Frozen-Flask — Frozen-Flask 0.12 documentation

# Frozen-Flask

Frozen-Flask freezes a Flask application into a set of static files. The result can be hosted without any server-side software other than a traditional web server.

Note: This project used to be called Flask-Static.

## Installation

Install the extension with one of the following commands:

    $ easy_install Frozen-Flask

or alternatively if you have pip installed:

    $ pip install Frozen-Flask

or you can get the source code from github.

## Context

This documentation assumes that you already have a working Flask application. You can run it and test it with the development server:

    from myapplication import app
    app.run(debug=True)

Frozen-Flask is only about deployment: instead of installing Python, a WGSI server and Flask on your server, you can use Frozen-Flask to freeze your application and only have static HTML files on your server.

## Getting started

Create a `Freezer` instance with your `app` object and call its `freeze()` method. Put that in a `freeze.py` script (or call it whatever you like):

    from flask_frozen import Freezer
    from myapplication import app

    freezer = Freezer(app)

    if __name__ == '__main__':
        freezer.freeze()

This will create a `build` directory next to your application’s `static` and `templates` directories, with your application’s content frozen into static files.

Note

Frozen-Flask considers it “owns” its build directory. By default, it will silently overwrite files in that directory, and remove those it did not create.

The configuration allows you to change the destination directory, or control what files are removed if at all.

This build will be most likely be partial since Frozen-Flask can only guess so much about your application.

## Finding URLs

Frozen-Flask works by simulating requests at the WSGI level and writing the responses to aptly named files. So it needs to find out which URLs exist in your application.

The following URLs can be found automatically:

- Static files handled by Flask for your application or any of its blueprints.
- Views with no variable parts in the URL, if they accept the `GET` method.
- New in version 0.6: Results of calls to `flask.url_for()` made by your application in the request for another URL. In other words, if you use `url_for()` to create links in your application, these links will be “followed”.

This means that if your application has an index page at the URL `/` (without parameters) and every other page can be found from there by recursively following links built with `url_for()`, then Frozen-Flask can discover all URLs automatically and you’re done.

Otherwise, you may need to write URL generators.

## URL generators

Let’s say that your application looks like this:

    @app.route('/')
    def products_list():
        return render_template('index.html', products=models.Product.all())

    @app.route('/product_<int:product_id>/')
    def product_details():
        product = models.Product.get_or_404(id=product_id)
        return render_template('product.html', product=product)

If, for some reason, some products pages are not linked from another page (or these links are not built by `url_for()`), Frozen-Flask will not find them.

To tell Frozen-Flask about them, write an URL generator and put it after creating your `Freezer` instance and before calling `freeze()`:

    @freezer.register_generator
    def product_details():
        for product in models.Product.all():
            yield {'product_id': product.id}

Frozen-Flask will find the URL by calling `url_for(endpoint, **values)` where `endpoint` is the name of the generator function and `values` is each dict yielded by the function.

You can specify a different endpoint by yielding a `(endpoint, values)` tuple instead of just `values`, or you can by-pass `url_for` and simply yield URLs as strings.

Also, generator functions do not have to be Python generators using `yield`, they can be any callable and return any iterable object.

All of these are thus equivalent:

    @freezer.register_generator
    def product_details():  # endpoint defaults to the function name
        # `values` dicts
        yield {'product_id': '1'}
        yield {'product_id': '2'}

    @freezer.register_generator
    def product_url_generator():  # Some other function name
        # `(endpoint, values)` tuples
        yield 'product_details', {'product_id': '1'}
        yield 'product_details', {'product_id': '2'}

    @freezer.register_generator
    def product_url_generator():
        # URLs as strings
        yield '/product_1/'
        yield '/product_2/'

    @freezer.register_generator
    def product_url_generator():
        # Return a list. (Any iterable type will do.)
        return [
            '/product_1/',
            # Mixing forms works too.
            ('product_details', {'product_id': '2'}),
        ]

Generating the same URL more than once is okay, Frozen-Flask will build it only once. Having different functions with the same name is generally a bad practice, but still work here as they are only used by their decorators. In practice you will probably have a module for you views and another one for the freezer and URL generators, so having the same name is not a problem.

## Testing URL generators

The idea behind Frozen-Flask is that you can use Flask directly to develop and test your application. However, it is also useful to test your URL generators and see that nothing is missing, before deploying to a production server.

