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.. _config:
Configuration Handling
======================
.. versionadded:: 0.3
Applications need some kind of configuration. There are different settings
you might want to change depending on the application environment like
toggling the debug mode, setting the secret key, and other such
environment-specific things.
The way Flask is designed usually requires the configuration to be
available when the application starts up. You can hardcode the
configuration in the code, which for many small applications is not
actually that bad, but there are better ways.
Independent of how you load your config, there is a config object
available which holds the loaded configuration values:
The :attr:`~flask.Flask.config` attribute of the :class:`~flask.Flask`
object. This is the place where Flask itself puts certain configuration
values and also where extensions can put their configuration values. But
this is also where you can have your own configuration.
Configuration Basics
--------------------
The :attr:`~flask.Flask.config` is actually a subclass of a dictionary and
can be modified just like any dictionary::
app = Flask(__name__)
app.config['DEBUG'] = True
Certain configuration values are also forwarded to the
:attr:`~flask.Flask` object so you can read and write them from there::
app.debug = True
To update multiple keys at once you can use the :meth:`dict.update`
method::
app.config.update(
DEBUG=True,
SECRET_KEY='...'
)
Builtin Configuration Values
----------------------------
The following configuration values are used internally by Flask:
.. tabularcolumns:: |p{6.5cm}|p{8.5cm}|
================================= =========================================
``DEBUG`` enable/disable debug mode
``TESTING`` enable/disable testing mode
``PROPAGATE_EXCEPTIONS`` explicitly enable or disable the
propagation of exceptions. If not set or
explicitly set to `None` this is
implicitly true if either `TESTING` or
`DEBUG` is true.
``PRESERVE_CONTEXT_ON_EXCEPTION`` By default if the application is in
debug mode the request context is not
popped on exceptions to enable debuggers
to introspect the data. This can be
disabled by this key. You can also use
this setting to force-enable it for non
debug execution which might be useful to
debug production applications (but also
very risky).
``SECRET_KEY`` the secret key
``SESSION_COOKIE_NAME`` the name of the session cookie
``SESSION_COOKIE_DOMAIN`` the domain for the session cookie. If
this is not set, the cookie will be
valid for all subdomains of
``SERVER_NAME``.
``SESSION_COOKIE_PATH`` the path for the session cookie. If
this is not set the cookie will be valid
for all of ``APPLICATION_ROOT`` or if
that is not set for ``'/'``.
``SESSION_COOKIE_HTTPONLY`` controls if the cookie should be set
with the httponly flag. Defaults to
`True`.
``SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE`` controls if the cookie should be set
with the secure flag. Defaults to
`False`.
``PERMANENT_SESSION_LIFETIME`` the lifetime of a permanent session as
:class:`datetime.timedelta` object.
Starting with Flask 0.8 this can also be
an integer representing seconds.
``SESSION_REFRESH_EACH_REQUEST`` this flag controls how permanent
sessions are refreshed. If set to `True`
(which is the default) then the cookie
is refreshed each request which
automatically bumps the lifetime. If
set to `False` a `set-cookie` header is
only sent if the session is modified.
Non permanent sessions are not affected
by this.
``USE_X_SENDFILE`` enable/disable x-sendfile
``LOGGER_NAME`` the name of the logger
``LOGGER_HANDLER_POLICY`` the policy of the default logging
handler. The default is ``'always'``
which means that the default logging
handler is always active. ``'debug'``
will only activate logging in debug
mode, ``'production'`` will only log in
production and ``'never'`` disables it
entirely.
``SERVER_NAME`` the name and port number of the server.
Required for subdomain support (e.g.:
``'myapp.dev:5000'``) Note that
localhost does not support subdomains so
setting this to “localhost” does not
help. Setting a ``SERVER_NAME`` also
by default enables URL generation
without a request context but with an
application context.
``APPLICATION_ROOT`` If the application does not occupy
a whole domain or subdomain this can
be set to the path where the application
is configured to live. This is for
session cookie as path value. If
domains are used, this should be
``None``.
``MAX_CONTENT_LENGTH`` If set to a value in bytes, Flask will
reject incoming requests with a
content length greater than this by
returning a 413 status code.
``SEND_FILE_MAX_AGE_DEFAULT``: Default cache control max age to use with
:meth:`~flask.Flask.send_static_file` (the
default static file handler) and
:func:`~flask.send_file`, in
seconds. Override this value on a per-file
basis using the
:meth:`~flask.Flask.get_send_file_max_age`
hook on :class:`~flask.Flask` or
:class:`~flask.Blueprint`,
respectively. Defaults to 43200 (12 hours).
``TRAP_HTTP_EXCEPTIONS`` If this is set to ``True`` Flask will
not execute the error handlers of HTTP
exceptions but instead treat the
exception like any other and bubble it
through the exception stack. This is
helpful for hairy debugging situations
where you have to find out where an HTTP
exception is coming from.
``TRAP_BAD_REQUEST_ERRORS`` Werkzeug's internal data structures that
deal with request specific data will
raise special key errors that are also
bad request exceptions. Likewise many
operations can implicitly fail with a
BadRequest exception for consistency.
