Http

Handlers¶

In the following text, the callable object used to process HTTP requests is referred to as an HTTP processor.

Function Handlers¶

Using a function to handle requests is straightforward.

from kui.wsgi import Kui

app = Kui()


@app.router.http("/hello")
def hello():
    return "hello"

The @app.router.http decorator returns the original function, so the same function can be registered under multiple routes.

from kui.wsgi import Kui, request

app = Kui()


@app.router.http("/hello", name="hello")
@app.router.http("/hello/{name}", name="hello-with-name")
def hello():
    if request.path_params:
        return f"hello {request.path_params['name']}"
    return "hello"

You can use required_method to restrict the function processor to accept only specified request methods.

from kui.wsgi import Kui, request, required_method

app = Kui()


@app.router.http("/hello", middlewares=[required_method("POST")])
def need_post():
    return request.method

Notice

When you use required_method to constrain the request methods, the OPTIONS method will be automatically handled.

Notice

When you allow the GET method using required_method, the HEAD method will also be allowed.

Class Handlers¶

Using a class to handle multiple types of requests is simple. Just inherit from HttpView and write the corresponding methods. The supported methods are "get", "post", "put", "patch", "delete", "head", "options", and "trace".

Allow more request methods

Override the class attribute HTTP_METHOD_NAMES when inheriting the class.

from kui.wsgi import Kui, request, HttpView

app = Kui()


@app.router.http("/cat")
class Cat(HttpView):
    @classmethod
    def get(cls):
        return request.method

    @classmethod
    def post(cls):
        return request.method

    @classmethod
    def put(cls):
        return request.method

    @classmethod
    def patch(cls):
        return request.method

    @classmethod
    def delete(cls):
        return request.method

Getting Request Values¶

Use the following statement to access the global variable request, which is a proxy object that allows reading, writing, and deleting various attributes of the HttpRequest object corresponding to the current request.

from kui.wsgi import request


def homepage():
    return request.url.path

In general, this is sufficient for most use cases. However, if you really need to access the original HttpRequest object, you can use

from kui.wsgi import request_var


def endpoint():
    request = request_var.get()
    ...

Here are the commonly used attributes and methods of the kui.wsgi.HttpRequest object.

Method¶

You can use request.method to retrieve the request method, such as GET or POST.

URL¶

You can use request.url to retrieve the request path. This attribute is an object similar to a string that exposes all the components parsed from the URL.

For example: request.url.path, request.url.port, request.url.scheme

Path Parameters¶

request.path_params is a dictionary that contains all the parsed path parameters.

Headers¶

request.headers is a case-insensitive multi-value dictionary.

The key obtained from request.headers.keys()/request.headers.items() will be in lowercase.

Accept¶

By reading the request.accepted_types attribute, you can obtain all the response types accepted by the client.

By calling the request.accepts function, you can determine what response types the client accepts. For example: request.accepts("text/html").

Content Type¶

Use request.content_type to retrieve the Content-Type header.

Content Length¶

Use request.content_length to retrieve the Content-Length header.

Date¶

Use request.date to retrieve the Date header.

Referrer¶

Use request.referrer to retrieve the Referer header.

Query Parameters¶

request.query_params is a multi-value dictionary.

For example: request.query_params['search']

Client Address¶

request.client is a namedtuple defined as namedtuple("Address", ["host", "port"]).

To get the client's hostname or IP address: request.client.host.

To get the port the client is using in the current connection: request.client.port.

Notice

Any element in the tuple may be None. This depends on the values passed by the server.

Cookies¶

request.cookies is a standard dictionary defined as Dict[str, str].

For example: request.cookies.get('mycookie')

Body¶

There are several ways to read the request body:

request.body: Returns a bytes object.
request.form: Parses the body as a form and returns the result as a multi-value dictionary.
request.json: Parses the body as a JSON string and returns the result.
request.data(): Parses the body based on the information provided by the content_type and returns the result.

You can also use the for loop syntax to read the body as a bytes stream:

def post():
    ...
    body = b''
    for chunk in request.stream():
        body += chunk
    ...

If you directly use request.stream() to read the data, the request body will not be cached in memory. Any subsequent calls to .body/.form/.json will throw an error.

Request Files¶

You can parse form data received in the multipart/form-data format, including files, using request.form.

