Web Server Quickstart

Run a Simple Web Server

In order to implement a web server, first create a request handler.

A request handler must be a coroutine that accepts a Request instance as its only parameter and returns a Response instance:

from aiohttp import web

async def hello(request):
    return web.Response(text="Hello, world")

Next, create an Application instance and register the request handler on a particular HTTP method and path:

app = web.Application()
app.add_routes([web.get('/', hello)])

After that, run the application by run_app() call:

web.run_app(app)

That’s it. Now, head over to http://localhost:8080/ to see the results.

Alternatively if you prefer route decorators create a route table and register a web-handler:

routes = web.RouteTableDef()

@routes.get('/')
async def hello(request):
    return web.Response(text="Hello, world")

app = web.Application()
app.add_routes(routes)
web.run_app(app)

Both ways essentially do the same work, the difference is only in your taste: do you prefer Django style with famous urls.py or Flask with shiny route decorators.

aiohttp server documentation uses both ways in code snippets to emphasize their equality, switching from one style to another is very trivial.

See also

Graceful shutdown section explains what run_app() does and how to implement complex server initialization/finalization from scratch.

Application runners for more handling more complex cases like asynchronous web application serving and multiple hosts support.

Command Line Interface (CLI)

aiohttp.web implements a basic CLI for quickly serving an Application in development over TCP/IP:

$ python -m aiohttp.web -H localhost -P 8080 package.module:init_func

package.module:init_func should be an importable callable that accepts a list of any non-parsed command-line arguments and returns an Application instance after setting it up:

def init_func(argv):
    app = web.Application()
    app.router.add_get("/", index_handler)
    return app

Handler

A request handler must be a coroutine that accepts a Request instance as its only argument and returns a StreamResponse derived (e.g. Response) instance:

async def handler(request):
    return web.Response()

Handlers are setup to handle requests by registering them with the Application.add_routes() on a particular route (HTTP method and path pair) using helpers like get() and post():

app.add_routes([web.get('/', handler),
                web.post('/post', post_handler),
                web.put('/put', put_handler)])

Or use route decorators:

routes = web.RouteTableDef()

@routes.get('/')
async def get_handler(request):
    ...

@routes.post('/post')
async def post_handler(request):
    ...

@routes.put('/put')
async def put_handler(request):
    ...

app.add_routes(routes)

Wildcard HTTP method is also supported by route() or RouteTableDef.route(), allowing a handler to serve incoming requests on a path having any HTTP method:

app.add_routes([web.route('*', '/path', all_handler)])

The HTTP method can be queried later in the request handler using the Request.method property.

By default endpoints added with GET method will accept HEAD requests and return the same response headers as they would for a GET request. You can also deny HEAD requests on a route:

web.get('/', handler, allow_head=False)

Here handler won’t be called on HEAD request and the server will respond with 405: Method Not Allowed.

Resources and Routes

Internally routes are served by Application.router (UrlDispatcher instance).

The router is a list of resources.

Resource is an entry in route table which corresponds to requested URL.

Resource in turn has at least one route.

Route corresponds to handling HTTP method by calling web handler.

Thus when you add a route the resouce object is created under the hood.

The library implementation merges all subsequent route additions for the same path adding the only resource for all HTTP methods.

Consider two examples:

app.add_routes([web.get('/path1', get_1),
                web.post('/path1', post_1),
                web.get('/path2', get_2),
                web.post('/path2', post_2)]

and:

app.add_routes([web.get('/path1', get_1),
                web.get('/path2', get_2),
                web.post('/path2', post_2),
                web.post('/path1', post_1)]

First one is optimized. You have got the idea.

Variable Resources

Resource may have variable path also. For instance, a resource with the path '/a/{name}/c' would match all incoming requests with paths such as '/a/b/c', '/a/1/c', and '/a/etc/c'.

A variable part is specified in the form {identifier}, where the identifier can be used later in a request handler to access the matched value for that part. This is done by looking up the identifier in the Request.match_info mapping:

@routes.get('/{name}')
async def variable_handler(request):
    return web.Response(
        text="Hello, {}".format(request.match_info['name']))

By default, each part matches the regular expression [^{}/]+.

You can also specify a custom regex in the form {identifier:regex}:

web.get(r'/{name:\d+}', handler)

Reverse URL Constructing using Named Resources

Routes can also be given a name:

@routes.get('/root', name='root')
async def handler(request):
    ...

