API Reference

Bottle prides itself on having source code that is easy to read and follow, so most questions about APIs or inner workings can be answered quickly by inspecting sources. Your IDE should give you the same information you’ll find on this page, as most of it is auto-generates from docstrings and method signatures anyway. If you are new to bottle, you may find the User’s Guide more helpful as a starting point.

Global functions

The module defines several functions, constants, and an exception.

app()

default_app()

Return the current Structuring Applications. This is actually a callable instances of AppStack.

debug(mode=True)

Change the debug level. There is only one debug level supported at the moment.

install(self, plugin)

Add a plugin to the list of plugins and prepare it for being applied to all routes of this application. A plugin may be a simple decorator or an object that implements the Plugin API.

uninstall(self, plugin)

Uninstall plugins. Pass an instance to remove a specific plugin, a type object to remove all plugins that match that type, a string to remove all plugins with a matching name attribute or True to remove all plugins. Return the list of removed plugins.

run(app=None, server='wsgiref', host='127.0.0.1', port=8080, interval=1, reloader=False, quiet=False, plugins=None, debug=None, config=None, **kargs)

Start a server instance. This method blocks until the server terminates.

Parameters:

• app – WSGI application or target string supported by load_app(). (default: default_app())

• server – Server adapter to use. See server_names keys for valid names or pass a ServerAdapter subclass. (default: wsgiref)

• host – Server address to bind to. Pass 0.0.0.0 to listens on all interfaces including the external one. (default: 127.0.0.1)

• port – Server port to bind to. Values below 1024 require root privileges. (default: 8080)

• reloader – Start auto-reloading server? (default: False)

• interval – Auto-reloader interval in seconds (default: 1)

• quiet – Suppress output to stdout and stderr? (default: False)

• options – Options passed to the server adapter.

Global decorators

Bottle maintains a stack of Bottle instances (see app() and AppStack) and uses the top of the stack as a Structuring Applications for some of the module-level functions and decorators. All of those have a corresponding method on the Bottle class.

route(path, method='GET', callback=None, **options)

get(...)

post(...)

put(...)

delete(...)

patch(...)

Decorator to install a route to the current default application. See Bottle.route() for details.

error(...)

Decorator to install an error handler to the current default application. See Bottle.error() for details.

hook(self, name)

Return a decorator that attaches a callback to a hook. See add_hook() for details.

Request Context

The global request and response instances are only valid from within an request handler function and represent the current HTTP request or response.

request = <LocalRequest: GET http://127.0.0.1/>

A thread-safe instance of LocalRequest. If accessed from within a request callback, this instance always refers to the current request (even on a multi-threaded server).

response = Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

A thread-safe instance of LocalResponse. It is used to change the HTTP response for the current request.

Helper Functions

abort(code=500, text='Unknown Error.')

Aborts execution and causes a HTTP error.

redirect(url, code=None)

Aborts execution and causes a 303 or 302 redirect, depending on the HTTP protocol version.

static_file(filename, root, mimetype=True, download=False, charset='UTF-8', etag=None, headers=None)

Open a file in a safe way and return an instance of HTTPResponse that can be sent back to the client.

Parameters:

• filename – Name or path of the file to send, relative to root.

• root – Root path for file lookups. Should be an absolute directory path.

• mimetype – Provide the content-type header (default: guess from file extension)

• download – If True, ask the browser to open a Save as… dialog instead of opening the file with the associated program. You can specify a custom filename as a string. If not specified, the original filename is used (default: False).

• charset – The charset for files with a text/* mime-type. (default: UTF-8)

• etag – Provide a pre-computed ETag header. If set to False, ETag handling is disabled. (default: auto-generate ETag header)

• headers – Additional headers dict to add to the response.

While checking user input is always a good idea, this function provides additional protection against malicious filename parameters from breaking out of the root directory and leaking sensitive information to an attacker.

Read-protected files or files outside of the root directory are answered with 403 Access Denied. Missing files result in a 404 Not Found response. Conditional requests (If-Modified-Since, If-None-Match) are answered with 304 Not Modified whenever possible. HEAD and Range requests (used by download managers to check or continue partial downloads) are also handled automatically.