Files will be wrapped in the baize.datastructures.UploadFile object, which has the following attributes:

filename: str: The original filename of the submitted file (e.g., myimage.jpg).
content_type: str: The file type (MIME type / media type) (e.g., image/jpeg).
headers: Headers: The headers carried by the file field in the multipart/form-data format.
file: tempfile.SpooledTemporaryFile: The temporary file that stores the file content (you can read and write to this object directly, but it is better not to).

UploadFile also has five methods:

write(data: bytes) -> None: Write data to the file.
read(size: int) -> bytes: Read data from the file.
seek(offset: int) -> None: Move the file pointer to the specified position.
save(filepath: str) -> None: Save the file to the specified path on disk.
close() -> None: Close the file.

State¶

In some cases, you may need to store additional custom information in request. You can use request.state for storage.

request.state.user = User(name="Alice")  # Write

user_name = request.state.user.name  # Read

del request.state.user  # Delete

Returning Response Values¶

For any successfully processed HTTP request, you must return an HttpResponse object or one of its subclasses.

HttpResponse¶

Signature: HttpResponse(status_code: int = 200, headers: Mapping[str, str] = None)

status_code - The HTTP status code.
headers - A dictionary of strings.

HttpResponse provides the set_cookie method to allow you to set cookies.

Signature: HttpResponse.set_cookie(key, value="", max_age=None, expires=None, path="/", domain=None, secure=False, httponly=False, samesite="lax")

key: str - The key that will become the cookie.
value: str = "" - The value of the cookie.
max_age: int - The lifetime of the cookie in seconds. Non-positive integers will cause the cookie to be discarded immediately.
expires: Optional[int] - The number of seconds before the cookie expires.
path: str = "/" - The subset of routes to which the cookie will apply.
domain: Optional[str] - The domain to which the cookie is valid.
secure: bool = False - Indicates that the cookie should only be sent to the server when using the HTTPS protocol.
httponly: bool = False - Indicates that the cookie cannot be accessed via JavaScript using properties such as Document.cookie, XMLHttpRequest, or Request.
samesite: str = "lax" - Specifies the SameSite policy for the cookie. Valid values are "lax", "strict", and "none".

HttpResponse also provides the delete_cookie method to expire a previously set cookie.

Signature: HttpResponse.delete_cookie(key, path='/', domain=None, secure=False, httponly=False, samesite="lax")

PlainTextResponse¶

Accepts a str or bytes and returns a plain text response.

from kui.wsgi import PlainTextResponse


def return_plaintext():
    return PlainTextResponse('Hello, world!')

HTMLResponse¶

Accepts a str or bytes and returns an HTML response.

from kui.wsgi import HTMLResponse


def return_html():
    return HTMLResponse('<html><body><h1>Hello, world!</h1></body></html>')

JSONResponse¶

Accepts a Python object and returns a response encoded as application/json.

from kui.wsgi import JSONResponse


def return_json():
    return JSONResponse({'hello': 'world'})

JSONResponse exposes all the options of json.dumps as keyword arguments for customization.

RedirectResponse¶

Returns an HTTP redirect. By default, it uses the 307 status code.

from kui.wsgi import RedirectResponse


def return_redirect():
    return RedirectResponse('/')

StreamResponse¶

Accepts a generator and streams the response body.

import time
from kui.wsgi import StreamResponse


def slow_numbers(minimum, maximum):
    yield b'<html><body><ul>'
    for number in range(minimum, maximum + 1):
        yield f'<li>{number}</li>'.encode()
        time.sleep(0.5)
    yield b'</ul></body></html>'


def return_stream(environ, start_response):
    generator = slow_numbers(1, 10)
    return StreamResponse(generator, content_type='text/html')

FileResponse¶

Transmits a file as the response.

Compared to other response types, it is instantiated with different parameters:

filepath - The file path of the file to be streamed.
headers - The same as the headers parameter in Response.
content_type - The MIME media type of the file. If not set, the file name or path will be used to infer the media type.
download_name - If set, it will be included in the Content-Disposition of the response.
stat_result - Accepts an os.stat_result object. If not passed, the result of os.stat(filepath) will be used automatically.

FileResponse automatically sets the appropriate Content-Length, Last-Modified, and ETag headers. And it supports file range requests without any additional handling.

TemplateResponse¶

TemplateResponse is a shortcut for app.templates.TemplateResponse.

