Flask-Classful#

Flask-Classful is an extension that adds class-based views to Flask. But why?

I ❤ Flask. Like a lot. But sometimes projects get a little big and I need some way of managing and organizing all the different pieces. I know what you’re saying: “But what about Blueprints?”

You’re right. Blueprints are pretty awesome. But I found that they aren’t always enough to encapsulate a specific context the way I need. What I wanted, no what I needed was to be able to group my views into relevant classes each with their own context and behavior. It’s also made testing really nifty too.

“OK, I see your point. But can’t I just use the base classes in flask.views to do that?”

Well, yes and no. While flask.views.MethodView does provide some of the functionality of flask_classful.FlaskView, it doesn’t quite complete the picture by supporting methods that aren’t part of the typical CRUD operations for a given resource, or make it easy for me to override the route rules for particular views. And while flask.views.View does add some context, it requires a class for each view instead of letting me group very similar views for the same resource into a single class.

“But my projects aren’t that big. Can Flask-Classful do anything else for me besides making a big project easier to manage?”

Why yes. It does help a bit with some other things.

For example, Flask-Classful will automatically generate routes based on the methods in your views, and makes it super simple to override those routes using Flask’s familiar decorator syntax.

About `Flask-Classful` vs `Flask-Classy` and how to migrate#

This is a fork of the original Flask-Classy for continued development since the original project has ceased updates. For more information, see: https://github.com/apiguy/flask-classy/issues/80

To switch from Flask-Classy to Flask-Classful, you just need to update the module import, as the APIs are the same for both:

from flask_classy => from flask_classful

Installation#

Install the latest extension with:

$ pip install flask-classful -U

Let’s see how it works#

If you’re like me, you probably get a better idea of how to use something when you see it being used. Let’s go ahead and create a little app to see how Flask-Classful works:

from flask import Flask
from flask_classful import FlaskView

# we'll make a list to hold some quotes for our app
quotes = [
    "A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man! ~ Jebediah Springfield",
    "If there is a way to do it better... find it. ~ Thomas Edison",
    "No one knows what he can do till he tries. ~ Publilius Syrus"
]

app = Flask(__name__)

class QuotesView(FlaskView):
    def index(self):
        return "<br>".join(quotes)

QuotesView.register(app)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run()

Run this app and open your web browser to: http://localhost:5000/quotes/

As you can see, it returns the list of quotes. But what if we just wanted one quote? What would we do then?

class QuotesView(FlaskView):
    def index(self):
        ...

    def get(self, id):
        id = int(id)
        if id < len(quotes):
            return quotes[id]
        else:
            return "Not Found", 404

Now direct your browser to: http://localhost:5000/quotes/1/ and you should see the very poignant quote from the esteemed Mr. Edison.

That’s cool and all, but what if we just wanted a random quote? What then? Let’s add a random view to our FlaskView:

from random import choice

class QuotesView(FlaskView):
    def index(self):
        ...

    def get(self, id):
        ...

    def random(self):
        return choice(quotes)

And point your browser to: http://localhost:5000/quotes/random/ and see that a random quote is returned each time. Voilà!

So by now you must be keenly aware of the fact that you have not defined a single route, but yet routing is obviously taking place. “Is this voodoo?” you ask?

Not at all. Flask-Classful will automatically create routes for any method in a FlaskView that doesn’t begin with an underscore character. You can still define your own routes of course, and we’ll look at that next.

Using custom routes#

So let’s pretend that /quotes/random/ is just too unsightly and we must fix it to be something more spectacular forthwith. In a moment of blind inspiration we decide that getting a random quote is on par with receiving a rasher of your favorite porcine delicacy. The new URL should be /quotes/word_bacon/ so that everyone knows what a treat they are in for.

from flask_classful import FlaskView, route

class QuotesView(FlaskView):
    def index(self):
        ...

    def get(self, id):
        ...

    @route('/word_bacon/') #<--- Adding route
    def random(self):
        return choice(quotes)

Load up http://localhost:5000/quotes/word_bacon/ in your browser and behold your latest achievement.

The route decorator takes exactly the same parameters as Flask’s app.route decorator, so you should feel right at home adding custom routes to any views you create.

Note

If you want to use other decorators with your views, you’ll need to make sure that the @route decorators are first.

