Merge pull request #2279 from davidism/docs-after_this_request

Clean up deferred callback doc

docs/patterns/deferredcallbacks.rst

@@ -3,71 +3,43 @@
 Deferred Request Callbacks
 ==========================
 
-One of the design principles of Flask is that response objects are created
-and passed down a chain of potential callbacks that can modify them or
-replace them.  When the request handling starts, there is no response
-object yet.  It is created as necessary either by a view function or by
-some other component in the system.
+One of the design principles of Flask is that response objects are created and
+passed down a chain of potential callbacks that can modify them or replace
+them. When the request handling starts, there is no response object yet. It is
+created as necessary either by a view function or by some other component in
+the system.
 
-But what happens if you want to modify the response at a point where the
-response does not exist yet?  A common example for that would be a
-before-request function that wants to set a cookie on the response object.
+What happens if you want to modify the response at a point where the response
+does not exist yet?  A common example for that would be a
+:meth:`~flask.Flask.before_request` callback that wants to set a cookie on the
+response object.
 
-One way is to avoid the situation.  Very often that is possible.  For
-instance you can try to move that logic into an after-request callback
-instead.  Sometimes however moving that code there is just not a very
-pleasant experience or makes code look very awkward.
+One way is to avoid the situation. Very often that is possible. For instance
+you can try to move that logic into a :meth:`~flask.Flask.after_request`
+callback instead. However, sometimes moving code there makes it more
+more complicated or awkward to reason about.
 
-As an alternative possibility you can attach a bunch of callback functions
-to the :data:`~flask.g` object and call them at the end of the request.
-This way you can defer code execution from anywhere in the application.
-
-
-The Decorator
--------------
-
-The following decorator is the key.  It registers a function on a list on
-the :data:`~flask.g` object::
-
-    from flask import g
-
-    def after_this_request(f):
-        if not hasattr(g, 'after_request_callbacks'):
-            g.after_request_callbacks = []
-        g.after_request_callbacks.append(f)
-        return f
-
-
-Calling the Deferred
---------------------
-
-Now you can use the `after_this_request` decorator to mark a function to
-be called at the end of the request.  But we still need to call them.  For
-this the following function needs to be registered as
-:meth:`~flask.Flask.after_request` callback::
-
-    @app.after_request
-    def call_after_request_callbacks(response):
-        for callback in getattr(g, 'after_request_callbacks', ()):
-            callback(response)
-        return response
-
-
-A Practical Example
--------------------
+As an alternative, you can use :func:`~flask.after_this_request` to register
+callbacks that will execute after only the current request. This way you can
+defer code execution from anywhere in the application, based on the current
+request.
 
 At any time during a request, we can register a function to be called at the
-end of the request.  For example you can remember the current language of the
-user in a cookie in the before-request function::
+end of the request. For example you can remember the current language of the
+user in a cookie in a :meth:`~flask.Flask.before_request` callback::
 
     from flask import request, after_this_request
 
     @app.before_request
     def detect_user_language():
         language = request.cookies.get('user_lang')
+
         if language is None:
             language = guess_language_from_request()
+
+            # when the response exists, set a cookie with the language
             @after_this_request
             def remember_language(response):
                 response.set_cookie('user_lang', language)
+
         g.language = language