mirror of https://github.com/pallets/flask.git
959 lines
32 KiB
ReStructuredText
959 lines
32 KiB
ReStructuredText
Quickstart
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==========
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Eager to get started? This page gives a good introduction to Flask.
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Follow :doc:`installation` to set up a project and install Flask first.
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A Minimal Application
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---------------------
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A minimal Flask application looks something like this:
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.. code-block:: python
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from flask import Flask
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app = Flask(__name__)
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@app.route("/")
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def hello_world():
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return "<p>Hello, World!</p>"
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So what did that code do?
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1. First we imported the :class:`~flask.Flask` class. An instance of
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this class will be our WSGI application.
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2. Next we create an instance of this class. The first argument is the
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name of the application's module or package. ``__name__`` is a
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convenient shortcut for this that is appropriate for most cases.
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This is needed so that Flask knows where to look for resources such
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as templates and static files.
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3. We then use the :meth:`~flask.Flask.route` decorator to tell Flask
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what URL should trigger our function.
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4. The function returns the message we want to display in the user's
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browser. The default content type is HTML, so HTML in the string
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will be rendered by the browser.
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Save it as :file:`hello.py` or something similar. Make sure to not call
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your application :file:`flask.py` because this would conflict with Flask
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itself.
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To run the application, use the :command:`flask` command or
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:command:`python -m flask`. Before you can do that you need
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to tell your terminal the application to work with by exporting the
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``FLASK_APP`` environment variable:
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.. tabs::
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.. group-tab:: Bash
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.. code-block:: text
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$ export FLASK_APP=hello
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$ flask run
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* Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/
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.. group-tab:: Fish
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.. code-block:: text
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$ set -x FLASK_APP hello
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$ flask run
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* Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/
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.. group-tab:: CMD
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.. code-block:: text
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> set FLASK_APP=hello
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> flask run
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* Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/
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.. group-tab:: Powershell
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.. code-block:: text
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> $env:FLASK_APP = "hello"
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> flask run
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* Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/
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.. admonition:: Application Discovery Behavior
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As a shortcut, if the file is named ``app.py`` or ``wsgi.py``, you
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don't have to set the ``FLASK_APP`` environment variable. See
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:doc:`/cli` for more details.
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This launches a very simple builtin server, which is good enough for
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testing but probably not what you want to use in production. For
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deployment options see :doc:`deploying/index`.
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Now head over to http://127.0.0.1:5000/, and you should see your hello
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world greeting.
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If another program is already using port 5000, you'll see
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``OSError: [Errno 98]`` or ``OSError: [WinError 10013]`` when the
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server tries to start. See :ref:`address-already-in-use` for how to
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handle that.
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.. _public-server:
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.. admonition:: Externally Visible Server
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If you run the server you will notice that the server is only accessible
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from your own computer, not from any other in the network. This is the
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default because in debugging mode a user of the application can execute
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arbitrary Python code on your computer.
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If you have the debugger disabled or trust the users on your network,
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you can make the server publicly available simply by adding
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``--host=0.0.0.0`` to the command line::
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$ flask run --host=0.0.0.0
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This tells your operating system to listen on all public IPs.
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What to do if the Server does not Start
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---------------------------------------
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In case the :command:`python -m flask` fails or :command:`flask`
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does not exist, there are multiple reasons this might be the case.
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First of all you need to look at the error message.
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Old Version of Flask
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````````````````````
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Versions of Flask older than 0.11 used to have different ways to start the
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application. In short, the :command:`flask` command did not exist, and
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neither did :command:`python -m flask`. In that case you have two options:
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either upgrade to newer Flask versions or have a look at :doc:`/server`
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to see the alternative method for running a server.
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Invalid Import Name
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```````````````````
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The ``FLASK_APP`` environment variable is the name of the module to import at
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:command:`flask run`. In case that module is incorrectly named you will get an
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import error upon start (or if debug is enabled when you navigate to the
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application). It will tell you what it tried to import and why it failed.
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The most common reason is a typo or because you did not actually create an
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``app`` object.
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Debug Mode
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----------
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The ``flask run`` command can do more than just start the development
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server. By enabling debug mode, the server will automatically reload if
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code changes, and will show an interactive debugger in the browser if an
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error occurs during a request.
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.. image:: _static/debugger.png
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:align: center
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:class: screenshot
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:alt: The interactive debugger in action.