So far, all of our URLs have been prefixed by that /quotes bit and you have probably deduced that it was derived from the name of your FlaskView instance (minus the “View” suffix, of course.) “That’s all well and good,” you’re saying, “but how do I change that? What if I want my views at the root?” Well, person, I have an answer for you.

`Flask-Classful`’s way of talking about “routes”#

OK, so I don’t want to start inventing a new language (actually I’d love to invent a new language, just not right now…) for talking about URLs, but since Flask-Classful gives you a lot of flexibility in customizing your routes we might as well make sure we’re talking about the same things when we talk about what you can do.

What you see below is a route comprised of a route prefix, and a route base:

/neat_prefix/great_base/

The prefix /neat_prefix/ is only included if you explicitly specify a prefix for the FlaskView, otherwise no prefix will be applied.

The route base /great_base/ will always exist, either because it was inferred automatically from the name of the FlaskView class, or because you specified a route base to use.

Note

Flask-Classful favors putting trailing slashes at the end of routes without parameters. You can override this behavior by specifying trailing_slash=False either as an attribute of your FlaskView or in the register method.

Specifying a Route Prefix#

A route prefix is a great way to define a common base to URLs. For example lets say you had a bunch of views that were all part of your application’s API system.

You could write custom route bases for all of them, but if you want to use Flask-Classful’s (admittedly amazing) automatic route generation stuff you’ll lose the part where it infers the route base from the name of the class.

A better choice is to use a route prefix.

You can specify a route prefix either as an attribute of the FlaskView, or when you register the FlaskView with the application.

As an attribute:#

Using an attribute is a great way to define a default prefix, as you can always override this value when you register the FlaskView with your app:

class BurgundyView(FlaskView):
    route_prefix = '/colors/'

    def index(self):
        ...

When registering:#

Alternatively (or additionally, if you like) you can specify a route prefix when you register the route with your app:

BurgundyView.register(app, route_prefix='/redish_colors/')

And this will override any route prefixes set on the FlaskView class itself.

Customizing the Route Base#

There are 2 ways to customize the base route of a FlaskView. (Well technically there are 3 if you count changing the name of the class but that’s hardly a reasonable way to go about it.)

Method 1:#

The first method simply requires you to set a route_base attribute on your FlaskView. Suppose we wanted to make our QuotesView handle the root of the web application:

class QuotesView(FlaskView):
    route_base = '/'

    def index(self):
        ...

    def get(self, id):
        ...

    @route('/word_bacon/')
    def random(self):
        ...

Method 2:#

The second method is perfect for when you’re using app factories, and you need to be able to specify different base routes for different apps. You can specify the route when you register the class with the Flask app instance:

QuotesView.register(app, route_base='/')

The second method will always override the first, so you can use method one, and override it with method two if needed. Sweet!

A few words on `register`#

As you’ve probably seen by now, the register method is integral to Flask-Classful’s usage and is pretty frickin’ powerful. But, how does it work under the hood?

Internally, register grabs all methods defined directly on the View Class given to it, ignoring methods from any base classes. From there, we inspect the names of the methods and the configuration attributes on the class and construct a valid URL Rule. We then merely call Flask’s own add_url_rule with the configuration we’ve gathered.

What does this mean for you? Well, it means you can pass any argument that add_url_rule takes to register and it will be passed to every single add_url_rule call we make when registering the class! Want all methods on a View to redirect elsewhere? Try calling register like so:

RedirectView.register(app, redirect_to='my/new/route')

For more information on what you can pass, see Werkzeug’s own documentation for werkzeug.routing.Rule.

Well … more words on `register`#

Sometimes you may want to pass additional information to the inherited FlaskView classes. One possible solution could be to use global objects (well, you could even join Darth Vader on the dark side and your mom wouldn’t be proud either) but this is not the best pattern.

Instead it is possible to pass an additional parameter to the register method called init_argument.

When it is passed with a value different than Nothing, Flask-Classful will create the inherited FlaskView instance passing this parameter to the constructor.

Note that this parameter is unique, you can pass complex structures using as this parameter either tuples or dictionaries.

Let’s see an example of this additional parameter in the register method:

from flask import Flask
from flask_classful import FlaskView

app = Flask(__name__)

class QuotesView(FlaskView):
    def __init__(self, my_init_argument):
        self._my_init_argument = my_init_argument

    def index(self):
        return self._my_init_argument

QuotesView.register(app, init_argument="Fistro diodenarl de abajorl")

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run()

Using multiple routes for a single view#

What happens when you need to apply more than one route to a specific view (for what it’s worth, Flask core developer Armin Ronacher says doing that is a bad idea). But since you’re so determined let’s see how to do that anyway.

