request.get_json()
no longer accepts arbitrary encodings. Incoming JSON should be encoded using UTF-8 per RFC 8259, but Flask will autodetect UTF-8, -16, or -32. #2692Fix a Python warning about imports when using
python -m flask
. #2666Fix a
ValueError
caused by invalidRange
requests in some cases.
Version 0.12.2¶
Released 2017-05-16
Fix a bug in
safe_join
on Windows.
Version 0.12.1¶
Released 2017-03-31
Prevent
flask run
from showing aNoAppException
when anImportError
occurs within the imported application module.Fix encoding behavior of
app.config.from_pyfile
for Python 3. #2118Use the
SERVER_NAME
config if it is present as default values forapp.run
. #2109, #2152Call
ctx.auto_pop
with the exception object instead ofNone
, in the event that aBaseException
such asKeyboardInterrupt
is raised in a request handler.
Version 0.12¶
Released 2016-12-21, codename Punsch
The cli command now responds to
--version
.Mimetype guessing and ETag generation for file-like objects in
send_file
has been removed. #104, :pr`1849`Mimetype guessing in
send_file
now fails loudly and doesn’t fall back toapplication/octet-stream
. #1988Make
flask.safe_join
able to join multiple paths likeos.path.join
#1730Revert a behavior change that made the dev server crash instead of returning an Internal Server Error. #2006
Correctly invoke response handlers for both regular request dispatching as well as error handlers.
Disable logger propagation by default for the app logger.
Add support for range requests in
send_file
.app.test_client
includes preset default environment, which can now be directly set, instead of perclient.get
.Fix crash when running under PyPy3. #1814
Version 0.11.1¶
Released 2016-06-07
Fixed a bug that prevented
FLASK_APP=foobar/__init__.py
from working. #1872
Version 0.11¶
Released 2016-05-29, codename Absinthe
Added support to serializing top-level arrays to
flask.jsonify()
. This introduces a security risk in ancient browsers. See JSON Security for details.Added before_render_template signal.
Added
**kwargs
toflask.Test.test_client()
to support passing additional keyword arguments to the constructor offlask.Flask.test_client_class
.Added
SESSION_REFRESH_EACH_REQUEST
config key that controls the set-cookie behavior. If set toTrue
a permanent session will be refreshed each request and get their lifetime extended, if set toFalse
it will only be modified if the session actually modifies. Non permanent sessions are not affected by this and will always expire if the browser window closes.Made Flask support custom JSON mimetypes for incoming data.
Added support for returning tuples in the form
(response, headers)
from a view function.Added
flask.Config.from_json()
.Added
flask.Flask.config_class
.Added
flask.Config.get_namespace()
.Templates are no longer automatically reloaded outside of debug mode. This can be configured with the new
TEMPLATES_AUTO_RELOAD
config key.Added a workaround for a limitation in Python 3.3’s namespace loader.
Added support for explicit root paths when using Python 3.3’s namespace packages.
Added flask and the
flask.cli
module to start the local debug server through the click CLI system. This is recommended over the oldflask.run()
method as it works faster and more reliable due to a different design and also replacesFlask-Script
.Error handlers that match specific classes are now checked first, thereby allowing catching exceptions that are subclasses of HTTP exceptions (in
werkzeug.exceptions
). This makes it possible for an extension author to create exceptions that will by default result in the HTTP error of their choosing, but may be caught with a custom error handler if desired.Added
flask.Config.from_mapping()
.Flask will now log by default even if debug is disabled. The log format is now hardcoded but the default log handling can be disabled through the
LOGGER_HANDLER_POLICY
configuration key.Removed deprecated module functionality.
Added the
EXPLAIN_TEMPLATE_LOADING
config flag which when enabled will instruct Flask to explain how it locates templates. This should help users debug when the wrong templates are loaded.Enforce blueprint handling in the order they were registered for template loading.
Ported test suite to py.test.
