Flask routing by username at top-level route

Question

Is there a prefered way of setting up Flask so that it routes by username (mysite.com/<username>) at the top level but still works well (and fast) for all other routes and static files?

The way I imagine it now is something like:

@app.route('/<username>', methods=['GET'])
def username_route(username):

    if username_is_valid(username):  # DB checks, not too fast
        display_user_page(username)
    
    render_template('user_not_found.html')

But would that have any unwanted effects on other routes or static assets, favicons, or something that I'm forgetting?

Yeah, it will have an effect on the other pages. Why not try mysite.com/user/ — Muhammed Jaseem, Sep 01 '21 at 17:48
Thanks. Yea that would make it simpler for me but I want the url to be the shortest for the user, like in instagram.com/username — fersarr, Sep 01 '21 at 17:50

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 01 '21 at 17:58

0

Put your username_route at the end. Flask checks for each route from top to bottom. So, when you put faqs_route at the top which points to mysite.com/faqs, flask will consider that first.

Now, if you want to go to mysite.com/<username>, it will check all the top functions and since it can't find the corresponding route, it will go to the username_route at the end which will be the right route for mysite.com/<username>

answered Sep 01 '21 at 17:58

Muhammed Jaseem

782
6
18

hm putting it at the end does not seem to make any difference. Even if I put mysite.com/ before mysite.com/faqs, faqs still works – fersarr Sep 01 '21 at 18:10
would u be able to share the github repo or something so I could look into the code? – Muhammed Jaseem Sep 01 '21 at 18:41

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 01 '21 at 21:51

0

You can send data with post request on frontend for clicking profile cases.

<button onclick="urlfor('username', {'user_id': id})"/>

Top level solution is possible with app.config.

app.config['RESERVED_ROUTES'] = [
    "faqs",
    "settings",
    "login",
    ...
]

Now we decide on request are user or reserved route. Because when we want to use blueprint in Flask it copy the config and give them an instance. So it is reachable for every request even you want to scale your app with blueprints.

@app.before_request
def decide_user_or_not():
    if request.path in app.config['RESERVED_ROUTES']:
        register_blueprint(route_blueprint)
    else:
        register_blueprint(user_blueprint)

answered Sep 01 '21 at 21:51

Baris Senyerli

642
7
13

Didnt know about blueprints! nice. I guess you could automatically get all the routes via https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13317536/get-list-of-all-routes-defined-in-the-flask-app and add favicon.png as well since some browsers seem to request it – fersarr Sep 02 '21 at 21:45
1

also, browsers ask for /favicon.ico, so it's useful to add it to an exceptions list – fersarr Sep 08 '21 at 20:22

Flask routing by username at top-level route

2 Answers2