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.. warning::
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The debugger allows executing arbitrary Python code from the
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browser. It is protected by a pin, but still represents a major
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security risk. Do not run the development server or debugger in a
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production environment.
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To enable all development features, set the ``FLASK_ENV`` environment
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variable to ``development`` before calling ``flask run``.
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.. tabs::
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.. group-tab:: Bash
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.. code-block:: text
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$ export FLASK_ENV=development
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$ flask run
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.. group-tab:: Fish
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.. code-block:: text
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$ set -x FLASK_ENV development
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$ flask run
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.. group-tab:: CMD
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.. code-block:: text
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> set FLASK_ENV=development
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> flask run
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.. group-tab:: Powershell
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.. code-block:: text
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> $env:FLASK_ENV = "development"
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> flask run
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See also:
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- :doc:`/server` and :doc:`/cli` for information about running in
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development mode.
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- :doc:`/debugging` for information about using the built-in debugger
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and other debuggers.
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- :doc:`/logging` and :doc:`/errorhandling` to log errors and display
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nice error pages.
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HTML Escaping
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-------------
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When returning HTML (the default response type in Flask), any
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user-provided values rendered in the output must be escaped to protect
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from injection attacks. HTML templates rendered with Jinja, introduced
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later, will do this automatically.
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:func:`~markupsafe.escape`, shown here, can be used manually. It is
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omitted in most examples for brevity, but you should always be aware of
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how you're using untrusted data.
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.. code-block:: python
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from markupsafe import escape
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@app.route("/<name>")
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def hello(name):
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return f"Hello, {escape(name)}!"
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If a user managed to submit the name ``<script>alert("bad")</script>``,
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escaping causes it to be rendered as text, rather than running the
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script in the user's browser.
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``<name>`` in the route captures a value from the URL and passes it to
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the view function. These variable rules are explained below.
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Routing
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-------
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Modern web applications use meaningful URLs to help users. Users are more
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likely to like a page and come back if the page uses a meaningful URL they can
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remember and use to directly visit a page.
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Use the :meth:`~flask.Flask.route` decorator to bind a function to a URL. ::
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@app.route('/')
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def index():
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return 'Index Page'
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@app.route('/hello')
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def hello():
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return 'Hello, World'
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You can do more! You can make parts of the URL dynamic and attach multiple
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rules to a function.
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Variable Rules
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``````````````
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You can add variable sections to a URL by marking sections with
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``<variable_name>``. Your function then receives the ``<variable_name>``
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as a keyword argument. Optionally, you can use a converter to specify the type
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of the argument like ``<converter:variable_name>``. ::
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from markupsafe import escape
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@app.route('/user/<username>')
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def show_user_profile(username):
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# show the user profile for that user
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return f'User {escape(username)}'
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@app.route('/post/<int:post_id>')
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def show_post(post_id):
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# show the post with the given id, the id is an integer
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return f'Post {post_id}'
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@app.route('/path/<path:subpath>')
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def show_subpath(subpath):
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# show the subpath after /path/
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return f'Subpath {escape(subpath)}'
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Converter types:
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========== ==========================================
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``string`` (default) accepts any text without a slash
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``int`` accepts positive integers
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``float`` accepts positive floating point values
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``path`` like ``string`` but also accepts slashes
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``uuid`` accepts UUID strings
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========== ==========================================
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Unique URLs / Redirection Behavior
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``````````````````````````````````
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The following two rules differ in their use of a trailing slash. ::
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@app.route('/projects/')
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def projects():
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return 'The project page'
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@app.route('/about')
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def about():
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return 'The about page'
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The canonical URL for the ``projects`` endpoint has a trailing slash.
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It's similar to a folder in a file system. If you access the URL without
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a trailing slash (``/projects``), Flask redirects you to the canonical URL
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with the trailing slash (``/projects/``).
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The canonical URL for the ``about`` endpoint does not have a trailing
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slash. It's similar to the pathname of a file. Accessing the URL with a
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trailing slash (``/about/``) produces a 404 "Not Found" error. This helps
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keep URLs unique for these resources, which helps search engines avoid
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indexing the same page twice.
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.. _url-building:
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URL Building
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````````````
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To build a URL to a specific function, use the :func:`~flask.url_for` function.
