The Flask documentation shows:
add_url_rule(*args, **kwargs)
Connects a URL rule. Works exactly like the route() decorator.
If a view_func is provided it will be registered with the endpoint.
endpoint – the endpoint for the registered URL rule. Flask itself assumes the name of the view function as endpoint
What exactly is meant by an "endpoint"?
How Flask Routing Works
The entire idea of Flask (and the underlying Werkzeug library) is to map URL paths to some logic that you will run (typically, the "view function"). Your basic view is defined like this:
#app.route('/greeting/<name>')
def give_greeting(name):
return 'Hello, {0}!'.format(name)
Note that the function you referred to (add_url_rule) achieves the same goal, just without using the decorator notation. Therefore, the following is the same:
# No "route" decorator here. We will add routing using a different method below.
def give_greeting(name):
return 'Hello, {0}!'.format(name)
app.add_url_rule('/greeting/<name>', 'give_greeting', give_greeting)
Let's say your website is located at 'www.example.org' and uses the above view. The user enters the following URL into their browser:
http://www.example.org/greeting/Mark
The job of Flask is to take this URL, figure out what the user wants to do, and pass it on to one of your many python functions for handling. It takes the path:
/greeting/Mark
...and matches it to the list of routes. In our case, we defined this path to go to the give_greeting function.
However, while this is the typical way that you might go about creating a view, it actually abstracts some extra info from you. Behind the scenes, Flask did not make the leap directly from URL to the view function that should handle this request. It does not simply say...
URL (http://www.example.org/greeting/Mark) should be handled by View Function (the function "give_greeting")
Actually, it there is another step, where it maps the URL to an endpoint:
URL (http://www.example.org/greeting/Mark) should be handled by Endpoint "give_greeting".
Requests to Endpoint "give_greeting" should be handled by View Function "give_greeting"
Basically, the "endpoint" is an identifier that is used in determining what logical unit of your code should handle the request. Normally, an endpoint is just the name of a view function. However, you can actually change the endpoint, as is done in the following example.
#app.route('/greeting/<name>', endpoint='say_hello')
def give_greeting(name):
return 'Hello, {0}!'.format(name)
Now, when Flask routes the request, the logic looks like this:
URL (http://www.example.org/greeting/Mark) should be handled by Endpoint "say_hello".
Endpoint "say_hello" should be handled by View Function "give_greeting"
How You Use the Endpoint
The endpoint is commonly used for the "reverse lookup". For example, in one view of your Flask application, you want to reference another view (perhaps when you are linking from one area of the site to another). Rather than hard-code the URL, you can use url_for(). Assume the following
#app.route('/')
def index():
print url_for('give_greeting', name='Mark') # This will print '/greeting/Mark'
#app.route('/greeting/<name>')
def give_greeting(name):
return 'Hello, {0}!'.format(name)
This is advantageous, as now we can change the URLs of our application without needing to change the line where we reference that resource.
Why not just always use the name of the view function?
One question that might come up is the following: "Why do we need this extra layer?" Why map a path to an endpoint, then an endpoint to a view function? Why not just skip that middle step?
The reason is because it is more powerful this way. For example, Flask Blueprints allow you to split your application into various parts. I might have all of my admin-side resources in a blueprint called "admin", and all of my user-level resources in an endpoint called "user".
Blueprints allow you to separate these into namespaces. For example...
main.py:
from flask import Flask, Blueprint
from admin import admin
from user import user
app = Flask(__name__)
app.register_blueprint(admin, url_prefix='admin')
app.register_blueprint(user, url_prefix='user')
admin.py:
admin = Blueprint('admin', __name__)
#admin.route('/greeting')
def greeting():
return 'Hello, administrative user!'
user.py:
user = Blueprint('user', __name__)
#user.route('/greeting')
def greeting():
return 'Hello, lowly normal user!'
Note that in both blueprints, the '/greeting' route is a function called "greeting". If I wanted to refer to the admin "greeting" function, I couldn't just say "greeting" because there is also a user "greeting" function. Endpoints allow for a sort of namespacing by having you specify the name of the blueprint as part of the endpoint. So, I could do the following...
print url_for('admin.greeting') # Prints '/admin/greeting'
print url_for('user.greeting') # Prints '/user/greeting'
Endpoint is the name used to reverse-lookup the url rules with url_for and it defaults to the name of the view function.
