lab 13

is52027c lab 13.h

in this lab we're going to look at flask's request object, including

GET requests that pass some user input (i.e. a key/value pair in the url)
POST requests submitted via a form
basic validation
uploading a file
using flask's implementation of WTForms

task 1: adapting headlines for user input via GET

note: my version of this in the lab-13 repo is get_headlines.py

in this exercise, you will adapt your headlines project from the last lab to respond to user choices made via a GET request.
this means making use of flask's request object http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/0.12/quickstart/#the-request-object
you will implement a simple form that allows the user to choose which rss headlines to display; bbc, aljazeera or ap (associated press)

rss feeds

you can use these or find some of your own:

add a form

add a super simple form to your template that uses a text field to pass a value for 'publication'
you don't need to explicitly add method or action as they will defualt to 'GET' and 'POST' which is what we want

adapt the headlines view

get the value of 'publication' from request.args
fetch the headlines from that rss feed and pass them to the template
use a default value for the case where no choice is passed

note that

request.args['publication']

will throw a key error if no value was passed.

so it's better to use

request.args.get('publication')

you check it exists, then if it does assign that value to you 'publication' variable

task 2: mocking up a login form using POST

note: my version of this in the lab-13 repo is mock_login.py

in this task you are simply asked to mock up a login form in flask
you need a form that submits username & password via a POST request
you need to extract those values and check them against stored values (we will just use CONSTANTS in this case)

adding messaging

well designed user interactions display helpful messages when something hasn't gone right
flask helps you do this via 'message flashing' http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/0.12/quickstart/#message-flashing
there's an example of using this with a login process at http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/0.12/patterns/flashing/#message-flashing-pattern
you use get_flashed_messages() in the template to extract these messages for display
flash messages use flask's session features to pass the message between a request (e.g. login attempt) and the next request (e.g. redisplaying the form with a message)
for reasons which will be explained later, this means you need to set the value of app.secret_key (it can be anything!)

task: create helpful messages for cases where username / password are missing or wrong

task 3: uploading files

note: my version of this in the lab-13 repo is file_upload.py

the following script will upload image files to the directory 'static/uploads'.
you need to create that directory before running the script
create your own version of this script
work your way through each line in the upload_image view, making sure you understand what is going on

you should look up the path & listdir functions from the python standard library to check what they do:

you should also look up what secure_filename does: see the quickstart pages http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/0.12/patterns/fileuploads/

    from flask import Flask
    from flask import render_template, session, request
    from flask import redirect, url_for, flash
    from flask import send_from_directory
    import os
    from werkzeug.utils import secure_filename

    ALLOWED_EXTENSIONS = set(['png', 'jpg', 'jpeg', 'gif'])
    UPLOAD_FOLDER = 'static/uploads'

    app = Flask(__name__)

    app.secret_key = 'A0Zr98j/3yX R~XHH!jmN]LWX/,?RT'

    # defining allowed file types for file upload
    def allowed_file(filename):
        return '.' in filename and \
            filename.rsplit('.', 1)[1].lower() in ALLOWED_EXTENSIONS

    @app.route('/')
    def index():
        files = [os.path.join(UPLOAD_FOLDER,f) for f in os.listdir(UPLOAD_FOLDER)]
        return render_template('upload_index.html', files=files)


    @app.route('/upload', methods = ['GET','POST'])
    def upload_image():
        if request.method == 'POST':
            if 'file' not in request.files:
                flash('no file part')
                return redirect(request.url)
            file = request.files['file']
            if file.filename=='':
                flash('no selected file')
                return redirect(request.url)
            if not allowed_file(file.filename):
                flash('file type not allowed')
                return redirect(request.url)
            if file and allowed_file(file.filename):
                filename = secure_filename(file.filename)
                file.save(os.path.join(UPLOAD_FOLDER,filename))
                flash('File "{}" successfully uploaded'.format(filename))
                return redirect(url_for('index'))
        return render_template('file_upload.html')    


    @app.route('/download/<filename>')
    def download_file(filename):
        print filename
        return send_from_directory(UPLOAD_FOLDER,
                                       filename)

    if __name__ == '__main__':
        app.run(debug=True,host='0.0.0.0',port=8000)

task: rendering images

create a template to display your uploaded images

task 4: flask-wtforms extension

note: my version of this in the lab-13 repo is mock_login_wtforms.py

the flask extension flask-wtf implements the widely used python package, wtforms. this makes it easy to set up safe and user-friendly forms.

first you will need to install flask-wtf:

pip install --user Flask-WTF

task: review the quickstart docs for flask-wtf and see of you can figure out how to create and validate your mock login form this way
https://flask-wtf.readthedocs.io/en/stable/quickstart.html
the thing to remember is that flask-wtf helps you to generate the form and to validate it.
you can find a nice simple example / explanation at http://exploreflask.com/en/latest/forms.html
note that the second part ('rendering forms') is halfway down that page
don't worry about the csrf stuff at the moment! we'll go over that in the lectures

extension task: apply wtforms to file uploads

The snippets for achieving this are on https://flask-wtf.readthedocs.io/en/stable/form.html#module-flask_wtf.file

(Note that, currently, you do not have the Flask-Uploads extension installed).

keep developing this work during the week...