So let’s say you add the following routes to one of your views:

class QuotesView(FlaskView):
    route_base = '/'

    @route('/quote/<id>')
    @route('/quote/show/<id>')
    def show_quote(self, id):
        ...

That would end up generating the following 2 routes:

rule	/quote/<id>
endpoint	QuotesView:show_quote_1
method	GET

rule	/quote/show/<id>
endpoint	QuotesView:show_quote_0
method	GET

“Oh weird! What’s with all the _0 and _1 stuff?” you ask in disgust. Well first I want to know how you managed to pronounce _0. But really the reason is that since there is more than one route, an index is added to prevent an endpoint collision. This differs from the default behavior of Flask, which allows you to create collisions.

Specify your own damn endpoint#

So you don’t like the nifty indexing trick? Well fine then. I guess you can go ahead and specify your own endpoint if you like but that’s only because I like you.

class QuotesView(FlaskView):
    route_base = '/'

    @route('/quote/<id>', endpoint='show_quote')
    @route('/quote/show/<id>')
    def show_quote(self, id):
        ...

Will generate the following routes:

rule	/quote/<id>
endpoint	show_quote
method	GET

rule	/quote/show/<id>
endpoint	QuotesView:show_quote_0
method	GET

Special method names#

So I guess I have to break the narrative a bit here so I can take some time to talk about Flask-Classful’s special method names.

Here’s the thing. FlaskView is smart. No, not solving differential equations smart, but let’s just say it knows how to put the round peg in the round hole. When you register a FlaskView with an app, FlaskView will look for special methods in your class. Why? Because I care. I know that sometimes you just want things to just work and not have to think about it. Let’s look at FlaskView’s very special method names:

index

Woah… you’ve seen this one before! Remember way back at the beginning? Oh nevermind. So index is generally used for home pages and lists of resources. The automatically generated route is:

rule	/
endpoint	<class name>:index
method	GET

get

Another old familiar friend, get is usually used to retrieve a specific resource. The automatically generated route is:

rule	/<id>
endpoint	<class name>:get
method	GET

post

This method is generally used for creating new instances of a resource but can really be used to handle any posted data you want. The automatically generated route is:

rule	/
endpoint	<class name>:post
method	POST

put

For those of us using REST this one is really helpful. It’s generally used to update a specific resource. The automatically generated route is:

rule	/<id>
endpoint	<class name>:put
method	PUT

patch

Similar to put, patch is used for updating a resource. Unlike put however you only send the parts of the resource you want changed, instead of doing a complete replacement of the resource. The automatically generated route is:

rule	/<id>
endpoint	<class name>:patch
method	PATCH

delete

More RESTfulness. It’s the most self explanatory of all the RESTful methods, and it’s commonly used to destroy a specific resource. The automatically generated route is:

rule	/<id>
endpoint	<class name>:delete
method	DELETE

url_for art thou, Romeo?#

Sorry that’s a terrible name for a section header, but naming things is what am the least skilled at, so please bear with me.

Once you’ve got your FlaskView registered, you’ll probably want to be able to get the URLs for it in your templates and redirects and whatnot. Flask ships with the awesome url_for function that does an excellent job of turning a function name into a URL that maps to it. You can use url_for with Flask-Classful by using the format “<Class name>:<method name>”. Let’s look at an example:

class DuckyView(FlaskView):
    def index(self):
        return "Duckies!"

    def get(self, name):
        return "Duck %s" % name

    @route('/do_duck_stuff', endpoint='do_duck_stuff')
    def post(self):
        return "Um... Quack?"

In this example, you can get a URL to the index method using:

url_for("DuckyView:index")

And you can get a URL to the get method using:

url_for("DuckyView:get", name="Howard")

And for that view with the custom endpoint defined?:

url_for("do_duck_stuff")

Note

Notice that the custom endpoint does not get prefixed with the class name like the auto-generated endpoints. When you define a custom endpoint, we hand that over to Flask in it’s original, unaltered form.