Deprecated
request.json
in favour ofrequest.get_json()
.Add “pretty” and “compressed” separators definitions in jsonify() method. Reduces JSON response size when
JSONIFY_PRETTYPRINT_REGULAR=False
by removing unnecessary white space included by default after separators.JSON responses are now terminated with a newline character, because it is a convention that UNIX text files end with a newline and some clients don’t deal well when this newline is missing. This came up originally as a part of https://github.com/postmanlabs/httpbin/issues/168. #1262
The automatically provided
OPTIONS
method is now correctly disabled if the user registered an overriding rule with the lowercase-versionoptions
. #1288flask.json.jsonify
now supports thedatetime.date
type. #1326Don’t leak exception info of already caught exceptions to context teardown handlers. #1393
Allow custom Jinja environment subclasses. #1422
Updated extension dev guidelines.
flask.g
now haspop()
andsetdefault
methods.Turn on autoescape for
flask.templating.render_template_string
by default. #1515flask.ext
is now deprecated. #1484send_from_directory
now raises BadRequest if the filename is invalid on the server OS. #1763Added the
JSONIFY_MIMETYPE
configuration variable. #1728Exceptions during teardown handling will no longer leave bad application contexts lingering around.
Fixed broken
test_appcontext_signals()
test case.Raise an
AttributeError
inflask.helpers.find_package()
with a useful message explaining why it is raised when a PEP 302 import hook is used without anis_package()
method.Fixed an issue causing exceptions raised before entering a request or app context to be passed to teardown handlers.
Fixed an issue with query parameters getting removed from requests in the test client when absolute URLs were requested.
Made
@before_first_request
into a decorator as intended.Fixed an etags bug when sending a file streams with a name.
Fixed
send_from_directory
not expanding to the application root path correctly.Changed logic of before first request handlers to flip the flag after invoking. This will allow some uses that are potentially dangerous but should probably be permitted.
Fixed Python 3 bug when a handler from
app.url_build_error_handlers
reraises theBuildError
.
Version 0.10.1¶
Released 2013-06-14
Fixed an issue where
|tojson
was not quoting single quotes which made the filter not work properly in HTML attributes. Now it’s possible to use that filter in single quoted attributes. This should make using that filter with angular.js easier.Added support for byte strings back to the session system. This broke compatibility with the common case of people putting binary data for token verification into the session.
Fixed an issue where registering the same method twice for the same endpoint would trigger an exception incorrectly.
Version 0.10¶
Released 2013-06-13, codename Limoncello
Changed default cookie serialization format from pickle to JSON to limit the impact an attacker can do if the secret key leaks. See Version 0.10 for more information.
Added
template_test
methods in addition to the already existingtemplate_filter
method family.Added
template_global
methods in addition to the already existingtemplate_filter
method family.Set the content-length header for x-sendfile.
tojson
filter now does not escape script blocks in HTML5 parsers.tojson
used in templates is now safe by default due. This was allowed due to the different escaping behavior.Flask will now raise an error if you attempt to register a new function on an already used endpoint.
Added wrapper module around simplejson and added default serialization of datetime objects. This allows much easier customization of how JSON is handled by Flask or any Flask extension.
Removed deprecated internal
flask.session
module alias. Useflask.sessions
instead to get the session module. This is not to be confused withflask.session
the session proxy.Templates can now be rendered without request context. The behavior is slightly different as the
request
,session
andg
objects will not be available and blueprint’s context processors are not called.The config object is now available to the template as a real global and not through a context processor which makes it available even in imported templates by default.
Added an option to generate non-ascii encoded JSON which should result in less bytes being transmitted over the network. It’s disabled by default to not cause confusion with existing libraries that might expect
flask.json.dumps
to return bytestrings by default.flask.g
is now stored on the app context instead of the request context.flask.g
now gained aget()
method for not erroring out on non existing items.flask.g
now can be used with thein
operator to see what’s defined and it now is iterable and will yield all attributes stored.flask.Flask.request_globals_class
got renamed toflask.Flask.app_ctx_globals_class
which is a better name to what it does since 0.10.request
,session
andg
are now also added as proxies to the template context which makes them available in imported templates. One has to be very careful with those though because usage outside of macros might cause caching.Flask will no longer invoke the wrong error handlers if a proxy exception is passed through.
Added a workaround for chrome’s cookies in localhost not working as intended with domain names.
Changed logic for picking defaults for cookie values from sessions to work better with Google Chrome.
Added
message_flashed
signal that simplifies flashing testing.Added support for copying of request contexts for better working with greenlets.
Removed custom JSON HTTP exception subclasses. If you were relying on them you can reintroduce them again yourself trivially. Using them however is strongly discouraged as the interface was flawed.
Python requirements changed: requiring Python 2.6 or 2.7 now to prepare for Python 3.3 port.
