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docs/quickstart.rst
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Quickstart
==========

Eager to get started? This page gives a good introduction to Flask.
Follow :doc:`installation` to set up a project and install Flask first.


A Minimal Application
---------------------

A minimal Flask application looks something like this:

.. code-block:: python

    from flask import Flask

    app = Flask(__name__)

    @app.route("/")
    def hello_world():
        return "<p>Hello, World!</p>"

So what did that code do?

1.  First we imported the :class:`~flask.Flask` class. An instance of
    this class will be our WSGI application.
2.  Next we create an instance of this class. The first argument is the
    name of the application's module or package. ``__name__`` is a
    convenient shortcut for this that is appropriate for most cases.
    This is needed so that Flask knows where to look for resources such
    as templates and static files.
3.  We then use the :meth:`~flask.Flask.route` decorator to tell Flask
    what URL should trigger our function.
4.  The function returns the message we want to display in the user's
    browser. The default content type is HTML, so HTML in the string
    will be rendered by the browser.

Save it as :file:`hello.py` or something similar. Make sure to not call
your application :file:`flask.py` because this would conflict with Flask
itself.

To run the application, use the :command:`flask` command or
:command:`python -m flask`. Before you can do that you need
to tell your terminal the application to work with by exporting the
``FLASK_APP`` environment variable:

.. tabs::

   .. group-tab:: Bash

      .. code-block:: text

         $ export FLASK_APP=hello
         $ flask run
          * Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/

   .. group-tab:: Fish

      .. code-block:: text

         $ set -x FLASK_APP hello
         $ flask run
          * Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/

   .. group-tab:: CMD

      .. code-block:: text

         > set FLASK_APP=hello
         > flask run
          * Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/

   .. group-tab:: Powershell

      .. code-block:: text

         > $env:FLASK_APP = "hello"
         > flask run
          * Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/

.. admonition:: Application Discovery Behavior

    As a shortcut, if the file is named ``app.py`` or ``wsgi.py``, you
    don't have to set the ``FLASK_APP`` environment variable. See
    :doc:`/cli` for more details.

This launches a very simple builtin server, which is good enough for
testing but probably not what you want to use in production. For
deployment options see :doc:`deploying/index`.

Now head over to http://127.0.0.1:5000/, and you should see your hello
world greeting.

If another program is already using port 5000, you'll see
``OSError: [Errno 98]`` or ``OSError: [WinError 10013]`` when the
server tries to start. See :ref:`address-already-in-use` for how to
handle that.

.. _public-server:

.. admonition:: Externally Visible Server

   If you run the server you will notice that the server is only accessible
   from your own computer, not from any other in the network.  This is the
   default because in debugging mode a user of the application can execute
   arbitrary Python code on your computer.

   If you have the debugger disabled or trust the users on your network,
   you can make the server publicly available simply by adding
   ``--host=0.0.0.0`` to the command line::

       $ flask run --host=0.0.0.0

   This tells your operating system to listen on all public IPs.


What to do if the Server does not Start
---------------------------------------

In case the :command:`python -m flask` fails or :command:`flask`
does not exist, there are multiple reasons this might be the case.
First of all you need to look at the error message.

Old Version of Flask
````````````````````

Versions of Flask older than 0.11 used to have different ways to start the
application.  In short, the :command:`flask` command did not exist, and
neither did :command:`python -m flask`.  In that case you have two options:
either upgrade to newer Flask versions or have a look at :doc:`/server`
to see the alternative method for running a server.

Invalid Import Name
```````````````````

The ``FLASK_APP`` environment variable is the name of the module to import at
:command:`flask run`. In case that module is incorrectly named you will get an
import error upon start (or if debug is enabled when you navigate to the
application). It will tell you what it tried to import and why it failed.

The most common reason is a typo or because you did not actually create an
``app`` object.


Debug Mode
----------

The ``flask run`` command can do more than just start the development
server. By enabling debug mode, the server will automatically reload if
code changes, and will show an interactive debugger in the browser if an
error occurs during a request.

.. image:: _static/debugger.png
    :align: center
    :class: screenshot
    :alt: The interactive debugger in action.

.. warning::

    The debugger allows executing arbitrary Python code from the
    browser. It is protected by a pin, but still represents a major
    security risk. Do not run the development server or debugger in a
    production environment.

To enable all development features, set the ``FLASK_ENV`` environment
variable to ``development`` before calling ``flask run``.

.. tabs::

   .. group-tab:: Bash

      .. code-block:: text

         $ export FLASK_ENV=development
         $ flask run

   .. group-tab:: Fish

      .. code-block:: text

         $ set -x FLASK_ENV development
         $ flask run

   .. group-tab:: CMD

      .. code-block:: text

         > set FLASK_ENV=development
         > flask run

   .. group-tab:: Powershell

      .. code-block:: text

         > $env:FLASK_ENV = "development"
         > flask run

See also:

-   :doc:`/server` and :doc:`/cli` for information about running in
    development mode.
-   :doc:`/debugging` for information about using the built-in debugger
    and other debuggers.
-   :doc:`/logging` and :doc:`/errorhandling` to log errors and display
    nice error pages.