Your own methods (they’re special too!)#

Let’s talk about how you can add your own methods (like we did with random back in the day, remember? Good times.) If you add your own methods, FlaskView will detect them during registration and register routes for them, whether you’ve gone and defined your own, or you just want to let FlaskView do its thing. By default, FlaskView will create a route that is the same as the method name. So if you define a view method in your FlaskView like this:

class SomeView(FlaskView):
    route_base = "root"

    def my_view(self):
        return "Check out my view!"

FlaskView will generate a route like this:

rule	/root/my_view/
endpoint	SomeView:my_view
method	GET

“That’s fine.” you say. “But what if I have a view method with some parameters?” Well FlaskView will try to take care of that for you too. If you were to define another view like this:

class AnotherView(FlaskView):
    route_base = "home"

    def this_view(self, arg1, arg2):
        return "Args: %s, %s" % (arg1, arg2,)

FlaskView would generate a route like this:

rule	/home/this_view/<arg1>/<arg2>
endpoint	AnotherView:this_view
method	GET

Note

One important thing to note is that FlaskView supports type hints in your parameters in Python 3, and if you want or need them in Python 2, you’ll need to define the route yourself using the @route decorator.

Sometimes that you need to use my-view instead of default my_view generated route, you can use method_dashified attribute when defining the view class or when registering the view with the app. For example:

class SomeView(FlaskView):
    route_base = "root"
    method_dashified = True

    def my_view(self):
        return "Check out my view!"

FlaskView will generate a route like this:

rule	/root/my-view/
endpoint	SomeView:my_view
method	GET

Out of the box, your custom methods will all be registed as only GET methods. This is done because it is simply the default that Flask uses when registering routes without any HTTP methods specified. If you want to change the default HTTP method your custom methods respond to, simply define a class level attribute named default_methods and make it a list of all HTTP methods you want your custom methods to respond to.

For example:

class DefaultMethodsView(FlaskView):
    default_methods = ['GET', 'POST']

    def my_view(self):
        return "Check out my view!"

This will register my_view as both a GET and a POST route. Creating the following route:

rule	/root/my_view/
endpoint	SomeView:my_view
method	GET, POST

“But I don’t want all endpoints to use the same method!” I hear you cry. Worry not! You have two options how to create endpoints with different methods.

Let’s see the first one:

from flask_classful import route

class MyResourceView(FlaskView):

    @route("do-something-cool", methods=["POST"])
    def do_something_cool(self):
        ...

@route is an old friend of ours, but I didn’t tell you earlier that it can also set methods, right? Well, now you know. As you can see, methods can accept multiple values, so you can set multiple methods for one endpoint.

But there’s also a second way, that some might consider nicer:

from flask_classful import method

class MyResourceView(FlaskView):

    @method("post")
    def do_something_cool(self):
        ...

@method is a new decorator (since v0.16), that can be used to set a method for one endpoint. So, if you only want to set a method, and not a custom route, this is the way to go. By the way, you can write either post or POST, that’s up to your preference.

What? You ask if you can have multiple methods for the same endpoint with this decorator? Ok, here you are:

@method("get")
@method("post")
def do_or_see_something_cool(self):
    ...

Hope you are happy.

Just a bit of warning. Be careful when you decide to combine these two ways. What would you guess happens when you do this?

@method("post")
@route("my-custom-path/<int:id>")
def do_or_see_something_cool(self):
    ...

Well, @method("post") is ignored, and you only get do_or_see_something_cool with method GET. So be careful.

Hiding your own methods (they’re not all special!)#

While automatically registering your own methods is awesome and usually expected, sometimes you write view-level methods that shouldn’t be API routes. Generally, these are private methods prefixed with an _. By default, Flask-Classful will not register a route for any method beginning with an _. However, sometimes you don’t have full API control or you are creating a publicly accessible API that isn’t an API endpoint. For example, consider some kind of setup method your class view has:

class SetupView(FlaskView):

    def setup(self):
        # do some sort of crazy expensive calculation on demand here
        pass

The intention is for the app to call this after registering the view when some data that isn’t immediately available is ready. As such, this isn’t really a private method, but it also isn’t an API endpoint. To prevent Flask-Classful from registering this as an endpoint, add it to the excluded_methods class property, like so:

class SetupView(FlaskView):
    excluded_methods = ['setup']

    def setup(self):
        # do some sort of crazy expensive calculation on demand here
        pass

Decorating Tips#

So if you’re like me (and who isn’t?), you think that class-based views are frickin’ beautiful. But once you’ve moved in, it’s nice to add a little personal touch, don’t you think?