Changed how the teardown system is informed about exceptions. This is now more reliable in case something handles an exception halfway through the error handling process.
Request context preservation in debug mode now keeps the exception information around which means that teardown handlers are able to distinguish error from success cases.
Added the
JSONIFY_PRETTYPRINT_REGULAR
configuration variable.Flask now orders JSON keys by default to not trash HTTP caches due to different hash seeds between different workers.
Added
appcontext_pushed
andappcontext_popped
signals.The builtin run method now takes the
SERVER_NAME
into account when picking the default port to run on.Added
flask.request.get_json()
as a replacement for the oldflask.request.json
property.
Version 0.9¶
Released 2012-07-01, codename Campari
The
flask.Request.on_json_loading_failed()
now returns a JSON formatted response by default.The
flask.url_for()
function now can generate anchors to the generated links.The
flask.url_for()
function now can also explicitly generate URL rules specific to a given HTTP method.Logger now only returns the debug log setting if it was not set explicitly.
Unregister a circular dependency between the WSGI environment and the request object when shutting down the request. This means that environ
werkzeug.request
will beNone
after the response was returned to the WSGI server but has the advantage that the garbage collector is not needed on CPython to tear down the request unless the user created circular dependencies themselves.Session is now stored after callbacks so that if the session payload is stored in the session you can still modify it in an after request callback.
The
flask.Flask
class will avoid importing the provided import name if it can (the required first parameter), to benefit tools which build Flask instances programmatically. The Flask class will fall back to using import on systems with custom module hooks, e.g. Google App Engine, or when the import name is inside a zip archive (usually a .egg) prior to Python 2.7.Blueprints now have a decorator to add custom template filters application wide,
flask.Blueprint.app_template_filter()
.The Flask and Blueprint classes now have a non-decorator method for adding custom template filters application wide,
flask.Flask.add_template_filter()
andflask.Blueprint.add_app_template_filter()
.The
flask.get_flashed_messages()
function now allows rendering flashed message categories in separate blocks, through acategory_filter
argument.The
flask.Flask.run()
method now acceptsNone
forhost
andport
arguments, using default values whenNone
. This allows for calling run using configuration values, e.g.app.run(app.config.get('MYHOST'), app.config.get('MYPORT'))
, with proper behavior whether or not a config file is provided.The
flask.render_template()
method now accepts a either an iterable of template names or a single template name. Previously, it only accepted a single template name. On an iterable, the first template found is rendered.Added
flask.Flask.app_context()
which works very similar to the request context but only provides access to the current application. This also adds support for URL generation without an active request context.View functions can now return a tuple with the first instance being an instance of
flask.Response
. This allows for returningjsonify(error="error msg"), 400
from a view function.Flask
andBlueprint
now provide aget_send_file_max_age()
hook for subclasses to override behavior of serving static files from Flask when usingflask.Flask.send_static_file()
(used for the default static file handler) andsend_file()
. This hook is provided a filename, which for example allows changing cache controls by file extension. The default max-age forsend_file
and static files can be configured through a newSEND_FILE_MAX_AGE_DEFAULT
configuration variable, which is used in the defaultget_send_file_max_age
implementation.Fixed an assumption in sessions implementation which could break message flashing on sessions implementations which use external storage.
Changed the behavior of tuple return values from functions. They are no longer arguments to the response object, they now have a defined meaning.
Added
flask.Flask.request_globals_class
to allow a specific class to be used on creation of theg
instance of each request.Added
required_methods
attribute to view functions to force-add methods on registration.Added
flask.after_this_request()
.Added
flask.stream_with_context()
and the ability to push contexts multiple times without producing unexpected behavior.
Version 0.8.1¶
Released 2012-07-01
Fixed an issue with the undocumented
flask.session
module to not work properly on Python 2.5. It should not be used but did cause some problems for package managers.
Version 0.8¶
Released 2011-09-29, codename Rakija
Refactored session support into a session interface so that the implementation of the sessions can be changed without having to override the Flask class.
Empty session cookies are now deleted properly automatically.
View functions can now opt out of getting the automatic OPTIONS implementation.
HTTP exceptions and Bad Request errors can now be trapped so that they show up normally in the traceback.
Flask in debug mode is now detecting some common problems and tries to warn you about them.
Flask in debug mode will now complain with an assertion error if a view was attached after the first request was handled. This gives earlier feedback when users forget to import view code ahead of time.