Small example:
from flask import Flask, url_for
app = Flask(__name__)
# We can use url_for('foo_view') for reverse-lookups in templates or view functions
#app.route('/foo')
def foo_view():
pass
# We now specify the custom endpoint named 'bufar'. url_for('bar_view') will fail!
#app.route('/bar', endpoint='bufar')
def bar_view():
pass
with app.test_request_context('/'):
print url_for('foo_view')
print url_for('bufar')
# url_for('bar_view') will raise werkzeug.routing.BuildError
print url_for('bar_view')
If you have same class name and want to map with multiple routes, then specify the endpoint, so that framework will differentiate between two:
class ClassName(Resource):
def get(self):
if request.endpoint!='hello':
return {"data": "Hello"}
elif:
return {"data" : "World"}
api.add_resource(ClassName, '/rout1', endpoint = "world")
api.add_resource(ClassName, '/rout2', endpoint="hello")
#app.route('/') #Endpoint
def a_function(): #View function
return 'view'
Inside Flask, every endpoint with its request methods mapped to a view function. When you use app.route decorator you are actually adding a URL rule.
Related
In my Python Flask app I have Blueprint Routes defined that correspond to API endpoints,
# Submit Agreement (Insert or Update)
#bp.route('submitAgreement', methods=['POST'])
#auth.login_required
def submitAgreement():
#...code...
# Get Existing Agreement
#bp.route('fetchAgreement', methods=['POST'])
#auth.login_required
def fetchAgreement():
#...code...
I need to define a common route pass-through or filter that will perform authorization prior to executing the code. The authorization needs to be, if the URL contains the param id=.., check that that ID belongs to the logged-in user.
Is there a way to define a custom "aspect" or filter with this code in Python Flask?
Flask offers an
#app.before_request decorator
You can substitute app for bp to apply the function you define to just the blueprint.
In Flask, you create routes like this:
from flask import Flask
app = Flask(__name__)
#app.route("/foobar")
def foo_bar_endpoint():
...
But the route decorator also has an endpoint parameter. The documentation just states:
the endpoint for the registered URL rule. Flask itself assumes the name of the view function as endpoint
Why should / would one not simply name the function as the endpoint should be called? Is this relevant for anything else than url_for?
The "endpoint" is an arbitrary name you provide, which is basically the canonical thing that a route refers to. You're not actually mapping a URL to a function there, you're mapping a URL to an endpoint and are attaching a view function to that endpoint.
URL → endpoint → function
You're just doing all that in one action, and the name of the function automatically becomes the name of the endpoint in the process. But you could do this all separately and register an endpoint for a URL, and later attach a function to that 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
https://flask.palletsprojects.com/en/1.1.x/api/#flask.Flask.add_url_rule
You may want to name your endpoint independently of your function, if you're under some constraint for the function name but are already referring to the endpoint from elsewhere, especially during refactoring, as one possible example where that might become relevant.
The URL is for external clients, for HTTP-requests.
The endpoint is for internal usage if you need to know which URL to redirect for example without any hardcoding.
In case you not defining endpoint your code looks like:
blueprint = Blueprint("bp_1", __name__)
#blueprint.route("/foobar")
def foo_bar_endpoint():
...
url = flask.url_for("bp_1.foo_bar_endpoint")
In case you define endpoint, you use function url_for with its name:
#blueprint.route("/foobar", endpoint="custom_name")
def foo_bar_endpoint():
...
url = flask.url_for("bp_1. custom_name")
Can someone show me examples of making a RESTful API which uses database information in Flask? I have no idea how to implement POST, PUT and DELETE and I always get the 405 error where I can't use the method in url.