Of course I’m talking about decorators. The Flask ecosystem is full of excellent extensions that allow you to customize a view’s behavior simply by adding a decorator, and you can use them with your FlaskView’s too.:

class BetterButterView(FlaskView):

    @login_required  # Ain't it pretty?
    def super_secret(self):
        return "It's a secret to everyone."

But what about when you want to add a decorator to every method in your FlaskView? All you need to do is add a decorators attribute to the class definition with a list of decorators you want applied to every method and Flask-Classful will take care of the rest:

class WhataGreatView(FlaskView):
    decorators = [login_required]

    def this_is_secret(self):
        return "If you see this, you're logged in."

    def so_is_this(self):
        return "Looking at me? I guess you're logged in."

Before and After#

Hey, remember that time when you made that big ol’ Flask app and then had those @app.before_request and @app.after_request decorated methods? Remember how you only wanted some of them to run for certain views so you had all those if view == the_one_I_care_about: statements and stuff?

Yuck.

I’ve been there too, and I think you might like how Flask-Classful addresses this very touchy issue. FlaskView will look for wrapper methods when your request is being processed so that you can create more fine grained “before and after” processing methods.

Wrap all the views in a FlaskView#

So there you are, eating a delicious Strawberry Frosted Pop Tart one morning, thinking about the awesome Flask-Classful app you deployed the night before during one of your late night hackathons and it hits you:

“Tracking! I need to track those widgets!”

No doubt it’s an inspired thought, but in this case it was a tragic oversight. You realize now how lucky it was that you chose to use Flask-Classful because adding tracking is going to be a snap:

from flask_classful import FlaskView
from made_up_tracking import track_it

class WidgetsView(FlaskView):

    def before_request(self, name):
        track_it("something is happening to a widget")

    def after_request(self, name, response):
        track_it("something happened to a widget")
        return response

    def post(self):
        ...

    def get(self, id):
        ...

Whew. Crisis averted, am I right? So you go about your day and at lunch time you hit your favorite Bacon Sandwich place and start daydreaming about your life as a rockstar Flask-Classful consultant when suddenly:

“I really only care about when widgets are created and retrieved!”

Wrap only specific views#

Yep, you’ve got a granularity problem. Not to worry though because Flask-Classful is happy to let you know that it has smart wrapper methods too. Let’s say for example you wanted to run something before the index view runs? Just create a method called before_index and Flask-Classful will make sure it gets run only before that view. (as you have guessed by now, after_index will be run only after the index view).

from flask_classful import FlaskView
from made_up_tracking import track_it

class WidgetsView(FlaskView):

    # Will be run before the 'get' view
    def before_get(self):
        track_it("a widget is being accessed")

    # Will be run before the 'post' view
    def after_post(self, response):
        track_it("a widget was created")
        return response

    def post(self):
        ...

    def get(self, id):
        ...

The View Wrappin’ Method List#

Just to be certain, let’s go ahead and review the methods you can write to wrap your views:

before_request(self, name, *args, **kwargs)

Will be called before any view in this FlaskView is called.

name:: The name of the view that’s about to be called.
*args:: Any arguments that will be passed to the view.
**kwargs:: Any keyword arguments that will be passed to the view.

before_<view_method>(self, *args, **kwargs)

Will be called before the view specified <view_method> is called.

*args:: Any arguments that will be passed to the view.
**kwargs:: Any keyword arguments that will be passed to the view.

after_request(self, name, response)

Will be called after any view in this FlaskView is called. You must return either the passed in response or a new response.

name:: The name of the view that was called.
response:: The response produced after calling the view.

after_<view_method>(self, response)

Will be called after the <view_method> is called. You must return either the passed in response or a new response.

response:: The response produced after calling the view.

Order of Wrapped Method Execution#

Wrapper methods are called in the same order every time. “How predictable.” you’re thinking. (You’re starting to sound like my ex, sheesh.) I prefer the term reliable.

Any method registered with @app.before_request
FlaskView’s before_request method
FlaskView’s before_<view_method> method
The actual view method
FlaskView’s after_<view_method> method
FlaskView’s after_request method
Any method registered with @app.after_request

Subdomains (getting advanced ‘n stuff)#

By now, you’ve built a few hundred Flask apps using Flask-Classful and you probably think you’re an expert. But not until you’ve tried the snazzy Subdomains feature my friend.