Jinja2 Template Engine¶

Kuí provides built-in support for Jinja2 templates. As long as you have installed the jinja2 module, you can export Jinja2Templates from kui.wsgi.templates. Here is a simple example: when accessing "/", it will look for the homepage.html file in the templates directory at the root of the project for rendering.

from kui.wsgi import Kui, TemplateResponse, Jinja2Templates

app = Kui(templates=Jinja2Templates("templates"))


@app.router.http("/")
def homepage():
    return TemplateResponse("homepage.html")

If you want to use a specific folder in a module for template files, you can use Jinja2Templates("module_name:dirname").

You can also pass multiple directories for Jinja2 to search in order until it finds the first available template. For example: Jinja2Templates("templates", "module_name:dirname").

Other Template Engines¶

Implement the kui.wsgi.templates.BaseTemplates interface to create your own template engine class.

SendEventResponse¶

You can return a Server-sent Events response using SendEventResponse. This is a type of HTTP long-polling response that can be used for scenarios such as server-side real-time data pushing to clients.

SendEventResponse accepts a generator that generates messages. Each message yielded by the generator should be a valid Server-Sent Events message.

Here is an example that sends a "hello" message every second, with a total of 101 messages.

import time
from typing import Generator
from kui.wsgi import Kui, SendEventResponse, ServerSentEvent

app = Kui()


@app.router.http("/message")
def message():
    def message_gen() -> Generator[ServerSentEvent, None, None]:
        for i in range(101):
            time.sleep(1)
            yield {"id": i, "data": "hello"}

    return SendEventResponse(message_gen())

Frontend Web Development

In most cases, using the browser's built-in EventSource is sufficient. However, in more complex scenarios such as using the Server-sent events with the ChatGPT API provided by OpenAI, you can use @microsoft/fetch-event-source to achieve more advanced functionality.

Simplified Response Writing¶

For convenience, Kuí allows you to define custom functions to handle non-HttpResponse objects returned by HTTP processors. The mechanism intercepts the response and automatically selects the handling function based on the type of the response value, converting non-HttpResponse objects into HttpResponse objects.

Explicit Conversion

If you need to convert the return value of a function to an HttpResponse object, you can use kui.wsgi.convert_response.

In the following example, the view function returns a dict object, but the client receives a JSON response. This is because Kuí provides some handling functions for common types:

dict | tuple | list: Automatically converted to JSONResponse
str | bytes: Automatically converted to PlainTextResponse
types.GeneratorType: Automatically converted to SendEventResponse
pathlib.PurePath: Automatically converted to FileResponse
baize.datastructures.URL: Automatically converted to RedirectResponse

def get_detail():
    return {"key": "value"}

You can also return multiple values to customize the HTTP status and headers:

def not_found():
    return {"message": "Not found"}, 404


def no_content():
    return "", 301, {"location": "https://kui.aber.sh"}

Similarly, you can define the simplified writing of response values to standardize the response format of the project (even though TypedDict has weak constraints in Python, dataclass is much more effective). The following example demonstrates that when you return an Error object in a view function, it will be automatically converted to a JSONResponse, and the default status code is 400:

from dataclasses import dataclass, asdict
from typing import Mapping
from kui.wsgi import Kui, HttpResponse, JSONResponse

app = Kui()


@dataclass
class Error:
    code: int = 0
    title: str = ""
    message: str = ""


@app.response_convertor.register(Error)
def _error_json(error: Error, status: int = 400, headers: Mapping[str, str] = None) -> HttpResponse:
    return JSONResponse(asdict(error), status, headers)

It is equivalent to:

from dataclasses import dataclass, asdict
from typing import Mapping
from kui.wsgi import Kui, HttpResponse, JSONResponse


@dataclass
class Error:
    code: int = 0
    title: str = ""
    message: str = ""


def _error_json(error: Error, status: int = 400, headers: Mapping[str, str] = None) -> HttpResponse:
    return JSONResponse(asdict(error), status, headers)


app = Kui(
    response_converters={
        Error: _error_json
    }
)

You can also override the default conversion method. The following example is equivalent to the previous example:

from typing import Mapping
from kui.wsgi import Kui, HttpResponse

app = Kui()


@app.response_convertor.register(tuple)
@app.response_convertor.register(list)
@app.response_convertor.register(dict)
def _more_json(body, status: int = 200, headers: Mapping[str, str] = None) -> HttpResponse:
    return CustomizeJSONResponse(body, status, headers)

Exception Handling¶

HTTPException¶

The parameter signature is: HTTPException(status_code: int, headers: dict = None, content: typing.Any = None)

You can use HTTPException to return an HTTP response by raising it (don't worry, Kuí will convert it into a regular response object). If you don't provide a content value, it will use http.HTTPStatus(status_code).description from the Python standard library as the final result.

from kui import HTTPException


def endpoint():
    ...
    raise HTTPException(400)
    ...