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It accepts the name of the function as its first argument and any number of
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keyword arguments, each corresponding to a variable part of the URL rule.
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Unknown variable parts are appended to the URL as query parameters.
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Why would you want to build URLs using the URL reversing function
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:func:`~flask.url_for` instead of hard-coding them into your templates?
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1. Reversing is often more descriptive than hard-coding the URLs.
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2. You can change your URLs in one go instead of needing to remember to
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manually change hard-coded URLs.
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3. URL building handles escaping of special characters transparently.
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4. The generated paths are always absolute, avoiding unexpected behavior
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of relative paths in browsers.
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5. If your application is placed outside the URL root, for example, in
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``/myapplication`` instead of ``/``, :func:`~flask.url_for` properly
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handles that for you.
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For example, here we use the :meth:`~flask.Flask.test_request_context` method
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to try out :func:`~flask.url_for`. :meth:`~flask.Flask.test_request_context`
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tells Flask to behave as though it's handling a request even while we use a
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Python shell. See :ref:`context-locals`.
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.. code-block:: python
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from flask import url_for
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@app.route('/')
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def index():
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return 'index'
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@app.route('/login')
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def login():
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return 'login'
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@app.route('/user/<username>')
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def profile(username):
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return f'{username}\'s profile'
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with app.test_request_context():
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print(url_for('index'))
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print(url_for('login'))
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print(url_for('login', next='/'))
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print(url_for('profile', username='John Doe'))
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.. code-block:: text
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/
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/login
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/login?next=/
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/user/John%20Doe
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HTTP Methods
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````````````
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Web applications use different HTTP methods when accessing URLs. You should
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familiarize yourself with the HTTP methods as you work with Flask. By default,
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a route only answers to ``GET`` requests. You can use the ``methods`` argument
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of the :meth:`~flask.Flask.route` decorator to handle different HTTP methods.
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::
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from flask import request
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@app.route('/login', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
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def login():
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if request.method == 'POST':
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return do_the_login()
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else:
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return show_the_login_form()
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If ``GET`` is present, Flask automatically adds support for the ``HEAD`` method
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and handles ``HEAD`` requests according to the `HTTP RFC`_. Likewise,
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``OPTIONS`` is automatically implemented for you.
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.. _HTTP RFC: https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2068.txt
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Static Files
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------------
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Dynamic web applications also need static files. That's usually where
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the CSS and JavaScript files are coming from. Ideally your web server is
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configured to serve them for you, but during development Flask can do that
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as well. Just create a folder called :file:`static` in your package or next to
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your module and it will be available at ``/static`` on the application.
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To generate URLs for static files, use the special ``'static'`` endpoint name::
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url_for('static', filename='style.css')
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The file has to be stored on the filesystem as :file:`static/style.css`.
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Rendering Templates
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-------------------
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Generating HTML from within Python is not fun, and actually pretty
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cumbersome because you have to do the HTML escaping on your own to keep
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the application secure. Because of that Flask configures the `Jinja2
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<https://palletsprojects.com/p/jinja/>`_ template engine for you automatically.
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To render a template you can use the :func:`~flask.render_template`
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method. All you have to do is provide the name of the template and the
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variables you want to pass to the template engine as keyword arguments.
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Here's a simple example of how to render a template::
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from flask import render_template
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@app.route('/hello/')
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@app.route('/hello/<name>')
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def hello(name=None):
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return render_template('hello.html', name=name)
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Flask will look for templates in the :file:`templates` folder. So if your
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application is a module, this folder is next to that module, if it's a
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package it's actually inside your package:
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**Case 1**: a module::
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/application.py
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/templates
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/hello.html
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**Case 2**: a package::
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/application
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/__init__.py
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/templates
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/hello.html
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For templates you can use the full power of Jinja2 templates. Head over
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to the official `Jinja2 Template Documentation
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<https://jinja.palletsprojects.com/templates/>`_ for more information.
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Here is an example template:
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.. sourcecode:: html+jinja
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<!doctype html>
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<title>Hello from Flask</title>
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{% if name %}
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<h1>Hello {{ name }}!</h1>
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{% else %}
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<h1>Hello, World!</h1>
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{% endif %}
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Inside templates you also have access to the :data:`~flask.Flask.config`,
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:class:`~flask.request`, :class:`~flask.session` and :class:`~flask.g` [#]_ objects
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as well as the :func:`~flask.url_for` and :func:`~flask.get_flashed_messages` functions.
