Django - WSGIHandler start_response and return response - python

I edited my question, because I realized I was combining two concepts (WSGIHandler and Middleware)
which I shouldn't have combined in this question.
I'm trying to get some basic understanding of what the WSGIHandler does.
django.core.handlers.wsgi.py
class WSGIHandler(base.BaseHandler):
initLock = Lock()
request_class = WSGIRequest
def __call__(self, environ, start_response):
#...
start_response(status, response_headers)
return response
An instance of WSGIHandler will be called with environ and start_response arguments.
environ will be used to create request object, which is an instance of WSGIRequest.
request = self.request_class(environ)
WSGIHandler.get_response will be used to create an HttpResponse object from request.
response = self.get_response(request)
My questions:
What does start_response do? By this time a response object has already been created. So what response does it start? Does it send some response somewhere? And where does it send the response sent by return response (i.e. what is it normally that calls it?)?

When you write a web app, you need to provide a callable to the server which the server will call when a request arrives. This callable is responsible for generating a response and sending the response back to server. The server in turns sends this response back to the browser.
In case of django, that callable is WSGIHandler. Since it has a __call__ defined, so this __call__ will be called by the server.
The arguments sent to __call__ are coming from server. start_response is also a callable which is implemented by the server. You do not need to worry about its implementation. So, __call__ of WSGIHandler calls this callable start_response.
start_response internally creates the header which later has to be sent back to the browser. But it only sets some attribute on the server, it doesn't sent the response back to the browser. It doesn't send any response anywhere.
After calling start_response, wsgi handler returns the actual response in line return response. When this line is executed, the server checks if the response is proper and then based on the response either sends the cookies as set in start_response call or raises some exeption.
Check http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0333/ for more info.

Related

Python requests - cannot understand how the argument is passed

I am using this code to get data from Twitter API.
The code works, but I cannot understand how.
Specifically, I cannot understand how the auth=bearer_oauth argument works, since I am passing a function. And how the function works, since I am calling it without its argument.
Sorry if this is too basic, but I could not find an answer.
import requests
bearer_token = "AAA"
api_url = "https://api.twitter.com/2/tweets/search/recent"
def bearer_oauth(r):
r.headers["Authorization"] = f"Bearer {bearer_token}"
return r
def connect_to_endpoint(url, params):
response = requests.get(url, auth=bearer_oauth)
return response
query_params = {'query': 'test'}
json_response = connect_to_endpoint(api_url, query_params)
The bearer_oauth function is just setting the request's authorization header to the bearer token before the request is sent.
The code you provided essentially has the same functionality as this:
headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {bearer_token}"
requests.get(url, headers=headers)
After you send the request, Twitter's server parses the authorization header and checks that the bearer token you supplied is valid and has access to the requested resources.
As for why your specific code works, bearer_oauth is an authentication handler that gets attached to the request. The handler gets called when the request is constructed. You don't need to pass the request object because the handler is part of it already.
If you're curious about the implementation, I'd read the internal code here. It looks like the request object is passed to the handler, which then modifies the request (in this case, by setting the authorization header), and then returns the modified request object back to the internal function preparing the request. Then, all of the modified request object's attributes are copied:
# Allow auth to make its changes.
r = auth(self)
# Update self to reflect the auth changes.
self.__dict__.update(r.__dict__)
Since __dict__ is an internal dictionary that holds all the attributes of a single object, everything that was changed about the request object in the handler function will be copied and included in the request before it is sent.