Exceptions

exception BottleException

A base class for exceptions used by bottle.

exception HTTPResponse

A subclass of Response that can be raised or returned from request handlers to short-curcuit request processing and override changes made to the global request object. This bypasses error handlers, even if the status code indicates an error. Return or raise HTTPError to trigger error handlers.

__init__(body='', status=None, headers=None, **more_headers)

Create a new response object.

Parameters:

• body – The response body as one of the supported types.

• status – Either an HTTP status code (e.g. 200) or a status line including the reason phrase (e.g. ‘200 OK’).

• headers – A dictionary or a list of name-value pairs.

Additional keyword arguments are added to the list of headers. Underscores in the header name are replaced with dashes.

apply(other)

Copy the state of this response to a different Response object.

exception HTTPError

A subclass of HTTPResponse that triggers error handlers.

__init__(status=None, body=None, exception=None, traceback=None, **more_headers)

Create a new response object.

Parameters:

• body – The response body as one of the supported types.

• status – Either an HTTP status code (e.g. 200) or a status line including the reason phrase (e.g. ‘200 OK’).

• headers – A dictionary or a list of name-value pairs.

Additional keyword arguments are added to the list of headers. Underscores in the header name are replaced with dashes.

The Bottle Class

class Bottle

Each Bottle object represents a single, distinct web application and consists of routes, callbacks, plugins, resources and configuration. Instances are callable WSGI applications.

Parameters:

catchall – If true (default), handle all exceptions. Turn off to let debugging middleware handle exceptions.

__init__(**kwargs)

config

A ConfigDict for app specific configuration.

resources

A ResourceManager for application files

catchall

If true, most exceptions are caught and returned as HTTPError

add_hook(name, func)

Attach a callback to a hook. Three hooks are currently implemented:

before_request

Executed once before each request. The request context is available, but no routing has happened yet.

after_request

Executed once after each request regardless of its outcome.

app_reset

Called whenever Bottle.reset() is called.

remove_hook(name, func)

Remove a callback from a hook.

trigger_hook(_Bottle__name, *args, **kwargs)

Trigger a hook and return a list of results.

hook(name)

Return a decorator that attaches a callback to a hook. See add_hook() for details.

mount(prefix, app, **options)

Mount an application (Bottle or plain WSGI) to a specific URL prefix. Example:

parent_app.mount('/prefix/', child_app)

Parameters:

• prefix – path prefix or mount-point.

• app – an instance of Bottle or a WSGI application.

Plugins from the parent application are not applied to the routes of the mounted child application. If you need plugins in the child application, install them separately.

While it is possible to use path wildcards within the prefix path (Bottle childs only), it is highly discouraged.

The prefix path must end with a slash. If you want to access the root of the child application via /prefix in addition to /prefix/, consider adding a route with a 307 redirect to the parent application.

merge(routes)

Merge the routes of another Bottle application or a list of Route objects into this application. The routes keep their ‘owner’, meaning that the Route.app attribute is not changed.

install(plugin)

Add a plugin to the list of plugins and prepare it for being applied to all routes of this application. A plugin may be a simple decorator or an object that implements the Plugin API.

uninstall(plugin)

Uninstall plugins. Pass an instance to remove a specific plugin, a type object to remove all plugins that match that type, a string to remove all plugins with a matching name attribute or True to remove all plugins. Return the list of removed plugins.

reset(route=None)

Reset all routes (force plugins to be re-applied) and clear all caches. If an ID or route object is given, only that specific route is affected.

close()

Close the application and all installed plugins.

run(**kwargs)

Calls run() with the same parameters.

match(environ)

Search for a matching route and return a (Route, urlargs) tuple. The second value is a dictionary with parameters extracted from the URL. Raise HTTPError (404/405) on a non-match.

get_url(routename, **kargs)

Return a string that matches a named route

add_route(route)

Add a route object, but do not change the Route.app attribute.

route(path=None, method='GET', callback=None, name=None, apply=None, skip=None, **config)

A decorator to bind a function to a request URL. Example:

@app.route('/hello/<name>')
def hello(name):
    return 'Hello %s' % name

The <name> part is a wildcard. See Router for syntax details.

