flaskrouting

Writing routes in flask is cumbersome. There is a lot of boilerplate and the API is very restrictive. flaskrouting lets you quickly define your site's routes how you want with as little code as possible.

Getting Started

Install flaskrouting with pip install flaskrouting

Here's some routing for a simple blog site:

from flaskrouting import var, page, path

routes = path("", [
  page("", HomeView, name="home"),
  page("blogs", BlogListView),

  path("blog", [
    var("<int:blog_id>", [
      page("", BlogView),
      page("edit", EditBlogView)
    ])
  ])
])

# Register the routes with the flask app instance
routes.register(app)

This creates 4 routes by using var, page, and path. The URLs for each page are built up one piece at a time. As a result, related URLs are grouped together, and there is no need to duplicate any code.

Here are the reverse lookups for each route:

url_for("home")                   => "/"
url_for("blogs")                  => "/blogs"
url_for("blog", blog_id=12)       => "/blog/12"
url_for("blog.edit", blog_id=12)  => "/blog/12/edit"

To register the routes, simply call register() and provide the flask application instance. The easiest way to do this is to define your routes in a separate file, then import them and register with the application instance when it is created.

Configuration

flaskrouting.TRAILING_SLASHES

Default: False

If TRAILING_SLASHES = False, flaskrouting will not append a trailing slash to URLs unless you explicitly define them with one. To always append a trailing slash, set flaskrouting.TRAILING_SLASHES = True before calling the register() method.

Reference

flaskrouting.path(name, routes)

Creates a path definition with name applied to routes. Every routing definition must be wrapped with a path(). To register a route definition, call .register(app) on the object that is returned

• name: The name of the path. This is used when building the URL as well as generating the reverse lookup name. If this path is at the root level, this can be set to "", in which case it's not used in the URL or the reverse lookup name, and merely acts as a container.
• routes: A list containing var, page, and/or path objects. If set to [], the path is discarded.

flaskrouting.page(url, view, name=None, methods=None, **options)

Creates a page definition at url which forwards requests to view. For reverse lookups, url is used by default unless name is set. If neither url or name are set, the name of the page is omitted from the reverse lookup. You can also specify a list of HTTP verbs for methods if you want to restrict the view to only serve certain requests (by default it accepts everything).

• url: The URL of the page. If set to "", nothing is appended to the full URL or the reverse lookup name.
• view: A view function or a subclass of flask.views.View.
• name (optional): If set, this will be used for the reverse lookup name instead of url. This must be set if the page is located at / (otherwise it won't have a reverse lookup name). If url is "", no page name will be used in the reverse lookup unless this is set.
• methods (optional): If set, the view will only accept requests that were made with the HTTP verbs provided. If this is not set, the view accepts requests made from any of the verbs: ["GET", "POST", "PUT", "PATCH", "DELETE"]
• **options (optional): Additional keyword options accepted by add_url_rule(). You would most likely use this to pass a defaults argument (see the flask docs for more info).

flaskrouting.var(var, routes, name=None)

Creates a new variable rule in the route. By default a variable definition does not include itself as part of the reverse lookup of a route, however you can set name to override this.

• var: The variable definition. This is a dynamic part of the URL that will be passed to the view as a parameter. See the flask docs on variable rules for information on formatting.
• routes: A list containing var, page, and/or path objects
• name (optional): If set, uses name as part of a route's reverse lookup.

Examples

An index page at /

Use a blank path and page name to create a route at /. The page must be defined with a name otherwise there is nothing that can be used to do a reverse lookup on the URL.

path("", [
  page("", IndexView, name="index")
])

REST API

Use the methods argument to specify which HTTP methods a certain endpoint should be responsible for.

path("api", [
  path("user", [
    page("", UserAPI, methods=["GET", "POST"]),
    var("<int:user_id>", [
      page("", UserAPI, methods=["PUT", "PATCH", "DELETE"])
    ])
  ])
])

Partial route definitions

Depending on the size of your site, you may wish to split up your route definitions by package or view files. If your folder structure looks like this:

api/
  __init__.py
  blog.py
  comment.py
  user.py

You could import your view functions/classes into __init__.py and handle all of the routing there, or define partial routes in blog.py, comment.py, and user.py, and then combine them in __init__.py.

# blog.py

routes = path("blog", [
  page("page1", view1),
  page("page2", view2),
])


# __init__.py

from .blog import routes as blog_routes

routes = path("api", [
  blog_routes
])

You can omit the path() and just define the partial route as a list as well:

# blog.py

routes = [
  page("page1", view1),
  page("page2", view2),
]


# __init__.py

from .blog import routes as blog_routes

routes = path("api", [
  path("blog", blog_routes)
])