Flask-Classful allows you to specify a subdomain to be used when registering routes for your FlaskViews. While the usefulness of this feature is probably apparent to many of you, let’s go ahead and take a look at one of the many facilitative use cases.

Suppose you’ve got a sweet API you’re porting over from a legacy app and in the migration you want to clean things up a bit and start using a subdomain like api.socool.biz instead of the old way of accessing it using api at the root of the path like socool.biz/api. The only catch, of course, is that you have API clients still using that old path based method. What is a hard working developer like you to do?

Thanks to Flask and Flask-Classful you have some options. There are two easy ways you can choose from to tell Flask-Classful which subdomains your FlaskView should respond to.

Let’s see both methods so you can choose which one works best for your application.

The Define-During-Registration Method#

Probably the most flexible method, you can define which subdomains you want to support at the same time you’re registering your views:

# views.py

from flask_classful import FlaskView

class CoolApiView(FlaskView):

    def index(self):
        return "API stuff"

# main.py

from flask import Flask
from views import CoolApiView

app = Flask(__name__)
app.config['SERVER_NAME'] = 'socool.biz'

# This one matches URLs like: http://socool.biz/api/...
CoolApiView.register(app, route_base='/api/')

# This one matches URLs like: http://api.socool.biz/...
CoolApiView.register(app, route_base='/', subdomain='api')

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app.run()

The Explicit-Define-In-The-FlaskView Method#

Using this method, you can explicitly define a subdomain as an attribute of the FlaskView subclass:

# views.py

from flask_classful import FlaskView

class CoolApiView(FlaskView):
    subdomain = "api"

    def index(self):
        return "API Stuff"

# main.py

from flask import Flask
from views import CoolApiView

app = Flask(__name__)
app.config['SERVER_NAME'] = 'socool.biz'

# This one matches URLs like: http://socool.biz/api/...
CoolApiView.register(app, route_base='/api/', subdomain='')

# This one matches URLs like: http://api.socool.biz/...
CoolApiView.register(app, route_base="/")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app.run()

As you can see here, specifying the subdomain to the register method will override the explicit subdomain attribute set inside the class.

Adding Resource Representations (Get real classy and put on a top hat)#

So, you want to use Flask-Classful to make a RESTful API. Not a problem, we got you covered. Say you want your API to be able to respond to requests with JSON. All you have to do is create a class that defines how to serialize and deserialize the data, add it to the representations variable on your FlaskView.

Here’s the code for the JSON Response class:

# representations.py

import json
from flask import make_response

def output_json(data, code, headers=None):
    content_type = 'application/json'
    dumped = json.dumps(data)
    if headers:
        headers.update({'Content-Type': content_type})
    else:
        headers = {'Content-Type': content_type}
    response = make_response(dumped, code, headers)
    return response

Then go ahead and add this new resource representation to your view:

# views.py

from flask_classful import FlaskView
from .representations import output_json

class CoolJSONView(FlaskView):
    representations = {'application/json': output_json}

    def index(self):
        return {'This is JSON': 'How Cool is that'}

The representations attribute is a dictionary in which each key is a content type and the value is a flask.make_response proxy function with the same signature.

By default, the representations class attribute is an empty dictionary.

When the representations dictionary is not empty and if the view function returns a flask.wrappers.ResponseBase instance, it will be returned immediately to Flask to handle the rest. Otherwise, Flask-Classful will try to find the best match between the accepted content types and the keys in the representations dictionary, and call the associated output proxy function to create a flask.wrappers.ResponseBase instance. If no matching output proxy function is found when Flask-Classful looks for one, then the data the view returns is passed straight to Flask's make_response and returned as is.

This is an example where the view function returns a flask.wrappers.ResponseBase instance, skipping the representations system entirely:

# views.py

from flask import redirect
from flask_classful import FlaskView
from .representations import output_json

class CoolJSONView(FlaskView):
    representations = {'application/json': output_json}

    def redirect(self):
        return redirect("http://flask-classful.teracy.org")

To define a default representation that is used when no other matches are found, you can add the flask-classful/default mimetype to your representations dictionary, like so:

# views.py

from flask_classful import FlaskView
from .representations import output_default, output_json

class CoolDefaultView(FlaskView):
    representations = {'application/json': output_json,
                       'flask-classful/default': output_default}

    def post(self):
        return {'defaults': 'are cool, yo'}

Note

“Find the best match” means comparing the accepted mimetypes and their q-factor weighting to the list of representation mimetypes. That is, Flask Classful does no special heuristics in finding this best match. For more information, see this MDN article on the Accept header or this snippet about Werkzeug’s best_match helper.