You can open the newly generated static HTML files in a web browser, but links probably won’t work. The `FREEZER_RELATIVE_URLS` configuration can fix this, but adds a visible `index.html` to the links. Alternatively, use the `run()` method to start an HTTP server on the build result, so you can check that everything is fine before uploading:

    if __name__ == '__main__':
        freezer.run(debug=True)

`Freezer.run()` will freeze you application before serving and when the reloader kicks in. But the reloader only watches Python files, not templates or static files. Because of that, you probably want to use `Freezer.run()` only for testing the URL generators. For everything else use the usual `app.run()`.

Flask-Script may come in handy here.

## Configuration

Frozen-Flask can be configured using Flask’s configuration system. The following configuration values are accepted:

`FREEZER_BASE_URL`
  Full URL you application is supposed to be installed at. This affects the output of `flask.url_for()` for absolute URLs (with `_external=True`) or if your application is not at the root of its domain name. Defaults to `'http://localhost/'`.
`FREEZER_RELATIVE_URLS`

  If set to `True`, Frozen-Flask will patch the Jinja environment so that `url_for()` returns relative URLs. Defaults to `False`. Python code is not affected unless you use `relative_url_for()` explicitly. This enable the frozen site to be browsed without a web server (opening the files directly in a browser) but appends a visible `index.html` to URLs that would otherwise end with `/`.

  New in version 0.10.

`FREEZER_DEFAULT_MIMETYPE`

  The MIME type that is assumed when it can not be determined from the filename extension. If you’re using the Apache web server, this should match the `DefaultType` value of Apache’s configuration. Defaults to `application/octet-stream`.

  New in version 0.7.

`FREEZER_IGNORE_MIMETYPE_WARNINGS`

  If set to `True`, Frozen-Flask won’t show warnings if the MIME type returned from the server doesn’t match the MIME type derived from the filename extension. Defaults to `False`.

  New in version 0.8.

`FREEZER_DESTINATION`
  Path to the directory where to put the generated static site. If relative, interpreted as relative to the application root, next to the `static` and `templates` directories. Defaults to `build`.
`FREEZER_REMOVE_EXTRA_FILES`

  If set to `True` (the default), Frozen-Flask will remove files in the destination directory that were not built during the current freeze. This is intended to clean up files generated by a previous call to `Freezer.freeze()` that are no longer needed. Setting this to `False` is equivalent to setting `FREEZER_DESTINATION_IGNORE` to `['*']`.

  New in version 0.5.

`FREEZER_DESTINATION_IGNORE`

  A list (defaults empty) of `fnmatch` patterns. Files or directories in the destination that match any of the patterns are not removed, even if `FREEZER_REMOVE_EXTRA_FILES` is true. As in `.gitignore` files, patterns apply to the whole path if they contain a slash `/`, to each slash-separated part otherwise. For example, this could be set to `['.git*']` if the destination is a git repository.

  New in version 0.10.

`FREEZER_STATIC_IGNORE`

  A list (defaults empty) of `fnmatch` patterns. Files served by send_static_file that match any of the patterns are not coppied to the build directory. As in `.gitignore` files, patterns apply to the whole path if they contain a slash `/`, to each slash-separated part otherwise. For example, this could be set to `['*.scss']` to stop all SASS files from being frozen.

  New in version 0.12.

`FREEZER_IGNORE_404_NOT_FOUND`

  If set to `True` (defaults False), Frozen-Flask won’t stop freezing when 404 error is returned by your application. In this case, a warning will be printed on stdout and the static page will be generated using your 404 error page handler or flask’s default one. This can be usefull during development phase if you have already referenced pages wich aren’t written yet.

  New in version 0.12.

## Filenames and MIME types

For each generated URL, Frozen-Flask simulates a request and save the content in a file in the `FREEZER_DESTINATION` directory. The filename is built from the URL. URLs with a trailing slash are interpreted as a directory name and the content is saved in `index.html`.

Query strings are removed from URLs to build filenames. For example, `/lorem/?page=ipsum` is saved to `lorem/index.html`. URLs that are only different by their query strings are considered the same, and they should return the same response. Otherwise, the behavior is undefined.

Additionally, the extension checks that the filename has an extension that match the MIME type given in the `Content-Type` HTTP response header. In case of mismatch, the Content-Type that a static web server will send will probably not be the one you expect, so Frozen-Flask issues a warning.

For example, the following views are both wrong:

    @app.route('/lipsum')
    def lipsum():
        return '<p>Lorem ipsum, ...</p>'

    @app.route('/style.css')
    def compressed_css():
        return '/* ... */'

as the default `Content-Type` in Flask is `text/html; charset=utf-8`, but the MIME types guessed by the Frozen-Flask as well as most web servers from the filenames are `application/octet-stream` and `text/css`.