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Templates are especially useful if inheritance is used. If you want to
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know how that works, see :doc:`patterns/templateinheritance`. Basically
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template inheritance makes it possible to keep certain elements on each
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page (like header, navigation and footer).
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Automatic escaping is enabled, so if ``name`` contains HTML it will be escaped
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automatically. If you can trust a variable and you know that it will be
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safe HTML (for example because it came from a module that converts wiki
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markup to HTML) you can mark it as safe by using the
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:class:`~markupsafe.Markup` class or by using the ``|safe`` filter in the
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template. Head over to the Jinja 2 documentation for more examples.
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Here is a basic introduction to how the :class:`~markupsafe.Markup` class works::
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>>> from markupsafe import Markup
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>>> Markup('<strong>Hello %s!</strong>') % '<blink>hacker</blink>'
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Markup('<strong>Hello <blink>hacker</blink>!</strong>')
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>>> Markup.escape('<blink>hacker</blink>')
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Markup('<blink>hacker</blink>')
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>>> Markup('<em>Marked up</em> » HTML').striptags()
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'Marked up » HTML'
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.. versionchanged:: 0.5
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Autoescaping is no longer enabled for all templates. The following
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extensions for templates trigger autoescaping: ``.html``, ``.htm``,
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``.xml``, ``.xhtml``. Templates loaded from a string will have
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autoescaping disabled.
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.. [#] Unsure what that :class:`~flask.g` object is? It's something in which
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you can store information for your own needs. See the documentation
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for :class:`flask.g` and :doc:`patterns/sqlite3`.
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Accessing Request Data
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----------------------
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For web applications it's crucial to react to the data a client sends to
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the server. In Flask this information is provided by the global
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:class:`~flask.request` object. If you have some experience with Python
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you might be wondering how that object can be global and how Flask
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manages to still be threadsafe. The answer is context locals:
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.. _context-locals:
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Context Locals
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``````````````
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.. admonition:: Insider Information
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If you want to understand how that works and how you can implement
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tests with context locals, read this section, otherwise just skip it.
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Certain objects in Flask are global objects, but not of the usual kind.
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These objects are actually proxies to objects that are local to a specific
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context. What a mouthful. But that is actually quite easy to understand.
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Imagine the context being the handling thread. A request comes in and the
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web server decides to spawn a new thread (or something else, the
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underlying object is capable of dealing with concurrency systems other
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than threads). When Flask starts its internal request handling it
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figures out that the current thread is the active context and binds the
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current application and the WSGI environments to that context (thread).
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It does that in an intelligent way so that one application can invoke another
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application without breaking.
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So what does this mean to you? Basically you can completely ignore that
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this is the case unless you are doing something like unit testing. You
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will notice that code which depends on a request object will suddenly break
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because there is no request object. The solution is creating a request
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object yourself and binding it to the context. The easiest solution for
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unit testing is to use the :meth:`~flask.Flask.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
|
|
:meth:`~flask.Flask.request_context` method::
|
|
|
|
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 :class:`~flask.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
|
|
:attr:`~flask.Request.method` attribute. To access form data (data
|
|
transmitted in a ``POST`` or ``PUT`` request) you can use the
|
|
:attr:`~flask.Request.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 :exc:`KeyError` is raised. You can catch it like a
|
|
standard :exc:`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
|
|
:attr:`~flask.Request.args` attribute::
|
|
|
|
searchword = request.args.get('key', '')
|
|
|
|
We recommend accessing URL parameters with `get` or by catching the
|
|
:exc:`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 :class:`~flask.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
|
|
:attr:`~flask.request.files` attribute on the request object. Each
|
|
uploaded file is stored in that dictionary. It behaves just like a
|
|
standard Python :class:`file` object, but it also has a
|
|
:meth:`~werkzeug.datastructures.FileStorage.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
|
|
:attr:`~werkzeug.datastructures.FileStorage.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
|
|
:func:`~werkzeug.utils.secure_filename` function that
|
|
Werkzeug provides for you::
|
|
|
|
from werkzeug.utils import secure_filename
|
|
|
|
@app.route('/upload', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
|
|
def upload_file():
|
|
if request.method == 'POST':
|
|
file = request.files['the_file']
|
|
file.save(f"/var/www/uploads/{secure_filename(file.filename)}")
|
|
...