Type Hints Support for Python 3#

With Python 3, you can use type hints for a view function’s arguments. By using these, you can have very simple, and convenient type input validation and conversion for a view function. If a view function is called with parameters of the wrong type, the view function will not be called and a 404 HTTP status code will be returned.

This is an example of type hinting support:

# python3 only

class TypingView(FlaskView):

    def index(self):
        return "Index"

    @route('/<id>', methods=['POST'])
    def post(self, id: str) -> str:
        return "Post"

    def patch(self, id: str) -> str:
        return "Patch"

    def int(self, arg: int):
        return str(arg)

    def float(self, arg: float):
        return str(arg)

    def uuid(self, arg: UUID):
        return str(arg)

This is the current default type_hints class attribute of the FlaskView class:

# supported type hints used to determine url variable converters
type_hints = {
    str: 'string',
    int: 'int',
    float: 'float',
    UUID: 'uuid',
}

You can override as much as you wish for your application, see more at URL Route Registrations and flask.Flask.url_map

In the future, we can add a more sophisticated mechanism for type hinting and conversion.

Disabling Type Hints#

Let’s say you’re using Python 3 with Type Hints, because types are awesome (just like you), but you want to disable reading these hints and adding them into your URL Rules. First off, I’m not really sure why you would ever want to do this, but I’m sure you have a great reason!

Luckily, Classful supports doing just that! Merely add a new class attribute named inspect_args and set it’s value to False, like so:

class NoInspectArgsView(FlaskView):
    inspect_args = False

    def post(self, id: int):
        pass

In the above example, even though we’re using a Type Hint to say that the id URL Argument should be an int, Flask Classful will ignore this information and continue to pass it to you as a string. From there, I’m sure you want to coerce arguments in your own fancy way.

Providing your OWN base class#

Just about every programmer who’s worked with a major library has discovered some odd issues with it or has found something they disagree with in its implementation. Many times, the easiest way to fix this (beyond contributing upstream!) is to define your own base class that extends the problematic class in question and fixes your gripe. This is a wonderful way to fix problems and really shows how excellent OOP can be, and, as such, is highly encouraged.

Flask-Classful feels the same way, if you want to sub-class FlaskView to add whatever functionality you want, you should do exactly that! However, you should know one thing before you do this, and that is how Flask-Classful automatically discovers methods to register as routes. Whenever register is called with a FlaskView subclass, the method inspects both FlaskView and the subclass, grabbing the set of methods from both. It then takes the set of methods defined on FlaskView and removes them from the set of methods defined on the subclass. This then gives the set of methods that are unique to the subclass and those methods are registered.

What does this mean to you? It means that all your nifty little helper methods on your base class… will be registered as routes by default! This is certainly not what you want. The astute reader will recognize that you can use the excluded_methods attribute to work around this. While this will work, it poses some problems. It essentially forces you to maintain a list of all methods on your base class that you want excluded. All in all, this creates a very user-unfriendly process.

Now that I’ve dashed all of your hopes, how about I restore them? This is a problem Flask-Classful has thought about and addressed, through the usage of the base_class kwarg on the register method. Whenever you call register on a FlaskView subclass, you can pass it the actual base class of the class you’re registering. When this is passed, Flask-Classful will grab the set of methods from the new base class and will not register any of them. For example:

class MyBaseView(FlaskView):
    def foo(self):
        return 'foo'

class MyChildView(MyBaseView):
    pass

MyChildView.register(app, base_class=MyBaseView)

By passing MyBaseView as the base_class to the register call, we will now properly ignore foo and it will not become a route!

Migration#

We will avoid introducing breaking changes immediately for a release but should add deprecated warnings before breaking things for the next version releases to make it always backward-compatible.

However, there are still some breaking changes that you must follow to upgrade Flask-Classful.

