Flask-arrest

Flask-arrest is a Flask-extension that works hard to make it easy to implement REST-APIs using Flask.

Flask-arrest is very modular and has three key concerns, content-negotiation, content-serialization/-deserialization and supporting resource abstraction. Each of these aspects can be replaced with an external library.

There are other REST-extensions available for Flask, check other-libraries for details.

Conceptual overview

Below you find an overview of the complete conceptual path a request takes on its way of generating a response:

digraph foo { req [shape=box, style=filled, label="Incoming Request"]; resp [shape=box, style=filled, label="Outgoing Response"]; bp [label="ContentNeg Blueprint"] exc_ren [label="Exception Renderer", color=blue] con_ren [label="Content Renderer", color=blue] exc [label="Unhandled Exceptions", shape=box] view [label="View function"] req -> bp; bp -> exc_ren [label="UnsupportMediaType?"] bp -> view view -> con_ren [label="serialize_response()", fontname="Monospace"] view -> exc_ren [label="raise HTTPError", fontname="Monospace"] exc -> exc_ren [label="HTTP500"] exc_ren -> resp [label="Renders acceptable response"] exc_ren -> resp [label="Falls back to HTML/HTTP415", color=red, fontcolor=red] con_ren -> resp [label="Renders acceptable response"] }

State of the library

Flask-arrest is still under heavy development at this point. The API underwent major changes in version 0.4, but do not count on anything being nailed down 100%. Any feedback is very welcome.