forked from orbit-oss/flask
Added support for macro pulling and documented certain design decisions.
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docs/design.rst
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docs/design.rst
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Design Decisions in Flask
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=========================
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If you are curious why Flask does certain things the way it does and not
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different, this section is for you. This should give you an idea about
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some of the design decisions that may appear arbitrary and surprising at
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first, especially in direct comparison with other frameworks.
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The Explicit Application Object
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-------------------------------
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A Python web application based on WSGI has to have one central callable
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object that implements the actual application. In Flask this is an
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instance of the :class:`~flask.Flask` class. Each Flask application has
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to create an instance of this class itself and pass it the name of the
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module, but why can't Flask do that itself?
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Without such an explicit application object the following code::
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from flask import Flask
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app = Flask(__name__)
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@app.route('/')
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def index():
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return 'Hello World!'
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Would look like this instead::
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from hypothetical_flask import route
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@route('/')
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def index():
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return 'Hello World!'
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There are three major reasons for this. The most important one is that
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implicit application objects require that there may only be one class at
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the time. There are ways to fake multiple application with a single
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application object, like maintaining a stack of applications, but this
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causes some problems I won't outline here in detail. Now the question is:
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when does a microframework need more than one application at the same
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time? A good example for this is unittesting. When you want to test
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something it can be very helpful to create a minimal application to test
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specific behavior. When the application object is deleted everything it
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allocated will be freed again.
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Another thing that becomes possible with having an explicit object laying
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around in your code is that you can subclass the base class
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(:class:`~flask.Flask`) to alter specific behaviour. This would not be
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possible without hacks if the object was created ahead of time for you
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based on a class that is not exposed to you.
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But there is another very important reason why Flask depends on an
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explicit instanciation of that class: the package name. Whenever you
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create a Flask instance you usually pass it `__name__` as package name.
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Flask depends on that information to properly load resources relative
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to your module. With Python's outstanding support for reflection it can
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then access the package to figure out where the templates and static files
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are stored (see :meth:`~flask.Flask.open_resource`). Now obviously there
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are frameworks around that do not need any configuration and will still be
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able to load templates relative to your application module. But they have
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to use the current working directory for that, which is a very unreliable
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way to determine where the application is. The current working directory
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is process-wide and if you are running multiple applications in one
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process (which could happen in a webserver without you knowing) the paths
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will be off. Worse: many webservers do not set the working directory to
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the directory of your application but to the document root which does not
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have to be the same folder.
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The third reason is "explicit is better than implicit". That object is
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your WSGI application, you don't have to remember anything else. If you
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want to apply a WSGI middleware, just wrap it and you're done (though
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there are better ways to do that so that you do not lose the reference
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to the application object :meth:`~flask.Flask.wsgi_app`).
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One Template Engine
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-------------------
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Flask decides on one template engine: Jinja2. Why doesn't Flask have a
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pluggable template engine interface? You can obviously use a different
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template engine, but Flask will still configure Jinja2 for you. While
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that limitation that Jinja2 is *always* configured will probably go away,
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the decision to bundle one template engine and use that will not.
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Template engines are like programming languages and each of those engines
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has a certain understandment about how things work. On the surface they
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all work the same: you tell the engine to evaluate a template with a set
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of variables and take the return value as string.
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But that's about where similarities end. Jinja2 for example has an
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extensive filter system, a certain way to do template inheritance, support
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for reusable blocks (macros) that can be used from inside templates and
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also from Python code, is using unicode for all operations, supports
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iterative template rendering, configurable syntax and more. On the other
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hand an engine like Genshi is based on XML stream evaluation, template
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inheritance by taking the availability of XPath into account and more.
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Mako on the other hand treats templates similar to Python modules.
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When it comes to bridge a template engine with an application or framework
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there is more than just rendering templates. Flask uses Jinja2's
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extensive autoescaping support for instance. Also it provides ways to
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access macros from Jinja2 templates.
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A template abstraction layer that would not take the unique features of
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the template engines away is a science on its own and a too large
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undertaking for a microframework like Flask.
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Micro with Dependencies
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-----------------------
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Why does Flask call itself a microframework and yet it depends on two
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libraries (namely Werkzeug and Jinja2). Why shouldn't it? If we look
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over to the Ruby side of web development there we have a protocol very
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similar to WSGI. Just that it's called Rack there, but besides that it
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looks very much like a WSGI rendition for Ruby. But nearly all
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applications in Ruby land do not work with Rack directly, but on top of a
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lirbary with the same name. This Rack library has two equivalents in
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Python: WebOb (formerly Paste) and Werkzeug. Paste is still around but
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from my understanding it's sortof deprecated in favour of WebOb. The
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development of WebOb and Werkzeug started side by side with similar ideas
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in mind: be a good implementation of WSGI for other applications to take
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advantage.
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Flask is a framework that takes advantage of the work already done by
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Werkzeug to properly interface WSGI (which can be a complex task at
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times). Thanks to recent developments in the Python package
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infrastructure, packages with depencencies are no longer an issue and
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there are very few reasons against having libraries that depend on others.
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Thread Locals
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-------------
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Flask uses thread local objects (context local objects in fact, they
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support greenlet contexts as well) for request, session and an extra
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object you can put your own things on (:data:`~flask.g`). Why is that and
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isn't that a bad idea?
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Yes it is usually not such a bright idea to use thread locals. They cause
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troubles for servers that are not based on the concept of threads and make
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large applications harder to maintain. However Flask is just not designed
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for large applications or asyncronous servers. Flask wants to make it
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quick and easy to write a traditional web application.
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Also see the :ref:`becomingbig` section of the documentation for some
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inspiration for larger applications based on Flask.
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