Developing with Quart#

When developing it is best to have your Quart app running so you can test any changes you make directly. This is made easier by the reloader which reloads your app whenever a file is changed. The reloader is active if you use app.run(), quart run command or run_task method.

Quart run#

The quart run command is the recommended way to develop with Quart and will run whichever app is specified by the QUART_APP environment variable. For example,

run.py#
from quart import Quart

app = Quart(__name__)

...
$ QUART_APP=run:app quart run

The quart run command comes with --host, and --port to specify where the app is served, and --cerfile and --keyfile to specify the SSL certificates to use.

app.run()#

The Quart class, instances typically named app, has a run() method. This method runs a development server, automatically turning on debug mode and code reloading. This can be used to run the app via this snippet,

run.py#
from quart import Quart

app = Quart(__name__)

...

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

with the if ensuring that this code only runs if the file is run directly, i.e.

$ python run.py

which ensures that it doesn’t run in production.

The run() method has options to set the host, and port the app will be served over, to turn off the reloader via use_reloader=False, and to add specify SSL certificates via the certfile and keyfile options.

Note

The run() method will create a new event loop, use run_task instead if you wish to control the event loop.

app.run_task#

The Quart class also has a run_task() method with the same options as the run() method. The run_task returns an asyncio task that when awaited will run the app. This is as useful as it makes no alterations to the event loop. The run_task can be used as so,

run.py#
import asyncio

from quart import Quart

app = Quart(__name__)

...

if __name__ == "__main__":
    asyncio.run(app.run_task())

with the if ensuring that this code only runs if the file is run directly, i.e.

$ python run.py

which ensures that it doesn’t run in production.

Curl#

To test the app locally I like to use a web browser, and the curl command line tool. I’d recommend reading the curl documentation and always using the -v, --verbose option. For example,

$ curl -v localhost:5000/