Parameters:

• path – Request path or a list of paths to listen to. If no path is specified, it is automatically generated from the signature of the function.

• method – HTTP method (GET, POST, PUT, …) or a list of methods to listen to. (default: GET)

• callback – An optional shortcut to avoid the decorator syntax. route(..., callback=func) equals route(...)(func)

• name – The name for this route. (default: None)

• apply – A decorator or plugin or a list of plugins. These are applied to the route callback in addition to installed plugins.

• skip – A list of plugins, plugin classes or names. Matching plugins are not installed to this route. True skips all.

Any additional keyword arguments are stored as route-specific configuration and passed to plugins (see Plugin.apply()).

get(path=None, method='GET', **options)

Equals route().

post(path=None, method='POST', **options)

Equals route() with a POST method parameter.

put(path=None, method='PUT', **options)

Equals route() with a PUT method parameter.

delete(path=None, method='DELETE', **options)

Equals route() with a DELETE method parameter.

patch(path=None, method='PATCH', **options)

Equals route() with a PATCH method parameter.

error(code=500, callback=None)

Register an output handler for a HTTP error code. Can be used as a decorator or called directly

def error_handler_500(error):
    return 'error_handler_500'

app.error(code=500, callback=error_handler_500)

@app.error(404)
def error_handler_404(error):
    return 'error_handler_404'

wsgi(environ, start_response)

The bottle WSGI-interface.

The Request Object

The Request class wraps a WSGI environment and provides helpful methods to parse and access form data, cookies, file uploads and other metadata. Most of the attributes are read-only.

Request

alias of BaseRequest

class BaseRequest

A wrapper for WSGI environment dictionaries that adds a lot of convenient access methods and properties. Most of them are read-only.

Adding new attributes to a request actually adds them to the environ dictionary (as ‘bottle.request.ext.<name>’). This is the recommended way to store and access request-specific data.

MEMFILE_MAX = 102400

Maximum size of memory buffer for body in bytes.

__init__(environ=None)

Wrap a WSGI environ dictionary.

environ

The wrapped WSGI environ dictionary. This is the only real attribute. All other attributes actually are read-only properties.

app

Bottle application handling this request.

route

The bottle Route object that matches this request.

url_args

The arguments extracted from the URL.

property path

The value of PATH_INFO with exactly one prefixed slash (to fix broken clients and avoid the “empty path” edge case).

property method

The REQUEST_METHOD value as an uppercase string.

headers

A WSGIHeaderDict that provides case-insensitive access to HTTP request headers.

get_header(name, default=None)

Return the value of a request header, or a given default value.

cookies

Cookies parsed into a FormsDict. Signed cookies are NOT decoded. Use get_cookie() if you expect signed cookies.

get_cookie(key, default=None, secret=None, digestmod=<built-in function openssl_sha256>)

Return the content of a cookie. To read a Signed Cookie, the secret must match the one used to create the cookie (see BaseResponse.set_cookie()). If anything goes wrong (missing cookie or wrong signature), return a default value.

query

The query_string parsed into a FormsDict. These values are sometimes called “URL arguments” or “GET parameters”, but not to be confused with “URL wildcards” as they are provided by the Router.

forms

Form values parsed from an url-encoded or multipart/form-data encoded POST or PUT request body. The result is returned as a FormsDict. All keys and values are strings. File uploads are stored separately in files.

params

A FormsDict with the combined values of query and forms. File uploads are stored in files.

files

File uploads parsed from multipart/form-data encoded POST or PUT request body. The values are instances of FileUpload.

json

If the Content-Type header is application/json or application/json-rpc, this property holds the parsed content of the request body. Only requests smaller than MEMFILE_MAX are processed to avoid memory exhaustion. Invalid JSON raises a 400 error response.

property body

The HTTP request body as a seek-able file-like object. Depending on MEMFILE_MAX, this is either a temporary file or a io.BytesIO instance. Accessing this property for the first time reads and replaces the wsgi.input environ variable. Subsequent accesses just do a seek(0) on the file object.

property chunked

True if Chunked transfer encoding was.