Which can then be used to access and build a URL for that resource later (e.g. in a request handler):

url = request.app.router['root'].url_for().with_query({"a": "b", "c": "d"})
assert url == URL('/root?a=b&c=d')

A more interesting example is building URLs for variable resources:

app.router.add_resource(r'/{user}/info', name='user-info')

In this case you can also pass in the parts of the route:

url = request.app.router['user-info'].url_for(user='john_doe')
url_with_qs = url.with_query("a=b")
assert url_with_qs == '/john_doe/info?a=b'

Organizing Handlers in Classes

As discussed above, handlers can be first-class coroutines:

async def hello(request):
    return web.Response(text="Hello, world")

app.router.add_get('/', hello)

But sometimes it’s convenient to group logically similar handlers into a Python class.

Since aiohttp.web does not dictate any implementation details, application developers can organize handlers in classes if they so wish:

class Handler:

    def __init__(self):
        pass

    async def handle_intro(self, request):
        return web.Response(text="Hello, world")

    async def handle_greeting(self, request):
        name = request.match_info.get('name', "Anonymous")
        txt = "Hello, {}".format(name)
        return web.Response(text=txt)

handler = Handler()
app.add_routes([web.get('/intro', handler.handle_intro),
                web.get('/greet/{name}', handler.handle_greeting)])

Class Based Views

aiohttp.web has support for class based views.

You can derive from View and define methods for handling http requests:

class MyView(web.View):
    async def get(self):
        return await get_resp(self.request)

    async def post(self):
        return await post_resp(self.request)

Handlers should be coroutines accepting self only and returning response object as regular web-handler. Request object can be retrieved by View.request property.

After implementing the view (MyView from example above) should be registered in application’s router:

web.view('/path/to', MyView)

or:

@routes.view('/path/to')
class MyView(web.View):
    ...

Example will process GET and POST requests for /path/to but raise 405 Method not allowed exception for unimplemented HTTP methods.

Resource Views

All registered resources in a router can be viewed using the UrlDispatcher.resources() method:

for resource in app.router.resources():
    print(resource)

A subset of the resources that were registered with a name can be viewed using the UrlDispatcher.named_resources() method:

for name, resource in app.router.named_resources().items():
    print(name, resource)

Alternative ways for registering routes

Code examples shown above use imperative style for adding new routes: they call app.router.add_get(...) etc.

There are two alternatives: route tables and route decorators.

Route tables look like Django way:

async def handle_get(request):
    ...


async def handle_post(request):
    ...

app.router.add_routes([web.get('/get', handle_get),
                       web.post('/post', handle_post),

The snippet calls add_routes() to register a list of route definitions (aiohttp.web.RouteDef instances) created by aiohttp.web.get() or aiohttp.web.post() functions.

See also

RouteDef and StaticDef reference.

Route decorators are closer to Flask approach:

routes = web.RouteTableDef()

@routes.get('/get')
async def handle_get(request):
    ...


@routes.post('/post')
async def handle_post(request):
    ...

app.router.add_routes(routes)

It is also possible to use decorators with class-based views:

routes = web.RouteTableDef()

@routes.view("/view")
class MyView(web.View):
    async def get(self):
        ...

    async def post(self):
        ...

app.router.add_routes(routes)

The example creates a aiohttp.web.RouteTableDef container first.

The container is a list-like object with additional decorators aiohttp.web.RouteTableDef.get(), aiohttp.web.RouteTableDef.post() etc. for registering new routes.

After filling the container add_routes() is used for adding registered route definitions into application’s router.

See also

RouteTableDef reference.

All tree ways (imperative calls, route tables and decorators) are equivalent, you could use what do you prefer or even mix them on your own.

New in version 2.3.

JSON Response

It is a common case to return JSON data in response, aiohttp.web provides a shortcut for returning JSON – aiohttp.web.json_response():

async def handler(request):
    data = {'some': 'data'}
    return web.json_response(data)

The shortcut method returns aiohttp.web.Response instance so you can for example set cookies before returning it from handler.