This can be fixed by adding a trailing slash to the URL or serving with the right `Content-Type`:

    # Saved as `lipsum/index.html` matches the 'text/html' MIME type.
    @app.route('/lipsum/')
    def lipsum():
        return '<p>Lorem ipsum, ...</p>'

    @app.route('/style.css')
    def compressed_css():
        return '/* ... */', 200, {'Content-Type': 'text/css; charset=utf-8'}

Alternatively, these warnings can be disabled entirely in the configuration.

## Character encodings

Flask uses Unicode everywhere internally, and defaults to UTF-8 for I/O. It will send the right `Content-Type` header with both a MIME type and and encoding (eg. `text/html; charset=utf-8`). Frozen-Flask will try to preserve MIME types through file extensions, but it can not preserve the encoding meta-data. You may need to add the right `<meta>` tag to your HTML. (You should anyway).

Flask also defaults to UTF-8 for URLs, so your web server will get URL-encoded UTF-8 HTTP requests. It’s up to you to make sure that it converts these to the native filesystem encoding. Frozen-Flask always writes Unicode filenames.

## API reference

## Changelog

### Version 0.12

Released on 2015-10-05.

- Fix #38: add `FREEZER_STATIC_IGNORE` config option.
- Add `FREEZER_IGNORE_404_NOT_FOUND` config option.

### Version 0.11

Released on 2013-06-13.

- Add Python 3.3 support (requires Flask >= 0.10 and Werkzeug >= 0.9)
- Drop Python 2.5 support
- Fix #30: `relative_url_for()` with a query string or URL fragment.

### Version 0.10

Released on 2013-03-11.

- Add the `FREEZER_DESTINATION_IGNORE` configuration (Thanks to Jim Gray and Christopher Roach.)
- Add the `FREEZER_RELATIVE_URLS` configuration
- Add the `relative_url_for()` function.

### Version 0.9

Released on 2012-02-13.

Add `Freezer.run()`.

### Version 0.8

Released on 2012-01-17.

- Remove query strings from URLs to build a file names. (Should we add configuration to disable this?)
- Raise a warning instead of an exception for MIME type mismatches, and give the option to disable them entirely in the configuration.

### Version 0.7

Released on 2011-10-20.

- Backward incompatible change: Moved the `flaskext.frozen` package to `flask_frozen`. You should change your imports either to that or to `flask.ext.frozen` if you’re using Flask 0.8 or more recent. See Flask’s documentation for details.
- Added FREEZER_DEFAULT_MIMETYPE
- Switch to tox for testing in multiple Python versions

### Version 0.6.1

Released on 2011-07-29.

Re-release of 0.6 with the artwork included.

### Version 0.6

Released on 2011-07-29.

- Thanks to Glwadys Fayolle for the new logo!
- Frozen-Flask now requires Flask 0.7 or later. Please use previous version of Frozen-Flask if you need previous versions of Flask.
- Support for Flask Blueprints
- Added the `log_url_for` parameter to `Freezer`. This makes some URL generators unnecessary since more URLs are discovered automatically.
- Bug fixes.

### Version 0.5

Released on 2011-07-24.

- You can now construct a Freezer and add URL generators without an app, and register the app later with `Freezer.init_app()`.
- The `FREEZER_DESTINATION` directory is created if it does not exist.
- New configuration: `FREEZER_REMOVE_EXTRA_FILES`
- Warn if an URL generator seems to be missing. (ie. if no URL was generated for a given endpoint.)
- Write Unicode filenames instead of UTF-8. Non-ASCII filenames are often undefined territory anyway.
- Bug fixes.

### Version 0.4

Released on 2011-06-02.

- Bugfix: correctly unquote URLs to build filenames. Spaces and non-ASCII characters should be %-encoded in URLs but not in frozen filenames. (Web servers do the decoding.)
- Add a documentation section about character encodings.

### Version 0.3

Released on 2011-05-28.

- URL generators can omit the endpoint and just yield `values` dictionaries. In that case, the name of the generator function is used as the endpoint, just like with Flask views.
- `Freezer.all_urls()` and `walk_directory()` are now part of the public API.

### Version 0.2

Released on 2011-02-21.

Renamed the project from Flask-Static to Frozen-Flask. While we’re at breaking API compatibility, `flaskext.static.StaticBuilder.build()` is now `flaskext.frozen.Freezer.freeze()` and the prefix for configuration keys is `FREEZER_` instead of `STATIC_BUILDER_`. Other names were left unchanged.

### Version 0.1

Released on 2011-02-06.

First properly tagged release.