Flask Middleware with both Request and Response

I want to create a middleware function in Flask that logs details from the request and the response. The middleware should run after the Response is created, but before it is sent back. I want to log:
The request's HTTP method (GET, POST, or PUT)
The request endpoint
The response HTTP status code, including 500 responses. So, if an exception is raised in the view function, I want to record the resulting 500 Response before the Flask internals send it off.
Some options I've found (that don't quite work for me):
The before_request and after_request decorators. If I could access the request data in after_request, my problems still won't be solved, because according to the documentation
If a function raises an exception, any remaining after_request functions will not be called.
Deferred Request Callbacks - there is an after_this_request decorator described on this page, which decorates an arbitrary function (defined inside the current view function) and registers it to run after the current request. Since the arbitrary function can have info from both the request and response in it, it partially solves my problem. The catch is that I would have to add such a decorated function to every view function; a situation I would very much like to avoid.
#app.route('/')
def index():
#after_this_request
def add_header(response):
response.headers['X-Foo'] = 'Parachute'
return response
return 'Hello World!'
Any suggestions?
My first answer is very hacky. There's actually a much better way to achieve the same result by making use of the g object in Flask. It is useful for storing information globally during a single request. From the documentation:
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.
This is how you would use it:
#app.before_request
def gather_request_data():
g.method = request.method
g.url = request.url
#app.after_request
def log_details(response: Response):
g.status = response.status
logger.info(f'method: {g.method}\n url: {g.url}\n status: {g.status}')
return response
Gather whatever request information you want in the function decorated with #app.before_request and store it in the g object.
Access whatever you want from the response in the function decorated with #app.after_request. You can still refer to the information you stored in the g object from step 1. Note that you'll have to return the response at the end of this function.
you can use flask-http-middleware for it link
from flask import Flask
from flask_http_middleware import MiddlewareManager, BaseHTTPMiddleware
app = Flask(__name__)
class MetricsMiddleware(BaseHTTPMiddleware):
def __init__(self):
super().__init__()
def dispatch(self, request, call_next):
url = request.url
response = call_next(request)
response.headers.add("x-url", url)
return response
app.wsgi_app = MiddlewareManager(app)
app.wsgi_app.add_middleware(MetricsMiddleware)
#app.get("/health")
def health():
return {"message":"I'm healthy"}
if __name__ == "__main__":
app.run()
Every time you make request, it will pass the middleware
Okay, so the answer was staring me in the face the whole time, on the page on Deferred Request Callbacks.
The trick is to register a function to run after the current request using after_this_request from inside the before_request callback. This is the code snippet of what worked for me:
#app.before_request
def log_details():
method = request.method
url = request.url
#after_this_request
def log_details_callback(response: Response):
logger.info(f'method: {method}\n url: {url}\n status: {response.status}')
These are the steps:
Get the required details from the response in the before_request callback and store them in some variables.
Then access what you want of the response in the function you decorate with after_this_request, along with the variables you stored the request details in earlier.

Is there a way to convert local flask http request to a function call?

Currently, in our system, we are calling the endpoints even in the same flask application by a HTTP request. All the requests is called through a make_request wrapper method as shown below:
def make_request(url, body, http_type="get"):
http_fn = getattr(requests, http_type)
response = http_fn(url, headers=headers, json=body)
return response.status_code, response
Hence I'm trying to convert all local requests within the same flask application to a direct method call so that any endpoint within the same flask application is called this way:
def make_request(url, body, http_type="get"):
# Figure out If its local request call the function of the endpoint and construct the response
# If not make an http request
return response.status_code, response
EDIT: Tried searching in the url_map to find the method associated with the endpoint but the function returned in not in a callabale state. Any points on how we can call the method from here?
for rule in current_app.url_map.iter_rules():
if my_url in rule.rule:
endpoint = rule.endpoint
for key, view in current_app.view_functions.items():
if key == endpoint:
# Found the view function, need to know how to call
# the right method( GET, POST etc)
view contains the following:
{
'view_class': <class 'endpoints.attribute_endpoints.AttributeEndpoint'>,
'methods': {'GET', 'PUT', 'POST'}, 'provide_automatic_options': None, '__wrapped__': <function View.as_view.<locals>.view at 0x10c9190d0>}
If I understand correctly, what you're trying to achieve is calling a flask endpoint internally without going over http. Look at the solution below and let me know if it is does what you want.
Old Code:
#app.route('/someRoute', methods=['GET'])
def some_route_function():
json_object = request.get_json()
my_number = json_object['myNumber']
my_number = my_number**2
return jsonify(my_number=my_number)
New Code:
def square_number_func(number):
return number**2
#app.route('/someRoute', methods=['GET'])
def some_route_function():
json_object = request.get_json()
my_number = json_object['myNumber']
my_number = square_number_func(my_number)
return jsonify(my_number=my_number)
def my_non_flask_function():
my_number = 17
my_number = square_number_func(my_number)
This way you get the functionality you need without having to rely on Flask's request object, nor having to call flask via http.
Edit: If you need to figure out if it's an internal flask function then you compare it against a list of functions in your local global scope or in your flask app, as it does store your routes. You can even store the function parameters so you know what to call. Finally, you can map each endpoint to another function if you want inside a dictionary or something, such as {some_route_function: square_number_func} so that you can tell which function to substitute for the http call.