GET

An alias for query.

POST

The values of forms and files combined into a single FormsDict. Values are either strings (form values) or instances of FileUpload.

property url

The full request URI including hostname and scheme. If your app lives behind a reverse proxy or load balancer and you get confusing results, make sure that the X-Forwarded-Host header is set correctly.

urlparts

The url string as an urlparse.SplitResult tuple. The tuple contains (scheme, host, path, query_string and fragment), but the fragment is always empty because it is not visible to the server.

property fullpath

Request path including script_name (if present).

property query_string

The raw query part of the URL (everything in between ? and #) as a string.

property script_name

The initial portion of the URL’s path that was removed by a higher level (server or routing middleware) before the application was called. This script path is returned with leading and tailing slashes.

path_shift(shift=1)

Shift path segments from path to script_name and

vice versa.

Parameters:

shift – The number of path segments to shift. May be negative to change the shift direction. (default: 1)

property content_length

The request body length as an integer. The client is responsible to set this header. Otherwise, the real length of the body is unknown and -1 is returned. In this case, body will be empty.

property content_type

The Content-Type header as a lowercase-string (default: empty).

property is_xhr

True if the request was triggered by a XMLHttpRequest. This only works with JavaScript libraries that support the X-Requested-With header (most of the popular libraries do).

property is_ajax

Alias for is_xhr. “Ajax” is not the right term.

property auth

HTTP authentication data as a (user, password) tuple. This implementation currently supports basic (not digest) authentication only. If the authentication happened at a higher level (e.g. in the front web-server or a middleware), the password field is None, but the user field is looked up from the REMOTE_USER environ variable. On any errors, None is returned.

property remote_route

A list of all IPs that were involved in this request, starting with the client IP and followed by zero or more proxies. This does only work if all proxies support the `X-Forwarded-For header. Note that this information can be forged by malicious clients.

property remote_addr

The client IP as a string. Note that this information can be forged by malicious clients.

copy()

Return a new Request with a shallow environ copy.

__setattr__(name, value)

Define new attributes that are local to the bound request environment.

class LocalRequest

A thread-local subclass of BaseRequest with a different set of attributes for each thread. There is usually only one global instance of this class (request). If accessed during a request/response cycle, this instance always refers to the current request (even on a multithreaded server).

bind(environ=None)

Wrap a WSGI environ dictionary.

environ

The wrapped WSGI environ dictionary. This is the only real attribute. All other attributes actually are read-only properties.

The Response Object

The Response class stores the HTTP status code as well as headers and cookies that are to be sent to the client. Similar to bottle.request there is a thread-local bottle.response instance that can be used to adjust the current response. Moreover, you can instantiate Response and return it from your request handler. In this case, the custom instance overrules the headers and cookies defined in the global one.

Response

alias of BaseResponse

class BaseResponse

Storage class for a response body as well as headers and cookies.

This class does support dict-like case-insensitive item-access to headers, but is NOT a dict. Most notably, iterating over a response yields parts of the body and not the headers.

__init__(body='', status=None, headers=None, **more_headers)

Create a new response object.

Parameters:

• body – The response body as one of the supported types.

• status – Either an HTTP status code (e.g. 200) or a status line including the reason phrase (e.g. ‘200 OK’).

• headers – A dictionary or a list of name-value pairs.

Additional keyword arguments are added to the list of headers. Underscores in the header name are replaced with dashes.

copy(cls=None)

Returns a copy of self.

property status_line

The HTTP status line as a string (e.g. 404 Not Found).

property status_code

The HTTP status code as an integer (e.g. 404).

property status

A writeable property to change the HTTP response status. It accepts either a numeric code (100-999) or a string with a custom reason phrase (e.g. “404 Brain not found”). Both status_line and status_code are updated accordingly. The return value is always a status string.

property headers

An instance of HeaderDict, a case-insensitive dict-like view on the response headers.

get_header(name, default=None)

Return the value of a previously defined header. If there is no header with that name, return a default value.

set_header(name, value)

Create a new response header, replacing any previously defined headers with the same name.