Since it's nice for debugging to know
why exactly it failed this flag can be
used to debug those situations. If this
config is set to ``True`` you will get
a regular traceback instead.
``PREFERRED_URL_SCHEME`` The URL scheme that should be used for
URL generation if no URL scheme is
available. This defaults to ``http``.
``JSON_AS_ASCII`` By default Flask serialize object to
ascii-encoded JSON. If this is set to
``False`` Flask will not encode to ASCII
and output strings as-is and return
unicode strings. ``jsonify`` will
automatically encode it in ``utf-8``
then for transport for instance.
``JSON_SORT_KEYS`` By default Flask will serialize JSON
objects in a way that the keys are
ordered. This is done in order to
ensure that independent of the hash seed
of the dictionary the return value will
be consistent to not trash external HTTP
caches. You can override the default
behavior by changing this variable.
This is not recommended but might give
you a performance improvement on the
cost of cachability.
``JSONIFY_PRETTYPRINT_REGULAR`` If this is set to ``True`` (the default)
jsonify responses will be pretty printed
if they are not requested by an
XMLHttpRequest object (controlled by
the ``X-Requested-With`` header)
``TEMPLATES_AUTO_RELOAD`` Flask checks if template was modified each
time it is requested and reloads it if
necessary. But disk I/O is costly and it may
be viable to disable this feature by setting
this key to ``False``. This option does not
affect debug mode.
``EXPLAIN_TEMPLATE_LOADING`` If this is enabled then every attempt to
load a template will write an info
message to the logger explaining the
attempts to locate the template. This
can be useful to figure out why
templates cannot be found or wrong
templates appear to be loaded.
================================= =========================================
.. admonition:: More on ``SERVER_NAME``
The ``SERVER_NAME`` key is used for the subdomain support. Because
Flask cannot guess the subdomain part without the knowledge of the
actual server name, this is required if you want to work with
subdomains. This is also used for the session cookie.
Please keep in mind that not only Flask has the problem of not knowing
what subdomains are, your web browser does as well. Most modern web
browsers will not allow cross-subdomain cookies to be set on a
server name without dots in it. So if your server name is
``'localhost'`` you will not be able to set a cookie for
``'localhost'`` and every subdomain of it. Please choose a different
server name in that case, like ``'myapplication.local'`` and add
this name + the subdomains you want to use into your host config
or setup a local `bind`_.
.. _bind: https://www.isc.org/downloads/bind/
.. versionadded:: 0.4
``LOGGER_NAME``
.. versionadded:: 0.5
``SERVER_NAME``
.. versionadded:: 0.6
``MAX_CONTENT_LENGTH``
.. versionadded:: 0.7
``PROPAGATE_EXCEPTIONS``, ``PRESERVE_CONTEXT_ON_EXCEPTION``
.. versionadded:: 0.8
``TRAP_BAD_REQUEST_ERRORS``, ``TRAP_HTTP_EXCEPTIONS``,
``APPLICATION_ROOT``, ``SESSION_COOKIE_DOMAIN``,
``SESSION_COOKIE_PATH``, ``SESSION_COOKIE_HTTPONLY``,
``SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE``
.. versionadded:: 0.9
``PREFERRED_URL_SCHEME``
.. versionadded:: 0.10
``JSON_AS_ASCII``, ``JSON_SORT_KEYS``, ``JSONIFY_PRETTYPRINT_REGULAR``
.. versionadded:: 1.0
``SESSION_REFRESH_EACH_REQUEST``, ``TEMPLATES_AUTO_RELOAD``,
``LOGGER_HANDLER_POLICY``, ``EXPLAIN_TEMPLATE_LOADING``
Configuring from Files
----------------------
Configuration becomes more useful if you can store it in a separate file,
ideally located outside the actual application package. This makes
packaging and distributing your application possible via various package
handling tools (:ref:`distribute-deployment`) and finally modifying the
configuration file afterwards.
So a common pattern is this::
app = Flask(__name__)
app.config.from_object('yourapplication.default_settings')
app.config.from_envvar('YOURAPPLICATION_SETTINGS')
This first loads the configuration from the
`yourapplication.default_settings` module and then overrides the values
with the contents of the file the :envvar:`YOURAPPLICATION_SETTINGS`
environment variable points to. This environment variable can be set on
Linux or OS X with the export command in the shell before starting the
server::
$ export YOURAPPLICATION_SETTINGS=/path/to/settings.cfg
$ python run-app.py
* Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/
* Restarting with reloader...
On Windows systems use the `set` builtin instead::
>set YOURAPPLICATION_SETTINGS=\path\to\settings.cfg
The configuration files themselves are actual Python files. Only values
in uppercase are actually stored in the config object later on. So make
sure to use uppercase letters for your config keys.
Here is an example of a configuration file::
# Example configuration
DEBUG = False
SECRET_KEY = '?\xbf,\xb4\x8d\xa3"<\x9c\xb0@\x0f5\xab,w\xee\x8d$0\x13\x8b83'
Make sure to load the configuration very early on, so that extensions have
the ability to access the configuration when starting up. There are other
methods on the config object as well to load from individual files. For a
complete reference, read the :class:`~flask.Config` object's
documentation.
