Flask-Via 2014.05.08

Flask-Via adds a cleaner method for defining routes to your Flask views, inspired by Django urls.

Inspired by the Django URL configuration system, Flask-Via is designed to add similar functionality to Flask applications which have grown beyond a simple single file application.

Example

from flask import Flask
from flask.ext.via import Via
from flask.ext.via.routers.default import Basic

app = Flask(__name__)

def foo(bar=None):
    return 'Foo View!'

routes = [
    Basic('/foo', foo),
    Basic('/foo/<bar>', foo, endpoint='foo2'),
]

via = Via()
via.init_app(app, route_module='flask_via.examples.basic')

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app.run(debug=True)

Why?

Growing your application can be quite difficult when it’s not always clear where and how your routes are discovered. This can lead to a cluttered application factory method when all your routes are defined at application creation - resulting in code which is difficult to maintain, not to mention messy.

A better solution is to define your routes in a routes.py and automatically load them at application start up. This is what Flask-Via helps to do.

Third party Flask extensions don’t always follow the same conventions for adding routes to an application, so Flask-Via has been designed to be easy for developers to write their own custom routers. For an example of this, take a look at the bundled Flask-Restful Resource router.

If you do write a custom router that is useful to you, it will probably be useful to someone else so please do contribute back :)

Links

• Documentation: http://flask-via.thisissoon.com

• CI: https://travis-ci.org/thisissoon/Flask-Via

• Coverage: https://coveralls.io/r/thisissoon/Flask-Via?branch=master