Passing session from template view to python requests api call

I want to make multiple internal REST API call from my Django TemplateView, using requests library. Now I want to pass the session too from template view to api call. What is the recommended way to do that, keeping performance in mind.
Right now, I'm extracting cookie from the current request object in template view, and passing that to requests.get() or requests.post() call. But problem with that is, I would have to pass request object to my API Client, which I don't want.
This the current wrapper I'm using to route my requests:
def wrap_internal_api_call(request, requests_api, uri, data=None, params=None, cookies=None, is_json=False, files=None):
headers = {'referer': request.META.get('HTTP_REFERER')}
logger.debug('Request API: %s calling URL: %s', requests_api, uri)
logger.debug('Referer header sent with requests: %s', headers['referer'])
if cookies:
csrf_token = cookies.get('csrftoken', None)
else:
csrf_token = request.COOKIES.get('csrftoken', None)
if csrf_token:
headers['X-CSRFToken'] = csrf_token
if data:
if is_json:
return requests_api(uri, json=data, params=params, cookies=cookies if cookies else request.COOKIES, headers=headers)
elif not files:
return requests_api(uri, data=data, params=params, cookies=cookies if cookies else request.COOKIES, headers=headers)
else:
return requests_api(uri, data=data, files=files, params=params, cookies=cookies if cookies else request.COOKIES,
headers=headers)
else:
return requests_api(uri, params=params, cookies=cookies if cookies else request.COOKIES, headers=headers)
Basically I want to get rid of that request parameter (1st param), because then to call it I've to keep passing request object from TemplateViews to internal services. Also, how can I keep persistent connection across multiple calls?
REST vs Invoking the view directly
While it's possible for a web app to make a REST API call to itself. That's not what REST is designed for. Consider the following from: https://docs.djangoproject.com/ja/1.9/topics/http/middleware/
As you can see a django request/response cycle has quite a bit of overhead. Add to this the overhead of webserver and wsgi container. At the client side you have the overhead associated with the requests library, but hang on a sec, the client also happens to be the same web app so it become s part of the web app's overhead too. And there is the problem of peristence (which I will come to shortly).
Last but not least, if you have a DNS round robin setup your request may actually go out on the wire before coming back to the same server. There is a better way, to invoke the view directly.
To invoke another view without the rest API call is really easy
other_app.other_view(request, **kwargs)
This has been discussed a few times here at links such as Django Call Class based view from another class based view and Can I call a view from within another view? so I will not elaborate.
Persistent requests
Persistent http requests (talking about python requests rather than django.http.request.HttpRequest) are managed through session objects (again not to be confused with django sessions). Avoiding confusion is really difficult:
The Session object allows you to persist certain parameters across
requests. It also persists cookies across all requests made from the
Session instance, and will use urllib3's connection pooling. So if
you're making several requests to the same host, the underlying TCP
connection will be reused, which can result in a significant
performance increase
Different hits to your django view will probably be from different users so you don't want to same cookie reused for the internal REST call. The other problem is that the python session object cannot be persisted between two different hit to the django view. Sockets cannot generally be serialized, a requirement for chucking them into memcached or redis.
If you still want to persist with internal REST
I think #julian 's answer shows how to avoid passing the django request instance as a parameter.
If you want to avoid passing the request to wrap_internal_api_call, all you need to do is do a bit more work on the end of the TemplateView where you call the api wrapper. Note that your original wrapper is doing a lot of cookies if cookies else request.COOKIES. You can factor that out to the calling site. Rewrite your api wrapper as follows:
def wrap_internal_api_call(referer, requests_api, uri, data=None, params=None, cookies, is_json=False, files=None):
headers = {'referer': referer}
logger.debug('Request API: %s calling URL: %s', requests_api, uri)
logger.debug('Referer header sent with requests: %s', referer)
csrf_token = cookies.get('csrftoken', None)
if csrf_token:
headers['X-CSRFToken'] = csrf_token
if data:
if is_json:
return requests_api(uri, json=data, params=params, cookies=cookies, headers=headers)
elif not files:
return requests_api(uri, data=data, params=params, cookies=cookies, headers=headers)
else:
return requests_api(uri, data=data, files=files, params=params, cookies=cookies, headers=headers)
else:
return requests_api(uri, params=params, cookies=cookies, headers=headers)
Now, at the place of invocation, instead of
wrap_internal_api_call(request, requests_api, uri, data, params, cookies, is_json, files)
do:
cookies_param = cookies or request.COOKIES
referer_param = request.META.get['HTTP_REFERER']
wrap_internal_api_call(referer_param, requests_api, uri, data, params, cookies_param, is_json, files)
Now you are not passing the request object to the wrapper anymore. This saves a little bit of time because you don't test cookies over and over, but otherwise it doesn't make a difference for performance. In fact, you could achieve the same slight performance gain just by doing the cookies or request.COOKIES once inside the api wrapper.
Networking is always the tightest bottleneck in any application. So if these internal APIs are on the same machine as your TemplateView, your best bet for performance is to avoid doing an API call.
Basically I want to get rid of that request parameter (1st param), because then to call it I've to keep passing request object from TemplateViews to internal services.
To pass function args without explicitly passing them into function calls you can use decorators to wrap your functions and automatically inject your arguments. Using this with a global variable and some django middleware for registering the request before it gets to your view will solve your problem. See below for an abstracted and simplified version of what I mean.
request_decorators.py
REQUEST = None
def request_extractor(func):
def extractor(cls, request, *args, **kwargs):
global REQUEST
REQUEST = request # this part registers request arg to global
return func(cls, request, *args, **kwargs)
return extractor
def request_injector(func):
def injector(*args, **kwargs):
global REQUEST
request = REQUEST
if len(args) > 0 and callable(args[0]): # to make it work with class methods
return func(args[0], request, args[1:], **kwargs) # class method
return func(request, *args, **kwargs) # function
return injector
extract_request_middleware.py
See the django docs for info on setting up middleware
from request_decorators import request_extractor
class ExtractRequest:
#request_extractor
def process_request(self, request):
return None
internal_function.py
from request_decorators import request_injector
#request_injector
def internal_function(request):
return request
your_view.py
from internal_function import internal_function
def view_with_request(request):
return internal_function() # here we don't need to pass in the request arg.
def run_test():
request = "a request!"
ExtractRequest().process_request(request)
response = view_with_request(request)
return response
if __name__ == '__main__':
assert run_test() == "a request!"