Configuration Best Practices
----------------------------
The downside with the approach mentioned earlier is that it makes testing
a little harder. There is no single 100% solution for this problem in
general, but there are a couple of things you can keep in mind to improve
that experience:
1. Create your application in a function and register blueprints on it.
That way you can create multiple instances of your application with
different configurations attached which makes unittesting a lot
easier. You can use this to pass in configuration as needed.
2. Do not write code that needs the configuration at import time. If you
limit yourself to request-only accesses to the configuration you can
reconfigure the object later on as needed.
Development / Production
------------------------
Most applications need more than one configuration. There should be at
least separate configurations for the production server and the one used
during development. The easiest way to handle this is to use a default
configuration that is always loaded and part of the version control, and a
separate configuration that overrides the values as necessary as mentioned
in the example above::
app = Flask(__name__)
app.config.from_object('yourapplication.default_settings')
app.config.from_envvar('YOURAPPLICATION_SETTINGS')
Then you just have to add a separate `config.py` file and export
``YOURAPPLICATION_SETTINGS=/path/to/config.py`` and you are done. However
there are alternative ways as well. For example you could use imports or
subclassing.
What is very popular in the Django world is to make the import explicit in
the config file by adding an ``from yourapplication.default_settings
import *`` to the top of the file and then overriding the changes by hand.
You could also inspect an environment variable like
``YOURAPPLICATION_MODE`` and set that to `production`, `development` etc
and import different hardcoded files based on that.
An interesting pattern is also to use classes and inheritance for
configuration::
class Config(object):
DEBUG = False
TESTING = False
DATABASE_URI = 'sqlite://:memory:'
class ProductionConfig(Config):
DATABASE_URI = 'mysql://user@localhost/foo'
class DevelopmentConfig(Config):
DEBUG = True
class TestingConfig(Config):
TESTING = True
To enable such a config you just have to call into
:meth:`~flask.Config.from_object`::
app.config.from_object('configmodule.ProductionConfig')
There are many different ways and it's up to you how you want to manage
your configuration files. However here a list of good recommendations:
- Keep a default configuration in version control. Either populate the
config with this default configuration or import it in your own
configuration files before overriding values.
- Use an environment variable to switch between the configurations.
This can be done from outside the Python interpreter and makes
development and deployment much easier because you can quickly and
easily switch between different configs without having to touch the
code at all. If you are working often on different projects you can
even create your own script for sourcing that activates a virtualenv
and exports the development configuration for you.
- Use a tool like `fabric`_ in production to push code and
configurations separately to the production server(s). For some
details about how to do that, head over to the
:ref:`fabric-deployment` pattern.
.. _fabric: http://www.fabfile.org/
.. _instance-folders:
Instance Folders
----------------
.. versionadded:: 0.8
Flask 0.8 introduces instance folders. Flask for a long time made it
possible to refer to paths relative to the application's folder directly
(via :attr:`Flask.root_path`). This was also how many developers loaded
configurations stored next to the application. Unfortunately however this
only works well if applications are not packages in which case the root
path refers to the contents of the package.
With Flask 0.8 a new attribute was introduced:
:attr:`Flask.instance_path`. It refers to a new concept called the
“instance folder”. The instance folder is designed to not be under
version control and be deployment specific. It's the perfect place to
drop things that either change at runtime or configuration files.
You can either explicitly provide the path of the instance folder when
creating the Flask application or you can let Flask autodetect the
instance folder. For explicit configuration use the `instance_path`
parameter::
app = Flask(__name__, instance_path='/path/to/instance/folder')
Please keep in mind that this path *must* be absolute when provided.
If the `instance_path` parameter is not provided the following default
locations are used:
- Uninstalled module::
/myapp.py
/instance
- Uninstalled package::
/myapp
/__init__.py
/instance
- Installed module or package::
$PREFIX/lib/python2.X/site-packages/myapp
$PREFIX/var/myapp-instance
``$PREFIX`` is the prefix of your Python installation. This can be
``/usr`` or the path to your virtualenv. You can print the value of
``sys.prefix`` to see what the prefix is set to.
Since the config object provided loading of configuration files from
relative filenames we made it possible to change the loading via filenames
to be relative to the instance path if wanted. The behavior of relative
paths in config files can be flipped between “relative to the application
root” (the default) to “relative to instance folder” via the
`instance_relative_config` switch to the application constructor::
app = Flask(__name__, instance_relative_config=True)
Here is a full example of how to configure Flask to preload the config
from a module and then override the config from a file in the config
folder if it exists::
app = Flask(__name__, instance_relative_config=True)
app.config.from_object('yourapplication.default_settings')
app.config.from_pyfile('application.cfg', silent=True)
The path to the instance folder can be found via the
:attr:`Flask.instance_path`. Flask also provides a shortcut to open a
file from the instance folder with :meth:`Flask.open_instance_resource`.
Example usage for both::
filename = os.path.join(app.instance_path, 'application.cfg')
with open(filename) as f:
config = f.read()
# or via open_instance_resource:
with app.open_instance_resource('application.cfg') as f:
config = f.read()