Message Flashing¶
Good applications and user interfaces are all about feedback. If the user does not get enough feedback they will probably end up hating the application. Flask provides a really simple way to give feedback to a user with the flashing system. The flashing system basically makes it possible to record a message at the end of a request and access it next request and only next request. This is usually combined with a layout template that does this. Note that browsers and sometimes web servers enforce a limit on cookie sizes. This means that flashing messages that are too large for session cookies causes message flashing to fail silently.
Simple Flashing¶
So here is a full example:
from flask import Flask, flash, redirect, render_template, \
request, url_for
app = Flask(__name__)
app.secret_key = b'_5#y2L"F4Q8z\n\xec]/'
@app.route('/')
def index():
return render_template('index.html')
@app.route('/login', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def login():
error = None
if request.method == 'POST':
if request.form['username'] != 'admin' or \
request.form['password'] != 'secret':
error = 'Invalid credentials'
else:
flash('You were successfully logged in')
return redirect(url_for('index'))
return render_template('login.html', error=error)
And here is the layout.html template which does the magic:
<!doctype html>
<title>My Application</title>
{% with messages = get_flashed_messages() %}
{% if messages %}
<ul class=flashes>
{% for message in messages %}
<li>{{ message }}</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
{% endif %}
{% endwith %}
{% block body %}{% endblock %}
Here is the index.html template which inherits from layout.html:
{% extends "layout.html" %}
{% block body %}
<h1>Overview</h1>
<p>Do you want to <a href="{{ url_for('login') }}">log in?</a>
{% endblock %}
And here is the login.html template which also inherits from
layout.html:
{% extends "layout.html" %}
{% block body %}
<h1>Login</h1>
{% if error %}
<p class=error><strong>Error:</strong> {{ error }}
{% endif %}
<form method=post>
<dl>
<dt>Username:
<dd><input type=text name=username value="{{
request.form.username }}">
<dt>Password:
<dd><input type=password name=password>
</dl>
<p><input type=submit value=Login>
</form>
{% endblock %}
Flashing With Categories¶
Changelog
New in version 0.3.
It is also possible to provide categories when flashing a message. The
default category if nothing is provided is 'message'. Alternative
categories can be used to give the user better feedback. For example
error messages could be displayed with a red background.
To flash a message with a different category, just use the second argument
to the flash() function:
flash('Invalid password provided', 'error')
Inside the template you then have to tell the
get_flashed_messages() function to also return the
categories. The loop looks slightly different in that situation then:
{% with messages = get_flashed_messages(with_categories=true) %}
{% if messages %}
<ul class=flashes>
{% for category, message in messages %}
<li class="{{ category }}">{{ message }}</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
{% endif %}
{% endwith %}
This is just one example of how to render these flashed messages. One
might also use the category to add a prefix such as
<strong>Error:</strong> to the message.
Filtering Flash Messages¶
Changelog
New in version 0.9.
Optionally you can pass a list of categories which filters the results of
get_flashed_messages(). This is useful if you wish to
render each category in a separate block.
{% with errors = get_flashed_messages(category_filter=["error"]) %}
{% if errors %}
<div class="alert-message block-message error">
<a class="close" href="#">×</a>
<ul>
{%- for msg in errors %}
<li>{{ msg }}</li>
{% endfor -%}
</ul>
</div>
{% endif %}
{% endwith %}