From v0.13.1 to v0.14.0#

The behavior of the trailing slash is changed: redirect by default when no trailing slash, see:
- https://github.com/pallets-eco/flask-classful/issues/47
=> If you don’t want to see 301 redirect, set trailing_slash option to False.
The behavior of the representations is changed: return content by default when no matching registered representation instead of returning the first output from the first registered representation. Allow specififying the default representation when no matching with flask-classful/default mime type, see:
- https://github.com/pallets-eco/flask-classful/issues/72
=> You need to specify the default representation.

From v0.10.0 to v0.11.0#

The order in which FlaskView decorators are applied has been reversed, see:
- https://github.com/pallets-eco/flask-classful/commit/686be6ef6fd09d9c1719fa89763ad09baddf7fd0
- https://github.com/pallets-eco/flask-classful/issues/49
=> You need to make sure the decorators are in the right order.

API#

class flask_classful.FlaskView#

Base view for any class based views implemented with Flask-Classful. Will automatically configure routes when registered with a Flask app instance.

classmethod register(app, route_base=None, subdomain=None, route_prefix=None, trailing_slash=None, method_dashified=None, base_class=None, init_argument=None, **rule_options)#

Registers a FlaskView class for use with a specific instance of a Flask app. Any methods not prefixes with an underscore are candidates to be routed and will have routes registered when this method is called.

Parameters:

app – an instance of a Flask application
route_base – The base path to use for all routes registered for this class. Overrides the route_base attribute if it has been set.
subdomain – A subdomain that this registration should use when configuring routes.
route_prefix – A prefix to be applied to all routes registered for this class. Precedes route_base. Overrides the class’ route_prefix if it has been set.
trailing_slash – An option to put trailing slashes at the end of routes without parameters.
method_dashified – An option to dashify method name from some_route to /some-route/ route instead of default /some_route/
base_class – Allow specifying an alternate base class for customization instead of the default FlaskView
init_argument – If provided, when instancing the class being registered it will pass this parameter to the constructor
rule_options – The options are passed to Rule object.

classmethod parse_options(options)#: Extracts subdomain and endpoint values from the options dict and returns them along with a new dict without those values.

classmethod make_proxy_method(name, init_argument)#

Creates a proxy function that can be used by Flasks routing. The proxy instantiates the FlaskView subclass and calls the appropriate method.

Parameters:: name – the name of the method to create a proxy for

classmethod build_rule(rule, method=None)#

Creates a routing rule based on either the class name (minus the ‘View’ suffix) or the defined route_base attribute of the class

Parameters:

rule – the path portion that should be appended to the route base
method – if a method’s arguments should be considered when constructing the rule, provide a reference to the method here. arguments named “self” will be ignored

classmethod get_route_base()#: Returns the route base to use for the current class.

classmethod build_route_name(method_name)#

Creates a unique route name based on the combination of the class name with the method name.

Parameters:: method_name – the method name to use when building a route name

flask_classful.route(rule, **options)#: A decorator that is used to define custom routes for methods in FlaskView subclasses. The format is exactly the same as Flask’s @app.route decorator.

Flask-Classful#

About Flask-Classful vs Flask-Classy and how to migrate#

Installation#

Let’s see how it works#

Using custom routes#

Flask-Classful’s way of talking about “routes”#

Specifying a Route Prefix#

As an attribute:#

When registering:#

Customizing the Route Base#

Method 1:#

Method 2:#

A few words on register#

Well … more words on register#

Using multiple routes for a single view#

Specify your own damn endpoint#

Special method names#

url_for art thou, Romeo?#

Your own methods (they’re special too!)#

Hiding your own methods (they’re not all special!)#

Decorating Tips#

Before and After#

Wrap all the views in a FlaskView#

Wrap only specific views#

The View Wrappin’ Method List#

Order of Wrapped Method Execution#

Subdomains (getting advanced ‘n stuff)#

The Define-During-Registration Method#

The Explicit-Define-In-The-FlaskView Method#

Adding Resource Representations (Get real classy and put on a top hat)#

Type Hints Support for Python 3#

Disabling Type Hints#

Providing your OWN base class#

Migration#

From v0.13.1 to v0.14.0#

From v0.10.0 to v0.11.0#

API#

About `Flask-Classful` vs `Flask-Classy` and how to migrate#

`Flask-Classful`’s way of talking about “routes”#

A few words on `register`#

Well … more words on `register`#