Web Server Advanced¶

Unicode support¶

aiohttp does requoting of incoming request path.

Unicode (non-ASCII) symbols are processed transparently on both route adding and resolving (internally everything is converted to percent-encoding form by yarl library).

But in case of custom regular expressions for Variable Resources please take care that URL is percent encoded: if you pass Unicode patterns they don’t match to requoted path.

Web Handler Cancellation¶

Warning

web-handler execution could be canceled on every await if client drops connection without reading entire response’s BODY.

The behavior is very different from classic WSGI frameworks like Flask and Django.

Sometimes it is a desirable behavior: on processing GET request the code might fetch data from database or other web resource, the fetching is potentially slow.

Canceling this fetch is very good: the peer dropped connection already, there is no reason to waste time and resources (memory etc) by getting data from DB without any chance to send it back to peer.

But sometimes the cancellation is bad: on POST request very often is needed to save data to DB regardless to peer closing.

Cancellation prevention could be implemented in several ways:

Applying asyncio.shield() to coroutine that saves data into DB.
Spawning a new task for DB saving
Using aiojobs or other third party library.

asyncio.shield() works pretty good. The only disadvantage is you need to split web handler into exactly two async functions: one for handler itself and other for protected code.

For example the following snippet is not safe:

async def handler(request):
    await asyncio.shield(write_to_redis(request))
    await asyncio.shield(write_to_postgres(request))
    return web.Response(text='OK')

Cancellation might be occurred just after saving data in REDIS, write_to_postgres will be not called.

Spawning a new task is much worse: there is no place to await spawned tasks:

async def handler(request):
    request.loop.create_task(write_to_redis(request))
    return web.Response(text='OK')

In this case errors from write_to_redis are not awaited, it leads to many asyncio log messages Future exception was never retrieved and Task was destroyed but it is pending!.

Moreover on Graceful shutdown phase aiohttp don’t wait for these tasks, you have a great chance to loose very important data.

On other hand aiojobs provides an API for spawning new jobs and awaiting their results etc. It stores all scheduled activity in internal data structures and could terminate them gracefully:

from aiojobs.aiohttp import setup, spawn

async def coro(timeout):
    await asyncio.sleep(timeout)  # do something in background

async def handler(request):
    await spawn(request, coro())
    return web.Response()

app = web.Application()
setup(app)
app.router.add_get('/', handler)

All not finished jobs will be terminated on Application.on_cleanup signal.

To prevent cancellation of the whole web-handler use @atomic decorator:

from aiojobs.aiohttp import atomic

@atomic
async def handler(request):
    await write_to_db()
    return web.Response()

app = web.Application()
setup(app)
app.router.add_post('/', handler)

It prevents all handler async function from cancellation, write_to_db will be never interrupted.

Passing a coroutine into run_app and Gunicorn¶

run_app() accepts either application instance or a coroutine for making an application. The coroutine based approach allows to perform async IO before making an app:

async def app_factory():
    await pre_init()
    app = web.Application()
    app.router.add_get(...)
    return app

web.run_app(app_factory())

Gunicorn worker supports a factory as well. For Gunicorn the factory should accept zero parameters:

async def my_web_app():
    app = web.Application()
    app.router.add_get(...)
    return app

Start gunicorn:

$ gunicorn my_app_module:my_web_app --bind localhost:8080 --worker-class aiohttp.GunicornWebWorker

New in version 3.1.

Custom Routing Criteria¶

Sometimes you need to register handlers on more complex criteria than simply a HTTP method and path pair.

Although UrlDispatcher does not support any extra criteria, routing based on custom conditions can be accomplished by implementing a second layer of routing in your application.

The following example shows custom routing based on the HTTP Accept header:

class AcceptChooser:

    def __init__(self):
        self._accepts = {}

    async def do_route(self, request):
        for accept in request.headers.getall('ACCEPT', []):
            acceptor = self._accepts.get(accept)
            if acceptor is not None:
                return (await acceptor(request))
        raise HTTPNotAcceptable()

    def reg_acceptor(self, accept, handler):
        self._accepts[accept] = handler


async def handle_json(request):
    # do json handling

async def handle_xml(request):
    # do xml handling

chooser = AcceptChooser()
app.add_routes([web.get('/', chooser.do_route)])

chooser.reg_acceptor('application/json', handle_json)
chooser.reg_acceptor('application/xml', handle_xml)

Static file handling¶

The best way to handle static files (images, JavaScripts, CSS files etc.) is using Reverse Proxy like nginx or CDN services.