Added the ability to register callbacks that are only triggered once at the beginning of the first request. (
Flask.before_first_request()
)Malformed JSON data will now trigger a bad request HTTP exception instead of a value error which usually would result in a 500 internal server error if not handled. This is a backwards incompatible change.
Applications now not only have a root path where the resources and modules are located but also an instance path which is the designated place to drop files that are modified at runtime (uploads etc.). Also this is conceptually only instance depending and outside version control so it’s the perfect place to put configuration files etc. For more information see Instance Folders.
Added the
APPLICATION_ROOT
configuration variable.Implemented
session_transaction()
to easily modify sessions from the test environment.Refactored test client internally. The
APPLICATION_ROOT
configuration variable as well asSERVER_NAME
are now properly used by the test client as defaults.Added
flask.views.View.decorators
to support simpler decorating of pluggable (class-based) views.Fixed an issue where the test client if used with the “with” statement did not trigger the execution of the teardown handlers.
Added finer control over the session cookie parameters.
HEAD requests to a method view now automatically dispatch to the
get
method if no handler was implemented.Implemented the virtual
flask.ext
package to import extensions from.The context preservation on exceptions is now an integral component of Flask itself and no longer of the test client. This cleaned up some internal logic and lowers the odds of runaway request contexts in unittests.
Fixed the Jinja2 environment’s
list_templates
method not returning the correct names when blueprints or modules were involved.
Version 0.7.2¶
Released 2011-07-06
Fixed an issue with URL processors not properly working on blueprints.
Version 0.7.1¶
Released 2011-06-29
Added missing future import that broke 2.5 compatibility.
Fixed an infinite redirect issue with blueprints.
Version 0.7¶
Released 2011-06-28, codename Grappa
Added
make_default_options_response()
which can be used by subclasses to alter the default behavior forOPTIONS
responses.Unbound locals now raise a proper
RuntimeError
instead of anAttributeError
.Mimetype guessing and etag support based on file objects is now deprecated for
flask.send_file()
because it was unreliable. Pass filenames instead or attach your own etags and provide a proper mimetype by hand.Static file handling for modules now requires the name of the static folder to be supplied explicitly. The previous autodetection was not reliable and caused issues on Google’s App Engine. Until 1.0 the old behavior will continue to work but issue dependency warnings.
Fixed a problem for Flask to run on jython.
Added a
PROPAGATE_EXCEPTIONS
configuration variable that can be used to flip the setting of exception propagation which previously was linked toDEBUG
alone and is now linked to eitherDEBUG
orTESTING
.Flask no longer internally depends on rules being added through the
add_url_rule
function and can now also accept regular werkzeug rules added to the url map.Added an
endpoint
method to the flask application object which allows one to register a callback to an arbitrary endpoint with a decorator.Use Last-Modified for static file sending instead of Date which was incorrectly introduced in 0.6.
Added
create_jinja_loader
to override the loader creation process.Implemented a silent flag for
config.from_pyfile
.Added
teardown_request
decorator, for functions that should run at the end of a request regardless of whether an exception occurred. Also the behavior forafter_request
was changed. It’s now no longer executed when an exception is raised. See Upgrading to new Teardown HandlingImplemented
flask.has_request_context()
Deprecated
init_jinja_globals
. Override thecreate_jinja_environment()
method instead to achieve the same functionality.Added
flask.safe_join()
The automatic JSON request data unpacking now looks at the charset mimetype parameter.
Don’t modify the session on
flask.get_flashed_messages()
if there are no messages in the session.before_request
handlers are now able to abort requests with errors.It is not possible to define user exception handlers. That way you can provide custom error messages from a central hub for certain errors that might occur during request processing (for instance database connection errors, timeouts from remote resources etc.).
Blueprints can provide blueprint specific error handlers.
Implemented generic Pluggable Views (class-based views).
Version 0.6.1¶
Released 2010-12-31
Fixed an issue where the default
OPTIONS
response was not exposing all valid methods in theAllow
header.Jinja2 template loading syntax now allows “./” in front of a template load path. Previously this caused issues with module setups.
Fixed an issue where the subdomain setting for modules was ignored for the static folder.
Fixed a security problem that allowed clients to download arbitrary files if the host server was a windows based operating system and the client uses backslashes to escape the directory the files where exposed from.
Version 0.6¶
Released 2010-07-27, codename Whisky
After request functions are now called in reverse order of registration.