User Sessions

Often you need a container for storing user data across requests. The concept is usually called a session.

aiohttp.web has no built-in concept of a session, however, there is a third-party library, aiohttp_session, that adds session support:

import asyncio
import time
import base64
from cryptography import fernet
from aiohttp import web
from aiohttp_session import setup, get_session, session_middleware
from aiohttp_session.cookie_storage import EncryptedCookieStorage

async def handler(request):
    session = await get_session(request)
    last_visit = session['last_visit'] if 'last_visit' in session else None
    text = 'Last visited: {}'.format(last_visit)
    return web.Response(text=text)

async def make_app():
    app = web.Application()
    # secret_key must be 32 url-safe base64-encoded bytes
    fernet_key = fernet.Fernet.generate_key()
    secret_key = base64.urlsafe_b64decode(fernet_key)
    setup(app, EncryptedCookieStorage(secret_key))
    app.add_routes([web.get('/', handler)])
    return app

web.run_app(make_app())

HTTP Forms

HTTP Forms are supported out of the box.

If form’s method is "GET" (<form method="get">) use Request.query for getting form data.

To access form data with "POST" method use Request.post() or Request.multipart().

Request.post() accepts both 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' and 'multipart/form-data' form’s data encoding (e.g. <form enctype="multipart/form-data">). It stores files data in temporary directory. If client_max_size is specified post raises ValueError exception. For efficiency use Request.multipart(), It is especially effective for uploading large files (File Uploads).

Values submitted by the following form:

<form action="/login" method="post" accept-charset="utf-8"
      enctype="application/x-www-form-urlencoded">

    <label for="login">Login</label>
    <input id="login" name="login" type="text" value="" autofocus/>
    <label for="password">Password</label>
    <input id="password" name="password" type="password" value=""/>

    <input type="submit" value="login"/>
</form>

could be accessed as:

async def do_login(request):
    data = await request.post()
    login = data['login']
    password = data['password']

File Uploads

aiohttp.web has built-in support for handling files uploaded from the browser.

First, make sure that the HTML <form> element has its enctype attribute set to enctype="multipart/form-data". As an example, here is a form that accepts an MP3 file:

<form action="/store/mp3" method="post" accept-charset="utf-8"
      enctype="multipart/form-data">

    <label for="mp3">Mp3</label>
    <input id="mp3" name="mp3" type="file" value=""/>

    <input type="submit" value="submit"/>
</form>

Then, in the request handler you can access the file input field as a FileField instance. FileField is simply a container for the file as well as some of its metadata:

async def store_mp3_handler(request):

    # WARNING: don't do that if you plan to receive large files!
    data = await request.post()

    mp3 = data['mp3']

    # .filename contains the name of the file in string format.
    filename = mp3.filename

    # .file contains the actual file data that needs to be stored somewhere.
    mp3_file = data['mp3'].file

    content = mp3_file.read()

    return web.Response(body=content,
                        headers=MultiDict(
                            {'CONTENT-DISPOSITION': mp3_file}))

You might have noticed a big warning in the example above. The general issue is that Request.post() reads the whole payload in memory, resulting in possible OOM errors. To avoid this, for multipart uploads, you should use Request.multipart() which returns a multipart reader:

async def store_mp3_handler(request):

    reader = await request.multipart()

    # /!\ Don't forget to validate your inputs /!\

    # reader.next() will `yield` the fields of your form

    field = await reader.next()
    assert field.name == 'name'
    name = await field.read(decode=True)

    field = await reader.next()
    assert field.name == 'mp3'
    filename = field.filename
    # You cannot rely on Content-Length if transfer is chunked.
    size = 0
    with open(os.path.join('/spool/yarrr-media/mp3/', filename), 'wb') as f:
        while True:
            chunk = await field.read_chunk()  # 8192 bytes by default.
            if not chunk:
                break
            size += len(chunk)
            f.write(chunk)

    return web.Response(text='{} sized of {} successfully stored'
                             ''.format(filename, size))

WebSockets

aiohttp.web supports WebSockets out-of-the-box.

To setup a WebSocket, create a WebSocketResponse in a request handler and then use it to communicate with the peer:

async def websocket_handler(request):

    ws = web.WebSocketResponse()
    await ws.prepare(request)

    async for msg in ws:
        if msg.type == aiohttp.WSMsgType.TEXT:
            if msg.data == 'close':
                await ws.close()
            else:
                await ws.send_str(msg.data + '/answer')
        elif msg.type == aiohttp.WSMsgType.ERROR:
            print('ws connection closed with exception %s' %
                  ws.exception())

    print('websocket connection closed')

    return ws

The handler should be registered as HTTP GET processor:

app.add_routes([web.get('/ws', websocket_handler)])

Redirects

To redirect user to another endpoint - raise HTTPFound with an absolute URL, relative URL or view name (the argument from router):

raise web.HTTPFound('/redirect')