Post print dictionary/json returns error to client

I am sending post request in the body of some json data, to process on server and I want the results back to client(c++ app on phone) in the form of json data and hence parse on mobile.
I have the following code inside handler:
class ServerHandler(tornado.web.RequestHandler):
def post(self):
data = tornado.escape.json_decode(self.request.body)
id = data.get('id',None)
#process data from db (take a while) and pack in result which is dictinary
result = process_data(id)# returns dictionary from db= takes time
print 'END OF HANDLER'
print json.dumps(result)
#before this code below I have tried also
#return result
#return self.write(result)
#return self.write(json.dumps(result))
#return json.dumps(result)
self.set_header('Content-Type', 'application/json')
json_ = tornado.escape.json_encode(result)
self.write(json_)
self.finish()
#return json.dumps(result)
I always get printed 'END OF HANDLER' and valid dictinary/json below on console but when I read at client mobile I always get
<html><title>405: Method Not Allowed</title><body>405: Method Not Allowed</body></html>
Does anyone have any idea what is the bug ?
(I am using CIwGameHttpRequest for sending request and it works when file is static =>name.json but now same content is giving error in post request. )
The error (HTTP 405 Method Not Allowed) means that you have made a request to a valid URL, but you are using an HTTP verb (e.g. GET, POST, PUT, DELETE) that cannot be used with that URL.
Your web service code appears to handle the POST verb, as evidenced by the post method name, and also by the fact that incoming requests appear to have a request body. You haven't shown us your C++ client code, so all I can do is to speculate that it is making a GET request. Does your C++ code call Request->setPOST();? (I haven't worked with CIwGameHttpRequest before, but Googling for it I found this page from which I took that line of code.)
I've not worked with Tornado before, but I imagine that there is some mechanism somewhere that allows you to connect a URL to a RequestHandler. Given that you have a 405 Method Not Allowed error rather than 404 Not Found, it seems that however this is done you've done it correctly. You issue a GET request to Tornado for the URL, it determines that it should call your handler, and only when it tries to use your handler it realises that it can't handle GET requests, concludes that your handler (and hence its URL) doesn't support GETs and returns a 405 error.

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