add_header(name, value)

Add an additional response header, not removing duplicates.

iter_headers()

Yield (header, value) tuples, skipping headers that are not allowed with the current response status code.

property headerlist

WSGI conform list of (header, value) tuples.

content_type

Current value of the ‘Content-Type’ header.

content_length

Current value of the ‘Content-Length’ header.

expires

Current value of the ‘Expires’ header.

property charset

Return the charset specified in the content-type header (default: utf8).

set_cookie(name, value, secret=None, digestmod=<built-in function openssl_sha256>, **options)

Create a new cookie or replace an old one. If the secret parameter is set, create a Signed Cookie (described below).

Parameters:

• name – the name of the cookie.

• value – the value of the cookie.

• secret – a signature key required for signed cookies.

Additionally, this method accepts all RFC 2109 attributes that are supported by cookie.Morsel, including:

Parameters:

• maxage – maximum age in seconds. (default: None)

• expires – a datetime object or UNIX timestamp. (default: None)

• domain – the domain that is allowed to read the cookie. (default: current domain)

• path – limits the cookie to a given path (default: current path)

• secure – limit the cookie to HTTPS connections (default: off).

• httponly – prevents client-side javascript to read this cookie (default: off, requires Python 2.6 or newer).

• samesite – Control or disable third-party use for this cookie. Possible values: lax, strict or none (default).

If neither expires nor maxage is set (default), the cookie will expire at the end of the browser session (as soon as the browser window is closed).

Signed cookies may store any pickle-able object and are cryptographically signed to prevent manipulation. Keep in mind that cookies are limited to 4kb in most browsers.

Warning: Pickle is a potentially dangerous format. If an attacker gains access to the secret key, he could forge cookies that execute code on server side if unpickled. Using pickle is discouraged and support for it will be removed in later versions of bottle.

Warning: Signed cookies are not encrypted (the client can still see the content) and not copy-protected (the client can restore an old cookie). The main intention is to make pickling and unpickling save, not to store secret information at client side.

delete_cookie(key, **kwargs)

Delete a cookie. Be sure to use the same domain and path settings as used to create the cookie.

class LocalResponse

A thread-local subclass of BaseResponse with a different set of attributes for each thread. There is usually only one global instance of this class (response). Its attributes are used to build the HTTP response at the end of the request/response cycle.

bind(body='', status=None, headers=None, **more_headers)

Create a new response object.

Parameters:

• body – The response body as one of the supported types.

• status – Either an HTTP status code (e.g. 200) or a status line including the reason phrase (e.g. ‘200 OK’).

• headers – A dictionary or a list of name-value pairs.

Additional keyword arguments are added to the list of headers. Underscores in the header name are replaced with dashes.

property body

Thread-local property

Data Structures

class AppStack

A stack-like list. Calling it returns the head of the stack.

pop()

Return the current default application and remove it from the stack.

push(value=None)

Add a new Bottle instance to the stack

new_app(value=None)

Add a new Bottle instance to the stack

class ConfigDict

A dict-like configuration storage with additional support for namespaces, validators, meta-data and overlays.

This dict-like class is heavily optimized for read access. Read-only methods and item access should be as fast as a native dict.

__init__()

load_module(name, squash=True)

Load values from a Python module.

Import a python module by name and add all upper-case module-level variables to this config dict.

Parameters:

• name – Module name to import and load.

• squash – If true (default), nested dicts are assumed to represent namespaces and flattened (see load_dict()).

load_config(filename, **options)

Load values from *.ini style config files using configparser.

INI style sections (e.g. [section]) are used as namespace for all keys within that section. Both section and key names may contain dots as namespace separators and are converted to lower-case.

The special sections [bottle] and [ROOT] refer to the root namespace and the [DEFAULT] section defines default values for all other sections.

Parameters:

• filename – The path of a config file, or a list of paths.

• options – All keyword parameters are passed to the underlying configparser.ConfigParser constructor call.

load_dict(source, namespace='')

Load values from a dictionary structure. Nesting can be used to represent namespaces.