Have you add request method in your routing? you can following reference from: flask-restful
from flask import Flask, request
from flask_restful import Resource, Api
app = Flask(__name__)
api = Api(app)
class TodoSimple(Resource):
def get(self):
# do get something
def put(self):
# do put something
def delete(self):
# do delete something
def post(self):
# do post something
api.add_resource(TodoSimple, '/api/todo')
if __name__ == '__main__':
app.run(debug=True)
in flask-restful the HTTP actions (GET, PUT, POST, DELETE) have their corresponding method in the resource class, so is just a matter of defining those method in the resource (with the corresponding parameter defined in the routing)
I've also built a lightweight framework for building restful apis that makes it super easy to build apis. You can take a look at the code to have an idea of how an API can be built, configured and run, and of course, build on top of it
here's the code: https://github.com/sebastiandev/peach
I've been trying to understand how to generate dynamic Flask URLs. I've read the docs and several example, but can't figure out why this code doesn't work:
path = 'foo'
#app.route('/<path:path>', methods=['POST'])
def index(path=None):
# do some stuff...
return flask.render_template('index.html', path=path)
I'd expect my index.html template to be served to /foo, but it is not. I get a build error. What am I missing?
If I use a fixed path, like /bar, everything works without issue.
#app.route('/bar', methods=['POST'])
You've got the long and short of it already. All you need to do is decorate your view functions using the /<var> syntax (or the /<converter:var> syntax where appropriate).
from flask import Flask, render_template
app = Flask(__name__)
#app.route('/')
def index():
return render_template('index.html')
#app.route('/<word>', defaults={'word': 'bird'})
def word_up(word):
return render_template('whatstheword.html', word=word)
#app.route('/files/<path:path>')
def serve_file(path):
return send_from_directory(app.config['UPLOAD_DIR'], path, as_attachment=True)
if __name__ == '__main__':
app.debug = True
app.run(port=9017)
When Flask pulls a variable out of a URL for a dynamic route like you're trying to use, it'll be a unicode string in Python by default. If you create the variable with the <int:var> or <float:var> converters, it'll be converted to the appropriate type in the app space for you.
The <path:blah> converter will match on a string that contains slashes (/), so you can pass /blah/dee/blah and the path variable in your view function will contain that string. Without using the path converter, flask would try and dispatch your request to a view function registered on the route /blah/dee/blah, because the plain <var> is delineated by the next / in the uri.
So looking at my little app, the /files/<path:path> route would serve whatever file it could find that matched the path sent up by the user on the request. I pulled this example from the docs here.
Also, dig that you can specify defaults for your variable URLs via a keyword arg to the route() decorator.
If you want, you can even access the underlying url_map that Werkzeug builds based on how you specify your view functions and routes in your app space. For more stuff to chew on, check out the api docs on URL registrations.
You can use add_url_rule():
def index(path=None):
return render_template('index.html', path=path)
path = '/foo'
app.add_url_rule(path, 'index', index)
You also might want to look at blueprint objects if you end up doing this alot.
I am trying to setup variable route handling in a Flask application such as described in this answer: Dynamic Subdomain Handling in a Web App (Flask)
However, I want to be able to recognize certain subdomains BEFORE they are caught by the variable route so I can use the flask-restful api extension (Routing with RESTful).
For example, I have tried the following:
#app.route('/', subdomain="<user>", defaults={'path':''})
#app.route('/<path:path>', subdomain="<user>")
def user_profile(user,path):
pass
class Api(restful.Resource):
def get(self):
#Do Api things.
api.add_resource(Api, '/v1', subdomain="api")
When I test this, all of URLs go to the variable route handler and call user_prof(). I tried putting the api route first and the standard #app.route rule second and vice versa but there was no change.
Am I missing some other parameter or need to go deeper in Flask to make this happen?
Update:
The URL patterns I am trying to match are like this:
user1.mysite.com -> handled by user_profile()
user2.mysite.com -> handled by user_profile()
any_future_string.mysite.com -> handled by user_profile()
api.mysite.com/v1 -> handled by Api class
Other cases include:
www.mysite.com -> handled by index_display()
mysite.com -> handled by index_display()
#app.before_request
def before_request():
if 'api' == request.host[:-len(app.config['SERVER_NAME'])].rstrip('.'):
redirect(url_for('api'))
#app.route('/', defaults={'path': ''}, subdomain='api')
#app.route('/<path:path>', subdomain='api')
def api(path):
return "hello"
This should work. Add your api version to the path if needed or that could be processed by your API class.
To keep it simple, I redesigned the logic of my application into two distinct parts.
This way the Flask application only handles the API endpoint logic. The user profile logic is handled by another application. I can now add multiple Resources to the API application without worry about breaking the routing.