Sometimes you may want to return more information. You can pass content and headers parameters to control the actual response object, just like using HttpResponse. Here's a simple example:

from kui import HTTPException


def endpoint():
    ...
    raise HTTPException(405, headers={"Allow": "HEAD, GET, POST"})
    ...

Tip

If you want to raise an HTTPException in a lambda function, you can use baize.exceptions.abort.

Custom Exception Handling¶

For intentionally thrown exceptions, Kuí provides a method for unified handling.

You can catch specific HTTP status codes, so when dealing with an HTTPException that contains the corresponding HTTP status code, Kuí will use the function you defined instead of the default behavior. You can also catch other exceptions that inherit from Exception and return specific content to the client through a custom function.

from kui.wsgi import Kui, HTTPException, HttpResponse, PlainTextResponse

app = Kui()


@app.exception_handler(404)
def not_found(exc: HTTPException) -> HttpResponse:
    return PlainTextResponse("what do you want to do?", status_code=404)


@app.exception_handler(ValueError)
def value_error(exc: ValueError) -> HttpResponse:
    return PlainTextResponse("Something went wrong with the server.", status_code=500)

In addition to decorator registration, you can also use a list-based registration method. The following example is equivalent to the previous one:

from kui.wsgi import Kui, HTTPException, HttpResponse, PlainTextResponse


def not_found(exc: HTTPException) -> HttpResponse:
    return PlainTextResponse("what do you want to do?", status_code=404)


def value_error(exc: ValueError) -> HttpResponse:
    return PlainTextResponse("Something went wrong with the server.", status_code=500)


app = Kui(exception_handlers={
    404: not_found,
    ValueError: value_error,
})

Allowing Cross-Origin Requests¶

To solve the cross-origin issue in modern browsers, Cross-Origin Resource Sharing is generally used. In Kuí, you can quickly configure API to allow cross-origin requests using the following code:

from kui.wsgi import Routes, allow_cors

routes = Routes(..., http_middlewares=[allow_cors()])

allow_cors has the following parameters:

allow_origins: Iterable[Pattern]: Allowed origins. It requires re.compile precompiled Pattern objects. The default value is (re.compile(".*"), ).
allow_methods: Iterable[str]: Allowed request methods. The default value is ("GET", "POST", "PUT", "PATCH", "DELETE", "HEAD", "OPTIONS", "TRACE").
allow_headers: Iterable[str]: Allowed request headers. Corresponds to Access-Control-Allow-Headers.
expose_headers: Iterable[str]: Request headers that can be listed in the response. Corresponds to Access-Control-Expose-Headers.
allow_credentials: bool: If True, allows cross-origin requests to carry cookies; otherwise, it does not allow. The default value is False.
max_age: int: Cache time for preflight requests. The default value is 600 seconds.

If you need to enable CORS globally, you can pass the cors_config parameter to Kui. It is a dictionary with the same key-value pairs as the allow_cors parameters.

from kui.wsgi import Kui

app = Kui(cors_config={})

Http

Handlers¶

Function Handlers¶

Class Handlers¶

Getting Request Values¶

Method¶

URL¶

Path Parameters¶

Headers¶

Accept¶

Content Type¶

Content Length¶

Date¶

Referrer¶

Query Parameters¶

Client Address¶

Cookies¶

Body¶

Request Files¶

State¶

Returning Response Values¶

HttpResponse¶

Set Cookie¶

Delete Cookie¶

PlainTextResponse¶

HTMLResponse¶

JSONResponse¶

RedirectResponse¶

StreamResponse¶

FileResponse¶

TemplateResponse¶

Jinja2 Template Engine¶

Other Template Engines¶

SendEventResponse¶

Simplified Response Writing¶

Exception Handling¶

HTTPException¶

Custom Exception Handling¶

Allowing Cross-Origin Requests¶