>>> c = ConfigDict()
>>> c.load_dict({'some': {'namespace': {'key': 'value'} } })
{'some.namespace.key': 'value'}

update(*a, **ka)

If the first parameter is a string, all keys are prefixed with this namespace. Apart from that it works just as the usual dict.update().

>>> c = ConfigDict()
>>> c.update('some.namespace', key='value')

setdefault(key, value=None)

Insert key with a value of default if key is not in the dictionary.

Return the value for key if key is in the dictionary, else default.

meta_get(key, metafield, default=None)

Return the value of a meta field for a key.

meta_set(key, metafield, value)

Set the meta field for a key to a new value.

Meta-fields are shared between all members of an overlay tree.

meta_list(key)

Return an iterable of meta field names defined for a key.

class MultiDict

This dict stores multiple values per key, but behaves exactly like a normal dict in that it returns only the newest value for any given key. There are special methods available to access the full list of values.

__init__(*a, **k)

keys() → a set-like object providing a view on D's keys

values() → an object providing a view on D's values

items() → a set-like object providing a view on D's items

iterkeys()

D.keys() -> a set-like object providing a view on D’s keys

itervalues()

D.values() -> an object providing a view on D’s values

iteritems()

D.items() -> a set-like object providing a view on D’s items

get(key, default=None, index=-1, type=None)

Return the most recent value for a key.

Parameters:

• default – The default value to be returned if the key is not present or the type conversion fails.

• index – An index for the list of available values.

• type – If defined, this callable is used to cast the value into a specific type. Exception are suppressed and result in the default value to be returned.

append(key, value)

Add a new value to the list of values for this key.

replace(key, value)

Replace the list of values with a single value.

getall(key)

Return a (possibly empty) list of values for a key.

getone(key, default=None, index=-1, type=None)

Aliases for WTForms to mimic other multi-dict APIs (Django)

getlist(key)

Return a (possibly empty) list of values for a key.

class WSGIHeaderDict

This dict-like class wraps a WSGI environ dict and provides convenient access to HTTP_* fields. Keys and values are native strings (2.x bytes or 3.x unicode) and keys are case-insensitive. If the WSGI environment contains non-native string values, these are de- or encoded using a lossless ‘latin1’ character set.

The API will remain stable even on changes to the relevant PEPs. Currently PEP 333, 444 and 3333 are supported. (PEP 444 is the only one that uses non-native strings.)

cgikeys = ('CONTENT_TYPE', 'CONTENT_LENGTH')

List of keys that do not have a HTTP_ prefix.

__init__(environ)

raw(key, default=None)

Return the header value as is (may be bytes or unicode).

keys() → a set-like object providing a view on D's keys

class HeaderDict

A case-insensitive version of MultiDict that defaults to replace the old value instead of appending it.

__init__(*a, **ka)

append(key, value)

Add a new value to the list of values for this key.

replace(key, value)

Replace the list of values with a single value.

getall(key)

Return a (possibly empty) list of values for a key.

get(key, default=None, index=-1)

Return the most recent value for a key.

Parameters:

• default – The default value to be returned if the key is not present or the type conversion fails.

• index – An index for the list of available values.

• type – If defined, this callable is used to cast the value into a specific type. Exception are suppressed and result in the default value to be returned.

class FormsDict

This MultiDict subclass is used to store request form data. Additionally to the normal dict-like item access methods (which return unmodified data as native strings), this container also supports attribute-like access to its values. Attributes are automatically de- or recoded to match input_encoding (default: ‘utf8’). Missing attributes default to an empty string.

input_encoding = 'utf8'

Encoding used for attribute values.

recode_unicode = True

If true (default), unicode strings are first encoded with latin1 and then decoded to match input_encoding.

decode(encoding=None)

Returns a copy with all keys and values de- or recoded to match input_encoding. Some libraries (e.g. WTForms) want a unicode dictionary.

getunicode(name, default=None, encoding=None)

Return the value as a unicode string, or the default.

class FileUpload

__init__(fileobj, name, filename, headers=None)

Wrapper for a single file uploaded via multipart/form-data.

file

Open file(-like) object (BytesIO buffer or temporary file)

name

Name of the upload form field

raw_filename

Raw filename as sent by the client (may contain unsafe characters)

headers

A HeaderDict with additional headers (e.g. content-type)

content_type

Current value of the ‘Content-Type’ header.

content_length

Current value of the ‘Content-Length’ header.

get_header(name, default=None)

Return the value of a header within the multipart part.

filename()

Name of the file on the client file system, but normalized to ensure file system compatibility. An empty filename is returned as ‘empty’.