But for development it’s very convenient to handle static files by aiohttp server itself.

To do it just register a new static route by RouteTableDef.static() or static() calls:

app.add_routes([web.static('/prefix', path_to_static_folder)])

routes.static('/prefix', path_to_static_folder)

When a directory is accessed within a static route then the server responses to client with HTTP/403 Forbidden by default. Displaying folder index instead could be enabled with show_index parameter set to True:

web.static('/prefix', path_to_static_folder, show_index=True)

When a symlink from the static directory is accessed, the server responses to client with HTTP/404 Not Found by default. To allow the server to follow symlinks, parameter follow_symlinks should be set to True:

web.static('/prefix', path_to_static_folder, follow_symlinks=True)

When you want to enable cache busting, parameter append_version can be set to True

Cache busting is the process of appending some form of file version hash to the filename of resources like JavaScript and CSS files. The performance advantage of doing this is that we can tell the browser to cache these files indefinitely without worrying about the client not getting the latest version when the file changes:

web.static('/prefix', path_to_static_folder, append_version=True)

Template Rendering¶

aiohttp.web does not support template rendering out-of-the-box.

However, there is a third-party library, aiohttp_jinja2, which is supported by the aiohttp authors.

Using it is rather simple. First, setup a jinja2 environment with a call to aiohttp_jinja2.setup():

app = web.Application()
aiohttp_jinja2.setup(app,
    loader=jinja2.FileSystemLoader('/path/to/templates/folder'))

After that you may use the template engine in your handlers. The most convenient way is to simply wrap your handlers with the aiohttp_jinja2.template() decorator:

@aiohttp_jinja2.template('tmpl.jinja2')
async def handler(request):
    return {'name': 'Andrew', 'surname': 'Svetlov'}

If you prefer the Mako template engine, please take a look at the aiohttp_mako library.

Warning

aiohttp_jinja2.template() should be applied before RouteTableDef.get() decorator and family, e.g. it must be the first (most down decorator in the chain):

@routes.get('/path')
@aiohttp_jinja2.template('tmpl.jinja2')
async def handler(request):
    return {'name': 'Andrew', 'surname': 'Svetlov'}

Reading from the same task in WebSockets¶

Reading from the WebSocket (await ws.receive()) must only be done inside the request handler task; however, writing (ws.send_str(...)) to the WebSocket, closing (await ws.close()) and canceling the handler task may be delegated to other tasks. See also FAQ section.

aiohttp.web creates an implicit asyncio.Task for handling every incoming request.

Note

While aiohttp.web itself only supports WebSockets without downgrading to LONG-POLLING, etc., our team supports SockJS, an aiohttp-based library for implementing SockJS-compatible server code.

Warning

Parallel reads from websocket are forbidden, there is no possibility to call WebSocketResponse.receive() from two tasks.

See FAQ section for instructions how to solve the problem.

Middlewares¶

aiohttp.web provides a powerful mechanism for customizing request handlers via middlewares.

A middleware is a coroutine that can modify either the request or response. For example, here’s a simple middleware which appends ' wink' to the response:

from aiohttp.web import middleware

@middleware
async def middleware(request, handler):
    resp = await handler(request)
    resp.text = resp.text + ' wink'
    return resp

Note

The example won’t work with streamed responses or websockets

Every middleware should accept two parameters, a request instance and a handler, and return the response or raise an exception. If the exception is not an instance of HTTPException it is converted to 500 HTTPInternalServerError after processing the middlewares chain.

Warning

Second argument should be named handler exactly.

When creating an Application, these middlewares are passed to the keyword-only middlewares parameter:

app = web.Application(middlewares=[middleware_1,
                                   middleware_2])

Internally, a single request handler is constructed by applying the middleware chain to the original handler in reverse order, and is called by the RequestHandler as a regular handler.

Since middlewares are themselves coroutines, they may perform extra await calls when creating a new handler, e.g. call database etc.

Middlewares usually call the handler, but they may choose to ignore it, e.g. displaying 403 Forbidden page or raising HTTPForbidden exception if the user does not have permissions to access the underlying resource. They may also render errors raised by the handler, perform some pre- or post-processing like handling CORS and so on.