OPTIONS is now automatically implemented by Flask unless the application explicitly adds ‘OPTIONS’ as method to the URL rule. In this case no automatic OPTIONS handling kicks in.
Static rules are now even in place if there is no static folder for the module. This was implemented to aid GAE which will remove the static folder if it’s part of a mapping in the .yml file.
The
config
is now available in the templates asconfig
.Context processors will no longer override values passed directly to the render function.
Added the ability to limit the incoming request data with the new
MAX_CONTENT_LENGTH
configuration value.The endpoint for the
flask.Module.add_url_rule()
method is now optional to be consistent with the function of the same name on the application object.Added a
flask.make_response()
function that simplifies creating response object instances in views.Added signalling support based on blinker. This feature is currently optional and supposed to be used by extensions and applications. If you want to use it, make sure to have blinker installed.
Refactored the way URL adapters are created. This process is now fully customizable with the
create_url_adapter()
method.Modules can now register for a subdomain instead of just an URL prefix. This makes it possible to bind a whole module to a configurable subdomain.
Version 0.5.2¶
Released 2010-07-15
Fixed another issue with loading templates from directories when modules were used.
Version 0.5.1¶
Released 2010-07-06
Fixes an issue with template loading from directories when modules where used.
Version 0.5¶
Released 2010-07-06, codename Calvados
Fixed a bug with subdomains that was caused by the inability to specify the server name. The server name can now be set with the
SERVER_NAME
config key. This key is now also used to set the session cookie cross-subdomain wide.Autoescaping is no longer active for all templates. Instead it is only active for
.html
,.htm
,.xml
and.xhtml
. Inside templates this behavior can be changed with theautoescape
tag.Refactored Flask internally. It now consists of more than a single file.
flask.send_file()
now emits etags and has the ability to do conditional responses builtin.(temporarily) dropped support for zipped applications. This was a rarely used feature and led to some confusing behavior.
Added support for per-package template and static-file directories.
Removed support for
create_jinja_loader
which is no longer used in 0.5 due to the improved module support.Added a helper function to expose files from any directory.
Version 0.4¶
Released 2010-06-18, codename Rakia
Added the ability to register application wide error handlers from modules.
after_request()
handlers are now also invoked if the request dies with an exception and an error handling page kicks in.Test client has not the ability to preserve the request context for a little longer. This can also be used to trigger custom requests that do not pop the request stack for testing.
Because the Python standard library caches loggers, the name of the logger is configurable now to better support unittests.
Added
TESTING
switch that can activate unittesting helpers.The logger switches to
DEBUG
mode now if debug is enabled.
Version 0.3.1¶
Released 2010-05-28
Fixed a error reporting bug with
flask.Config.from_envvar()
Removed some unused code from flask
Release does no longer include development leftover files (.git folder for themes, built documentation in zip and pdf file and some .pyc files)
Version 0.3¶
Released 2010-05-28, codename Schnaps
Added support for categories for flashed messages.
The application now configures a
logging.Handler
and will log request handling exceptions to that logger when not in debug mode. This makes it possible to receive mails on server errors for example.Added support for context binding that does not require the use of the with statement for playing in the console.
The request context is now available within the with statement making it possible to further push the request context or pop it.
Added support for configurations.
Version 0.2¶
Released 2010-05-12, codename J?germeister
Various bugfixes
Integrated JSON support
Added
get_template_attribute()
helper function.add_url_rule()
can now also register a view function.Refactored internal request dispatching.
Server listens on 127.0.0.1 by default now to fix issues with chrome.
Added external URL support.
Added support for
send_file()
Module support and internal request handling refactoring to better support pluggable applications.
Sessions can be set to be permanent now on a per-session basis.
Better error reporting on missing secret keys.
Added support for Google Appengine.
Version 0.1¶
Released 2010-04-16
First public preview release.
License¶
Source License¶
This license applies to all files in the Flask repository and source distribution. This includes Flask’s source code, the examples, and tests, as well as the documentation.
Copyright 2010 Pallets
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
Neither the name of the copyright holder nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
Artwork License¶
This license applies to Flask’s logo.
Copyright 2010 Pallets
This logo or a modified version may be used by anyone to refer to the Flask project, but does not indicate endorsement by the project.
Redistribution and use in source (SVG) and binary (renders in PNG, etc.) forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice and this list of conditions.