Only ASCII letters, digits, dashes, underscores and dots are allowed in the final filename. Accents are removed, if possible. Whitespace is replaced by a single dash. Leading or tailing dots or dashes are removed. The filename is limited to 255 characters.

save(destination, overwrite=False, chunk_size=65536)

Save file to disk or copy its content to an open file(-like) object. If destination is a directory, filename is added to the path. Existing files are not overwritten by default (IOError).

Parameters:

• destination – File path, directory or file(-like) object.

• overwrite – If True, replace existing files. (default: False)

• chunk_size – Bytes to read at a time. (default: 64kb)

Request routing

class Router

A Router is an ordered collection of route->target pairs. It is used to efficiently match WSGI requests against a number of routes and return the first target that satisfies the request. The target may be anything, usually a string, ID or callable object. A route consists of a path-rule and a HTTP method.

The path-rule is either a static path (e.g. /contact) or a dynamic path that contains wildcards (e.g. /wiki/<page>). The wildcard syntax and details on the matching order are described in docs:routing.

__init__(strict=False)

strict_order

If true, static routes are no longer checked first.

add_filter(name, func)

Add a filter. The provided function is called with the configuration string as parameter and must return a (regexp, to_python, to_url) tuple. The first element is a string, the last two are callables or None.

add(rule, method, target, name=None)

Add a new rule or replace the target for an existing rule.

build(_name, *anons, **query)

Build an URL by filling the wildcards in a rule.

match(environ)

Return a (target, url_args) tuple or raise HTTPError(400/404/405).

class Route

This class wraps a route callback along with route specific metadata and configuration and applies Plugins on demand. It is also responsible for turning an URL path rule into a regular expression usable by the Router.

__init__(app, rule, method, callback, name=None, plugins=None, skiplist=None, **config)

app

The application this route is installed to.

rule

The path-rule string (e.g. /wiki/<page>).

method

The HTTP method as a string (e.g. GET).

callback

The original callback with no plugins applied. Useful for introspection.

name

The name of the route (if specified) or None.

plugins

A list of route-specific plugins (see Bottle.route()).

skiplist

A list of plugins to not apply to this route (see Bottle.route()).

config

Additional keyword arguments passed to the Bottle.route() decorator are stored in this dictionary. Used for route-specific plugin configuration and meta-data.

call()

The route callback with all plugins applied. This property is created on demand and then cached to speed up subsequent requests.

reset()

Forget any cached values. The next time call is accessed, all plugins are re-applied.

prepare()

Do all on-demand work immediately (useful for debugging).

all_plugins()

Yield all Plugins affecting this route.

get_undecorated_callback()

Return the callback. If the callback is a decorated function, try to recover the original function.

get_callback_args()

Return a list of argument names the callback (most likely) accepts as keyword arguments. If the callback is a decorated function, try to recover the original function before inspection.

get_config(key, default=None)

Lookup a config field and return its value, first checking the route.config, then route.app.config.

Templating

All template engines supported by bottle implement the BaseTemplate API. This way it is possible to switch and mix template engines without changing the application code at all.

class BaseTemplate

Base class and minimal API for template adapters

__init__(source=None, name=None, lookup=None, encoding='utf8', **settings)

Create a new template. If the source parameter (str or buffer) is missing, the name argument is used to guess a template filename. Subclasses can assume that self.source and/or self.filename are set. Both are strings. The lookup, encoding and settings parameters are stored as instance variables. The lookup parameter stores a list containing directory paths. The encoding parameter should be used to decode byte strings or files. The settings parameter contains a dict for engine-specific settings.

classmethod search(name, lookup=None)

Search name in all directories specified in lookup. First without, then with common extensions. Return first hit.