HTML Escaping
-------------

When returning HTML (the default response type in Flask), any
user-provided values rendered in the output must be escaped to protect
from injection attacks. HTML templates rendered with Jinja, introduced
later, will do this automatically.

:func:`~markupsafe.escape`, shown here, can be used manually. It is
omitted in most examples for brevity, but you should always be aware of
how you're using untrusted data.

.. code-block:: python

    from markupsafe import escape

    @app.route("/<name>")
    def hello(name):
        return f"Hello, {escape(name)}!"

If a user managed to submit the name ``<script>alert("bad")</script>``,
escaping causes it to be rendered as text, rather than running the
script in the user's browser.

``<name>`` in the route captures a value from the URL and passes it to
the view function. These variable rules are explained below.


Routing
-------

Modern web applications use meaningful URLs to help users. Users are more
likely to like a page and come back if the page uses a meaningful URL they can
remember and use to directly visit a page.

Use the :meth:`~flask.Flask.route` decorator to bind a function to a URL. ::

    @app.route('/')
    def index():
        return 'Index Page'

    @app.route('/hello')
    def hello():
        return 'Hello, World'

You can do more! You can make parts of the URL dynamic and attach multiple
rules to a function.

Variable Rules
``````````````

You can add variable sections to a URL by marking sections with
``<variable_name>``. Your function then receives the ``<variable_name>``
as a keyword argument. Optionally, you can use a converter to specify the type
of the argument like ``<converter:variable_name>``. ::

    from markupsafe import escape

    @app.route('/user/<username>')
    def show_user_profile(username):
        # show the user profile for that user
        return f'User {escape(username)}'

    @app.route('/post/<int:post_id>')
    def show_post(post_id):
        # show the post with the given id, the id is an integer
        return f'Post {post_id}'

    @app.route('/path/<path:subpath>')
    def show_subpath(subpath):
        # show the subpath after /path/
        return f'Subpath {escape(subpath)}'

Converter types:

========== ==========================================
``string`` (default) accepts any text without a slash
``int``    accepts positive integers
``float``  accepts positive floating point values
``path``   like ``string`` but also accepts slashes
``uuid``   accepts UUID strings
========== ==========================================


Unique URLs / Redirection Behavior
``````````````````````````````````

The following two rules differ in their use of a trailing slash. ::

    @app.route('/projects/')
    def projects():
        return 'The project page'

    @app.route('/about')
    def about():
        return 'The about page'

The canonical URL for the ``projects`` endpoint has a trailing slash.
It's similar to a folder in a file system. If you access the URL without
a trailing slash (``/projects``), Flask redirects you to the canonical URL
with the trailing slash (``/projects/``).

The canonical URL for the ``about`` endpoint does not have a trailing
slash. It's similar to the pathname of a file. Accessing the URL with a
trailing slash (``/about/``) produces a 404 "Not Found" error. This helps
keep URLs unique for these resources, which helps search engines avoid
indexing the same page twice.


.. _url-building:

URL Building
````````````

To build a URL to a specific function, use the :func:`~flask.url_for` function.
It accepts the name of the function as its first argument and any number of
keyword arguments, each corresponding to a variable part of the URL rule.
Unknown variable parts are appended to the URL as query parameters.

Why would you want to build URLs using the URL reversing function
:func:`~flask.url_for` instead of hard-coding them into your templates?

1. Reversing is often more descriptive than hard-coding the URLs.
2. You can change your URLs in one go instead of needing to remember to
   manually change hard-coded URLs.
3. URL building handles escaping of special characters transparently.
4. The generated paths are always absolute, avoiding unexpected behavior
   of relative paths in browsers.
5. If your application is placed outside the URL root, for example, in
   ``/myapplication`` instead of ``/``, :func:`~flask.url_for` properly
   handles that for you.

For example, here we use the :meth:`~flask.Flask.test_request_context` method
to try out :func:`~flask.url_for`. :meth:`~flask.Flask.test_request_context`
tells Flask to behave as though it's handling a request even while we use a
Python shell. See :ref:`context-locals`.

.. code-block:: python

    from flask import url_for

    @app.route('/')
    def index():
        return 'index'

    @app.route('/login')
    def login():
        return 'login'

    @app.route('/user/<username>')
    def profile(username):
        return f'{username}\'s profile'

    with app.test_request_context():
        print(url_for('index'))
        print(url_for('login'))
        print(url_for('login', next='/'))
        print(url_for('profile', username='John Doe'))

.. code-block:: text

    /
    /login
    /login?next=/
    /user/John%20Doe


HTTP Methods
````````````

Web applications use different HTTP methods when accessing URLs. You should
familiarize yourself with the HTTP methods as you work with Flask. By default,
a route only answers to ``GET`` requests. You can use the ``methods`` argument
of the :meth:`~flask.Flask.route` decorator to handle different HTTP methods.
::

    from flask import request

    @app.route('/login', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
    def login():
        if request.method == 'POST':
            return do_the_login()
        else:
            return show_the_login_form()

If ``GET`` is present, Flask automatically adds support for the ``HEAD`` method
and handles ``HEAD`` requests according to the `HTTP RFC`_. Likewise,
``OPTIONS`` is automatically implemented for you.

