python - Send data from a textbox into Flask?

Question

I was wondering if there was a way to take something from a text box in the HTML, feed it into flask, then parse that data with Python. I was thinking this might involve some JS but I could be wrong. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Unless you want to do something more complicated, feeding data from a HTML form into Flask is pretty easy.

• Create a view that accepts a POST request (my_form_post).
• Access the form elements in the dictionary request.form.

templates/my-form.html:

<form method="POST">
    <input name="text">
    <input type="submit">
</form>

from flask import Flask, request, render_template

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route('/')
def my_form():
    return render_template('my-form.html')

@app.route('/', methods=['POST'])
def my_form_post():
    text = request.form['text']
    processed_text = text.upper()
    return processed_text

This is the Flask documentation about accessing request data.

If you need more complicated forms that need validation then you can take a look at WTForms and how to integrate them with Flask.

Note: unless you have any other restrictions, you don't really need JavaScript at all to send your data (although you can use it).