The following code demonstrates middlewares execution order:

from aiohttp import web

async def test(request):
    print('Handler function called')
    return web.Response(text="Hello")

@web.middleware
async def middleware1(request, handler):
    print('Middleware 1 called')
    response = await handler(request)
    print('Middleware 1 finished')
    return response

@web.middleware
async def middleware2(request, handler):
    print('Middleware 2 called')
    response = await handler(request)
    print('Middleware 2 finished')
    return response


app = web.Application(middlewares=[middleware1, middleware2])
app.router.add_get('/', test)
web.run_app(app)

Produced output:

Middleware 1 called
Middleware 2 called
Handler function called
Middleware 2 finished
Middleware 1 finished

Example¶

A common use of middlewares is to implement custom error pages. The following example will render 404 errors using a JSON response, as might be appropriate a JSON REST service:

from aiohttp import web

@web.middleware
async def error_middleware(request, handler):
    try:
        response = await handler(request)
        if response.status != 404:
            return response
        message = response.message
    except web.HTTPException as ex:
        if ex.status != 404:
            raise
        message = ex.reason
    return web.json_response({'error': message})

app = web.Application(middlewares=[error_middleware])

Middleware Factory¶

A middleware factory is a function that creates a middleware with passed arguments. For example, here’s a trivial middleware factory:

def middleware_factory(text):
    @middleware
    async def sample_middleware(request, handler):
        resp = await handler(request)
        resp.text = resp.text + text
        return resp
    return sample_middleware

Remember that contrary to regular middlewares you need the result of a middleware factory not the function itself. So when passing a middleware factory to an app you actually need to call it:

app = web.Application(middlewares=[middleware_factory(' wink')])

Signals¶

Although middlewares can customize request handlers before or after a Response has been prepared, they can’t customize a Response while it’s being prepared. For this aiohttp.web provides signals.

For example, a middleware can only change HTTP headers for unprepared responses (see StreamResponse.prepare()), but sometimes we need a hook for changing HTTP headers for streamed responses and WebSockets. This can be accomplished by subscribing to the Application.on_response_prepare signal:

async def on_prepare(request, response):
    response.headers['My-Header'] = 'value'

app.on_response_prepare.append(on_prepare)

Additionally, the Application.on_startup and Application.on_cleanup signals can be subscribed to for application component setup and tear down accordingly.

The following example will properly initialize and dispose an aiopg connection engine:

from aiopg.sa import create_engine

async def create_aiopg(app):
    app['pg_engine'] = await create_engine(
        user='postgre',
        database='postgre',
        host='localhost',
        port=5432,
        password=''
    )

async def dispose_aiopg(app):
    app['pg_engine'].close()
    await app['pg_engine'].wait_closed()

app.on_startup.append(create_aiopg)
app.on_cleanup.append(dispose_aiopg)

Signal handlers should not return a value but may modify incoming mutable parameters.

Signal handlers will be run sequentially, in order they were added. All handlers must be asynchronous since aiohttp 3.0.

Cleanup Context¶

Bare Application.on_startup / Application.on_cleanup pair still has a pitfall: signals handlers are independent on each other.

E.g. we have [create_pg, create_redis] in startup signal and [dispose_pg, dispose_redis] in cleanup.

If, for example, create_pg(app) call fails create_redis(app) is not called. But on application cleanup both dispose_pg(app) and dispose_redis(app) are still called: cleanup signal has no knowledge about startup/cleanup pairs and their execution state.

The solution is Application.cleanup_ctx usage:

async def pg_engine(app):
    app['pg_engine'] = await create_engine(
        user='postgre',
        database='postgre',
        host='localhost',
        port=5432,
        password=''
    )
    yield
    app['pg_engine'].close()
    await app['pg_engine'].wait_closed()

app.cleanup_ctx.append(pg_engine)

The attribute is a list of asynchronous generators, a code before yield is an initialization stage (called on startup), a code after yield is executed on cleanup. The generator must have only one yield.

aiohttp guarantees that cleanup code is called if and only if startup code was successfully finished.

Asynchronous generators are supported by Python 3.6+, on Python 3.5 please use async_generator library.

New in version 3.1.

Nested applications¶

Sub applications are designed for solving the problem of the big monolithic code base. Let’s assume we have a project with own business logic and tools like administration panel and debug toolbar.

Administration panel is a separate application by its own nature but all toolbar URLs are served by prefix like /admin.