|
|
|
|
For some better examples, see :doc:`patterns/fileuploads`.
|
|
|
|
Cookies
|
|
```````
|
|
|
|
To access cookies you can use the :attr:`~flask.Request.cookies`
|
|
attribute. To set cookies you can use the
|
|
:attr:`~flask.Response.set_cookie` method of response objects. The
|
|
:attr:`~flask.Request.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
|
|
:ref:`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 :meth:`~flask.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
|
|
:doc:`patterns/deferredcallbacks` pattern.
|
|
|
|
For this also see :ref:`about-responses`.
|
|
|
|
Redirects and Errors
|
|
--------------------
|
|
|
|
To redirect a user to another endpoint, use the :func:`~flask.redirect`
|
|
function; to abort a request early with an error code, use the
|
|
:func:`~flask.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
|
|
:meth:`~flask.Flask.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 :func:`~flask.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 :doc:`errorhandling` for more details.
|
|
|
|
.. _about-responses:
|
|
|
|
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 :mimetype:`text/html` mimetype. If the
|
|
return value is a dict, :func:`jsonify` is called to produce a response.
|
|
The logic that Flask applies to converting return values into response
|
|
objects is as follows:
|
|
|
|
1. If a response object of the correct type is returned it's directly
|
|
returned from the view.
|
|
2. If it's a string, a response object is created with that data and
|
|
the default parameters.
|
|
3. If it's a dict, a response object is created using ``jsonify``.
|
|
4. 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)``. The ``status`` value will override
|
|
the status code and ``headers`` can be a list or dictionary of
|
|
additional header values.
|
|
5. 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 :func:`~flask.make_response` function.
|
|
|
|
Imagine you have a view like this::
|
|
|
|
from flask import render_template
|
|
|
|
@app.errorhandler(404)
|
|
def not_found(error):
|
|
return render_template('error.html'), 404
|
|
|
|
You just need to wrap the return expression with
|
|
:func:`~flask.make_response` and get the response object to modify it, then
|
|
return it::
|
|
|
|
from flask import make_response
|
|
|
|
@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.
|
|
|
|
.. code-block:: python
|
|
|
|
@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
|
|
:func:`~flask.json.jsonify` function, which will serialize any supported
|
|
JSON data type. Or look into Flask community extensions that support
|
|
more complex applications.
|
|
|
|
.. code-block:: python
|
|
|
|
from flask import jsonify
|
|
|
|
@app.route("/users")
|
|
def users_api():
|
|
users = get_all_users()
|
|
return jsonify([user.to_json() for user in users])
|
|
|
|
|
|
.. _sessions:
|
|
|
|
Sessions
|
|
--------
|
|
|
|
In addition to the request object there is also a second object called
|
|
:class:`~flask.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 session
|
|
|
|
# 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 f'Logged in as {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'))
|
|
|
|
.. admonition:: 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
|
|
:attr:`Flask.secret_key` (or :data:`SECRET_KEY`)::
|
|
|
|
$ python -c 'import secrets; print(secrets.token_hex())'
|
|
'192b9bdd22ab9ed4d12e236c78afcb9a393ec15f71bbf5dc987d54727823bcbf'
|
|
|
|
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 :func:`~flask.flash` method, to get hold of the
|
|
messages you can use :func:`~flask.get_flashed_messages` which is also
|
|
available in the templates. See :doc:`patterns/flashing` for a full
|
|
example.
|
|
|
|
Logging
|
|
-------
|
|
|
|
.. versionadded:: 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 :attr:`~flask.Flask.logger` is a standard logging
|
|
:class:`~logging.Logger`, so head over to the official :mod:`logging`
|
|
docs for more information.
|
|
|
|
See :doc:`errorhandling`.
|
|
|
|
|
|
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
|
|
:class:`~werkzeug.middleware.proxy_fix.ProxyFix` middleware for running
|
|
behind Nginx:
|
|
|
|
.. code-block:: python
|
|
|
|
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, see :doc:`extensions`.
|
|
|
|
Deploying to a Web Server
|
|
-------------------------
|
|
|
|
Ready to deploy your new Flask app? See :doc:`deploying/index`.
|