Making Websites with Flask/Templating
What is templating?
editWhen we are making Flask apps, we often want to return an HTML file, not just a string of HTML. Using templating, we can do this, along with many more advanced things like variables, loops, base templates, and more.
Making a Template File
edit
To make a template file, we make an HTML file in a folder called templates. For example, let's make called our HTML file index.html and put the following in it:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>My Website</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Welcome to my Website!</h1>
<p>Hello world!</p>
</body>
</html>
Displaying Templates
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To display a template, we use the render_template() function. To use it, we first of all need to import it from the Flask module:
from flask import render_template
Then, we use the render_template() function when we are returning our functions. We pass in the name of the template HTML file into the render_template() function. So, something like the following:
@app.route("/template")
def template_page():
return render_template("index.html")
Inline Code Storing
editAnother way you can serve HTML code is by serving it inline. Here is a example:
from flask import *
app = Flask(__name__)
@app.route('/')
def inline_example();
return """
<!DOCTYPE html><html>
<head>
<title>My Inline Code Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>You did it</h1>
Good Job!
</body>
</html>
"""
if __name__ == "__main__":
app.run(debug=true)
In this example, instead of the HTML being loaded from an external file, it is being directly given to the user.
Test it out
editOn your Python editor, run the program. Then open a browser. Navigate to http://127.0.0.1:5000/ and you should see a web page congratulating you. If you don't, check the console to debug.