Thus we’ll create a totally separate application named admin and connect it to main app with prefix by Application.add_subapp():

admin = web.Application()
# setup admin routes, signals and middlewares

app.add_subapp('/admin/', admin)

Middlewares and signals from app and admin are chained.

It means that if URL is '/admin/something' middlewares from app are applied first and admin.middlewares are the next in the call chain.

The same is going for Application.on_response_prepare signal – the signal is delivered to both top level app and admin if processing URL is routed to admin sub-application.

Common signals like Application.on_startup, Application.on_shutdown and Application.on_cleanup are delivered to all registered sub-applications. The passed parameter is sub-application instance, not top-level application.

Third level sub-applications can be nested into second level ones – there are no limitation for nesting level.

Url reversing for sub-applications should generate urls with proper prefix.

But for getting URL sub-application’s router should be used:

admin = web.Application()
admin.add_routes([web.get('/resource', handler, name='name')])

app.add_subapp('/admin/', admin)

url = admin.router['name'].url_for()

The generated url from example will have a value URL('/admin/resource').

If main application should do URL reversing for sub-application it could use the following explicit technique:

admin = web.Application()
admin.add_routes([web.get('/resource', handler, name='name')])

app.add_subapp('/admin/', admin)
app['admin'] = admin

async def handler(request):  # main application's handler
    admin = request.app['admin']
    url = admin.router['name'].url_for()

Expect Header¶

aiohttp.web supports Expect header. By default it sends HTTP/1.1 100 Continue line to client, or raises HTTPExpectationFailed if header value is not equal to “100-continue”. It is possible to specify custom Expect header handler on per route basis. This handler gets called if Expect header exist in request after receiving all headers and before processing application’s Middlewares and route handler. Handler can return None, in that case the request processing continues as usual. If handler returns an instance of class StreamResponse, request handler uses it as response. Also handler can raise a subclass of HTTPException. In this case all further processing will not happen and client will receive appropriate http response.

Note

A server that does not understand or is unable to comply with any of the expectation values in the Expect field of a request MUST respond with appropriate error status. The server MUST respond with a 417 (Expectation Failed) status if any of the expectations cannot be met or, if there are other problems with the request, some other 4xx status.

http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.20

If all checks pass, the custom handler must write a HTTP/1.1 100 Continue status code before returning.

The following example shows how to setup a custom handler for the Expect header:

async def check_auth(request):
    if request.version != aiohttp.HttpVersion11:
        return

    if request.headers.get('EXPECT') != '100-continue':
        raise HTTPExpectationFailed(text="Unknown Expect: %s" % expect)

    if request.headers.get('AUTHORIZATION') is None:
        raise HTTPForbidden()

    request.transport.write(b"HTTP/1.1 100 Continue\r\n\r\n")

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

app = web.Application()
app.add_routes([web.add_get('/', hello, expect_handler=check_auth)])

Custom resource implementation¶

To register custom resource use UrlDispatcher.register_resource(). Resource instance must implement AbstractResource interface.

Application runners¶

run_app() provides a simple blocking API for running an Application.

For starting the application asynchronously or serving on multiple HOST/PORT AppRunner exists.

The simple startup code for serving HTTP site on 'localhost', port 8080 looks like:

runner = web.AppRunner(app)
await runner.setup()
site = web.TCPSite(runner, 'localhost', 8080)
await site.start()

To stop serving call AppRunner.cleanup():

await runner.cleanup()

New in version 3.0.

Graceful shutdown¶

Stopping aiohttp web server by just closing all connections is not always satisfactory.

The problem is: if application supports websockets or data streaming it most likely has open connections at server shutdown time.

The library has no knowledge how to close them gracefully but developer can help by registering Application.on_shutdown signal handler and call the signal on web server closing.

Developer should keep a list of opened connections (Application is a good candidate).

The following websocket snippet shows an example for websocket handler:

from aiohttp import web
import weakref

app = web.Application()
app['websockets'] = weakref.WeakSet()

async def websocket_handler(request):
    ws = web.WebSocketResponse()
    await ws.prepare(request)

    request.app['websockets'].add(ws)
    try:
        async for msg in ws:
            ...
    finally:
        request.app['websockets'].discard(ws)

    return ws

Signal handler may look like:

from aiohttp import WSCloseCode

async def on_shutdown(app):
    for ws in set(app['websockets']):
        await ws.close(code=WSCloseCode.GOING_AWAY,
                       message='Server shutdown')

app.on_shutdown.append(on_shutdown)

Both run_app() and AppRunner.cleanup() call shutdown signal handlers.