.. _HTTP RFC: https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2068.txt

Static Files
------------

Dynamic web applications also need static files.  That's usually where
the CSS and JavaScript files are coming from.  Ideally your web server is
configured to serve them for you, but during development Flask can do that
as well.  Just create a folder called :file:`static` in your package or next to
your module and it will be available at ``/static`` on the application.

To generate URLs for static files, use the special ``'static'`` endpoint name::

    url_for('static', filename='style.css')

The file has to be stored on the filesystem as :file:`static/style.css`.

Rendering Templates
-------------------

Generating HTML from within Python is not fun, and actually pretty
cumbersome because you have to do the HTML escaping on your own to keep
the application secure.  Because of that Flask configures the `Jinja2
<https://palletsprojects.com/p/jinja/>`_ template engine for you automatically.

To render a template you can use the :func:`~flask.render_template`
method.  All you have to do is provide the name of the template and the
variables you want to pass to the template engine as keyword arguments.
Here's a simple example of how to render a template::

    from flask import render_template

    @app.route('/hello/')
    @app.route('/hello/<name>')
    def hello(name=None):
        return render_template('hello.html', name=name)

Flask will look for templates in the :file:`templates` folder.  So if your
application is a module, this folder is next to that module, if it's a
package it's actually inside your package:

**Case 1**: a module::

    /application.py
    /templates
        /hello.html

**Case 2**: a package::

    /application
        /__init__.py
        /templates
            /hello.html

For templates you can use the full power of Jinja2 templates.  Head over
to the official `Jinja2 Template Documentation
<https://jinja.palletsprojects.com/templates/>`_ for more information.

Here is an example template:

.. sourcecode:: html+jinja

    <!doctype html>
    <title>Hello from Flask</title>
    {% if name %}
      <h1>Hello {{ name }}!</h1>
    {% else %}
      <h1>Hello, World!</h1>
    {% endif %}

Inside templates you also have access to the :data:`~flask.Flask.config`,
:class:`~flask.request`, :class:`~flask.session` and :class:`~flask.g` [#]_ objects
as well as the :func:`~flask.url_for` and :func:`~flask.get_flashed_messages` functions.

Templates are especially useful if inheritance is used.  If you want to
know how that works, see :doc:`patterns/templateinheritance`. Basically
template inheritance makes it possible to keep certain elements on each
page (like header, navigation and footer).

Automatic escaping is enabled, so if ``name`` contains HTML it will be escaped
automatically.  If you can trust a variable and you know that it will be
safe HTML (for example because it came from a module that converts wiki
markup to HTML) you can mark it as safe by using the
:class:`~markupsafe.Markup` class or by using the ``|safe`` filter in the
template.  Head over to the Jinja 2 documentation for more examples.

Here is a basic introduction to how the :class:`~markupsafe.Markup` class works::

    >>> from markupsafe import Markup
    >>> Markup('<strong>Hello %s!</strong>') % '<blink>hacker</blink>'
    Markup('<strong>Hello &lt;blink&gt;hacker&lt;/blink&gt;!</strong>')
    >>> Markup.escape('<blink>hacker</blink>')
    Markup('&lt;blink&gt;hacker&lt;/blink&gt;')
    >>> Markup('<em>Marked up</em> &raquo; HTML').striptags()
    'Marked up » HTML'

.. versionchanged:: 0.5

   Autoescaping is no longer enabled for all templates.  The following
   extensions for templates trigger autoescaping: ``.html``, ``.htm``,
   ``.xml``, ``.xhtml``.  Templates loaded from a string will have
   autoescaping disabled.

.. [#] Unsure what that :class:`~flask.g` object is? It's something in which
   you can store information for your own needs. See the documentation
   for :class:`flask.g` and :doc:`patterns/sqlite3`.


Accessing Request Data
----------------------

For web applications it's crucial to react to the data a client sends to
the server.  In Flask this information is provided by the global
:class:`~flask.request` object.  If you have some experience with Python
you might be wondering how that object can be global and how Flask
manages to still be threadsafe.  The answer is context locals:


.. _context-locals:

Context Locals
``````````````

.. admonition:: Insider Information

   If you want to understand how that works and how you can implement
   tests with context locals, read this section, otherwise just skip it.

Certain objects in Flask are global objects, but not of the usual kind.
These objects are actually proxies to objects that are local to a specific
context.  What a mouthful.  But that is actually quite easy to understand.

Imagine the context being the handling thread.  A request comes in and the
web server decides to spawn a new thread (or something else, the
underlying object is capable of dealing with concurrency systems other
than threads).  When Flask starts its internal request handling it
figures out that the current thread is the active context and binds the
current application and the WSGI environments to that context (thread).
It does that in an intelligent way so that one application can invoke another
application without breaking.

So what does this mean to you?  Basically you can completely ignore that
this is the case unless you are doing something like unit testing.  You
will notice that code which depends on a request object will suddenly break
because there is no request object.  The solution is creating a request
object yourself and binding it to the context.  The easiest solution for
unit testing is to use the :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`.