classmethod global_config(key, *args)

This reads or sets the global settings stored in class.settings.

prepare(**options)

Run preparations (parsing, caching, …). It should be possible to call this again to refresh a template or to update settings.

render(*args, **kwargs)

Render the template with the specified local variables and return a single byte or unicode string. If it is a byte string, the encoding must match self.encoding. This method must be thread-safe! Local variables may be provided in dictionaries (args) or directly, as keywords (kwargs).

view(tpl_name, **defaults)

Decorator: renders a template for a handler. The handler can control its behavior like that:

• return a dict of template vars to fill out the template

• return something other than a dict and the view decorator will not process the template, but return the handler result as is. This includes returning a HTTPResponse(dict) to get, for instance, JSON with autojson or other castfilters.

template(*args, **kwargs)

Get a rendered template as a string iterator. You can use a name, a filename or a template string as first parameter. Template rendering arguments can be passed as dictionaries or directly (as keyword arguments).

TEMPLATE_PATH = ['./', './views/']

Built-in mutable sequence.

If no argument is given, the constructor creates a new empty list. The argument must be an iterable if specified.

Global search path for templates.

You can write your own adapter for your favourite template engine or use one of the predefined adapters. Currently there are four fully supported template engines:

Class	URL	Decorator	Render function
SimpleTemplate	SimpleTemplate	view()	template()
MakoTemplate	http://www.makotemplates.org	mako_view()	mako_template()
CheetahTemplate	http://www.cheetahtemplate.org/	cheetah_view()	cheetah_template()
Jinja2Template	http://jinja.pocoo.org/	jinja2_view()	jinja2_template()

To use MakoTemplate as your default template engine, just import its specialised decorator and render function:

from bottle import mako_view as view, mako_template as template

HTTP utilities

parse_date(ims)

Parse rfc1123, rfc850 and asctime timestamps and return UTC epoch.

parse_auth(header)

Parse rfc2617 HTTP authentication header string (basic) and return (user,pass) tuple or None

cookie_encode(data, key, digestmod=None)

Encode and sign a pickle-able object. Return a (byte) string

cookie_decode(data, key, digestmod=None)

Verify and decode an encoded string. Return an object or None.

cookie_is_encoded(data)

Return True if the argument looks like a encoded cookie.

path_shift(script_name, path_info, shift=1)

Shift path fragments from PATH_INFO to SCRIPT_NAME and vice versa.

Returns:

The modified paths.

Parameters:

• script_name – The SCRIPT_NAME path.

• script_name – The PATH_INFO path.

• shift – The number of path fragments to shift. May be negative to change the shift direction. (default: 1)

HTTP_CODES

A dict to map HTTP status codes (e.g. 404) to phrases (e.g. ‘Not Found’)

Misc utilities

class DictProperty

Property that maps to a key in a local dict-like attribute.

__init__(attr, key=None, read_only=False)

__new__(**kwargs)

class cached_property

A property that is only computed once per instance and then replaces itself with an ordinary attribute. Deleting the attribute resets the property.

__init__(func)

__new__(**kwargs)

class lazy_attribute

A property that caches itself to the class object.

__init__(func)

__new__(**kwargs)

yieldroutes(func)

Return a generator for routes that match the signature (name, args) of the func parameter. This may yield more than one route if the function takes optional keyword arguments. The output is best described by example:

a()         -> '/a'
b(x, y)     -> '/b/<x>/<y>'
c(x, y=5)   -> '/c/<x>' and '/c/<x>/<y>'
d(x=5, y=6) -> '/d' and '/d/<x>' and '/d/<x>/<y>'

load(target, **namespace)

Import a module or fetch an object from a module.

• package.module returns module as a module object.

• pack.mod:name returns the module variable name from pack.mod.

• pack.mod:func() calls pack.mod.func() and returns the result.

The last form accepts not only function calls, but any type of expression. Keyword arguments passed to this function are available as local variables. Example: import_string('re:compile(x)', x='[a-z]')

load_app(target)

Load a bottle application from a module and make sure that the import does not affect the current default application, but returns a separate application object. See load() for the target parameter.