Background tasks¶

Sometimes there’s a need to perform some asynchronous operations just after application start-up.

Even more, in some sophisticated systems there could be a need to run some background tasks in the event loop along with the application’s request handler. Such as listening to message queue or other network message/event sources (e.g. ZeroMQ, Redis Pub/Sub, AMQP, etc.) to react to received messages within the application.

For example the background task could listen to ZeroMQ on zmq.SUB socket, process and forward retrieved messages to clients connected via WebSocket that are stored somewhere in the application (e.g. in the application['websockets'] list).

To run such short and long running background tasks aiohttp provides an ability to register Application.on_startup signal handler(s) that will run along with the application’s request handler.

For example there’s a need to run one quick task and two long running tasks that will live till the application is alive. The appropriate background tasks could be registered as an Application.on_startup signal handlers as shown in the example below:

async def listen_to_redis(app):
    try:
        sub = await aioredis.create_redis(('localhost', 6379), loop=app.loop)
        ch, *_ = await sub.subscribe('news')
        async for msg in ch.iter(encoding='utf-8'):
            # Forward message to all connected websockets:
            for ws in app['websockets']:
                ws.send_str('{}: {}'.format(ch.name, msg))
    except asyncio.CancelledError:
        pass
    finally:
        await sub.unsubscribe(ch.name)
        await sub.quit()


async def start_background_tasks(app):
    app['redis_listener'] = app.loop.create_task(listen_to_redis(app))


async def cleanup_background_tasks(app):
    app['redis_listener'].cancel()
    await app['redis_listener']


app = web.Application()
app.on_startup.append(start_background_tasks)
app.on_cleanup.append(cleanup_background_tasks)
web.run_app(app)

The task listen_to_redis() will run forever. To shut it down correctly Application.on_cleanup signal handler may be used to send a cancellation to it.

Handling error pages¶

Pages like 404 Not Found and 500 Internal Error could be handled by custom middleware, see polls demo for example.

Deploying behind a Proxy¶

As discussed in Server Deployment the preferable way is deploying aiohttp web server behind a Reverse Proxy Server like nginx for production usage.

In this way properties like BaseRequest.scheme BaseRequest.host and BaseRequest.remote are incorrect.

Real values should be given from proxy server, usually either Forwarded or old-fashion X-Forwarded-For, X-Forwarded-Host, X-Forwarded-Proto HTTP headers are used.

aiohttp does not take forwarded headers into account by default because it produces security issue: HTTP client might add these headers too, pushing non-trusted data values.

That’s why aiohttp server should setup forwarded headers in custom middleware in tight conjunction with reverse proxy configuration.

For changing BaseRequest.scheme BaseRequest.host and BaseRequest.remote the middleware might use BaseRequest.clone().

Swagger support¶

aiohttp-swagger is a library that allow to add Swagger documentation and embed the Swagger-UI into your aiohttp.web project.

CORS support¶

aiohttp.web itself does not support Cross-Origin Resource Sharing, but there is an aiohttp plugin for it: aiohttp_cors.

Dev Tools¶

aiohttp-devtools provides a couple of tools to simplify development of aiohttp.web applications.

Install with pip:

  $ pip install aiohttp-devtools

 * ``runserver`` provides a development server with auto-reload,
live-reload, static file serving and aiohttp_debugtoolbar_
integration.
 * ``start`` is a `cookiecutter command which does the donkey work
of creating new :mod:`aiohttp.web` Applications.

Documentation and a complete tutorial of creating and running an app locally are available at aiohttp-devtools.

Web Server Advanced¶

Unicode support¶

Web Handler Cancellation¶

Passing a coroutine into run_app and Gunicorn¶

Custom Routing Criteria¶

Static file handling¶

Template Rendering¶

Reading from the same task in WebSockets¶

Data Sharing aka No Singletons Please¶

Application’s config¶

Request’s storage¶

Response’s storage¶

Naming hint¶

Middlewares¶

Example¶

Middleware Factory¶

Signals¶

Cleanup Context¶

Nested applications¶

Expect Header¶

Custom resource implementation¶

Application runners¶

Graceful shutdown¶

Background tasks¶

Handling error pages¶

Deploying behind a Proxy¶

Swagger support¶

CORS support¶

Debug Toolbar¶

Dev Tools¶