Neither the name of the copyright holder nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
We would appreciate that you make the image a link to https://palletsprojects.com/p/flask/ if you use it in a medium that supports links.
How to contribute to Flask¶
Thank you for considering contributing to Flask!
Support questions¶
Please, don’t use the issue tracker for this. Use one of the following resources for questions about your own code:
The
#get-help
channel on our Discord chat: https://discordapp.com/invite/t6rrQZHThe IRC channel
#pocoo
on FreeNode is linked to Discord, but Discord is preferred.
The mailing list flask@python.org for long term discussion or larger issues.
Ask on Stack Overflow. Search with Google first using:
site:stackoverflow.com flask {search term, exception message, etc.}
Reporting issues¶
Describe what you expected to happen.
If possible, include a minimal reproducible example to help us identify the issue. This also helps check that the issue is not with your own code.
Describe what actually happened. Include the full traceback if there was an exception.
List your Python, Flask, and Werkzeug versions. If possible, check if this issue is already fixed in the repository.
Submitting patches¶
Use Black to autoformat your code. This should be done for you as a git pre-commit hook, which gets installed when you run
pip install -e .[dev]
. You may also wish to use Black’s Editor integration.Include tests if your patch is supposed to solve a bug, and explain clearly under which circumstances the bug happens. Make sure the test fails without your patch.
Include a string like “Fixes #123” in your commit message (where 123 is the issue you fixed). See Closing issues using keywords.
First time setup¶
Download and install the latest version of git.
Configure git with your username and email:
git config --global user.name 'your name' git config --global user.email 'your email'
Make sure you have a GitHub account.
Fork Flask to your GitHub account by clicking the Fork button.
Clone your GitHub fork locally:
git clone https://github.com/{username}/flask cd flask
Add the main repository as a remote to update later:
git remote add pallets https://github.com/pallets/flask git fetch pallets
Create a virtualenv:
python3 -m venv env . env/bin/activate # or "env\Scripts\activate" on Windows
Install Flask in editable mode with development dependencies:
pip install -e ".[dev]"
Install the pre-commit framework.
Install the pre-commit hooks:
pre-commit install --install-hooks
Start coding¶
Create a branch to identify the issue you would like to work on. If you’re submitting a bug or documentation fix, branch off of the latest “.x” branch:
git checkout -b your-branch-name origin/1.0.x
If you’re submitting a feature addition or change, branch off of the “master” branch:
git checkout -b your-branch-name origin/master
Using your favorite editor, make your changes, committing as you go.
Include tests that cover any code changes you make. Make sure the test fails without your patch. Run the tests..
Push your commits to GitHub and create a pull request by using:
git push --set-upstream origin your-branch-name
Celebrate 🎉
Running the tests¶
Run the basic test suite with:
pytest
This only runs the tests for the current environment. Whether this is relevant depends on which part of Flask you’re working on. Travis-CI will run the full suite when you submit your pull request.
The full test suite takes a long time to run because it tests multiple combinations of Python and dependencies. You need to have Python 2.7, 3.4, 3.5 3.6, and PyPy 2.7 installed to run all of the environments. Then run:
tox
Running test coverage¶
Generating a report of lines that do not have test coverage can indicate
where to start contributing. Run pytest
using coverage
and generate a
report on the terminal and as an interactive HTML document:
coverage run -m pytest
coverage report
coverage html
# then open htmlcov/index.html
Read more about coverage.
Running the full test suite with tox
will combine the coverage reports
from all runs.
Building the docs¶
Build the docs in the docs
directory using Sphinx:
cd docs
pip install -r requirements.txt
make html
Open _build/html/index.html
in your browser to view the docs.
Read more about Sphinx.
Caution: zero-padded file modes¶
This repository contains several zero-padded file modes that may cause issues when pushing this repository to git hosts other than GitHub. Fixing this is destructive to the commit history, so we suggest ignoring these warnings. If it fails to push and you’re using a self-hosted git service like GitLab, you can turn off repository checks in the admin panel.
These files can also cause issues while cloning. If you have
[fetch]
fsckobjects = true
or
[receive]
fsckObjects = true
set in your git configuration file, cloning this repository will fail. The only solution is to set both of the above settings to false while cloning, and then setting them back to true after the cloning is finished.
Comments¶
Rules for comments are similar to docstrings. Both are formatted with reStructuredText. If a comment is used to document an attribute, put a colon after the opening pound sign (
#
):