The following example shows redirect to view named ‘login’ in routes:

async def handler(request):
    location = request.app.router['login'].url_for()
    raise web.HTTPFound(location=location)

router.add_get('/handler', handler)
router.add_get('/login', login_handler, name='login')

Example with login validation:

@aiohttp_jinja2.template('login.html')
async def login(request):

    if request.method == 'POST':
        form = await request.post()
        error = validate_login(form)
        if error:
            return {'error': error}
        else:
            # login form is valid
            location = request.app.router['index'].url_for()
            raise web.HTTPFound(location=location)

    return {}

app.router.add_get('/', index, name='index')
app.router.add_get('/login', login, name='login')
app.router.add_post('/login', login, name='login')

Exceptions

aiohttp.web defines a set of exceptions for every HTTP status code.

Each exception is a subclass of HTTPException and relates to a single HTTP status code:

async def handler(request):
    raise aiohttp.web.HTTPFound('/redirect')

Warning

Returning HTTPException or its subclasses is deprecated and will be removed in subsequent aiohttp versions.

Each exception class has a status code according to RFC 2068: codes with 100-300 are not really errors; 400s are client errors, and 500s are server errors.

HTTP Exception hierarchy chart:

Exception
  HTTPException
    HTTPSuccessful
      * 200 - HTTPOk
      * 201 - HTTPCreated
      * 202 - HTTPAccepted
      * 203 - HTTPNonAuthoritativeInformation
      * 204 - HTTPNoContent
      * 205 - HTTPResetContent
      * 206 - HTTPPartialContent
    HTTPRedirection
      * 300 - HTTPMultipleChoices
      * 301 - HTTPMovedPermanently
      * 302 - HTTPFound
      * 303 - HTTPSeeOther
      * 304 - HTTPNotModified
      * 305 - HTTPUseProxy
      * 307 - HTTPTemporaryRedirect
      * 308 - HTTPPermanentRedirect
    HTTPError
      HTTPClientError
        * 400 - HTTPBadRequest
        * 401 - HTTPUnauthorized
        * 402 - HTTPPaymentRequired
        * 403 - HTTPForbidden
        * 404 - HTTPNotFound
        * 405 - HTTPMethodNotAllowed
        * 406 - HTTPNotAcceptable
        * 407 - HTTPProxyAuthenticationRequired
        * 408 - HTTPRequestTimeout
        * 409 - HTTPConflict
        * 410 - HTTPGone
        * 411 - HTTPLengthRequired
        * 412 - HTTPPreconditionFailed
        * 413 - HTTPRequestEntityTooLarge
        * 414 - HTTPRequestURITooLong
        * 415 - HTTPUnsupportedMediaType
        * 416 - HTTPRequestRangeNotSatisfiable
        * 417 - HTTPExpectationFailed
        * 421 - HTTPMisdirectedRequest
        * 422 - HTTPUnprocessableEntity
        * 424 - HTTPFailedDependency
        * 426 - HTTPUpgradeRequired
        * 428 - HTTPPreconditionRequired
        * 429 - HTTPTooManyRequests
        * 431 - HTTPRequestHeaderFieldsTooLarge
        * 451 - HTTPUnavailableForLegalReasons
      HTTPServerError
        * 500 - HTTPInternalServerError
        * 501 - HTTPNotImplemented
        * 502 - HTTPBadGateway
        * 503 - HTTPServiceUnavailable
        * 504 - HTTPGatewayTimeout
        * 505 - HTTPVersionNotSupported
        * 506 - HTTPVariantAlsoNegotiates
        * 507 - HTTPInsufficientStorage
        * 510 - HTTPNotExtended
        * 511 - HTTPNetworkAuthenticationRequired

All HTTP exceptions have the same constructor signature:

HTTPNotFound(*, headers=None, reason=None,
             body=None, text=None, content_type=None)

If not directly specified, headers will be added to the default response headers.

Classes HTTPMultipleChoices, HTTPMovedPermanently, HTTPFound, HTTPSeeOther, HTTPUseProxy, HTTPTemporaryRedirect have the following constructor signature:

HTTPFound(location, *, headers=None, reason=None,
          body=None, text=None, content_type=None)

where location is value for Location HTTP header.

HTTPMethodNotAllowed is constructed by providing the incoming unsupported method and list of allowed methods:

HTTPMethodNotAllowed(method, allowed_methods, *,
                     headers=None, reason=None,
                     body=None, text=None, content_type=None)