CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonflask
Rijul Jain
Rijul Jain

Reputation: 371

Unable to retrieve files from send_from_directory() in flask

I have a html file which references static object like this 

<img src="img/snacks.png">
<link href="css/bluestrap.css" rel="stylesheet">

Hence the browser tries to call this via and flask fails to do so 

http://127.0.0.1:5000/img/snacks.png

There are lots of such references across multiple files hence changing the references is not possible. How do i serve these static files from FLASK

I have copied all these static files to the 'static' folder and tried this 

@app.route('/<path:filename>')  
def send_file(filename):  
      return send_from_directory('/static', filename)

However this does not work, Is there any other way to do this ? or what am i doing wrong ?

Upvotes: 33

Views: 89025

Answers (7)

Ahmed Aziz Smaoui
Ahmed Aziz Smaoui

Reputation: 1

This answer is for Flask Version 2.3 this is reference for documentation https://flask.palletsprojects.com/en/latest/api/#flask.send_from_directory this an example

@app.route('/download:')
def download():
    return send_from_directory(directory='static/files', path="cheat_sheet.pdf", as_attachment=False)

app hierarchy

Upvotes: 0

Michael Panashe Mudimbu
Michael Panashe Mudimbu

Reputation: 11

Use:

@app.route('/<path:filename>')  
def send_file(filename):
      from pathlib import Path
      root = Path('.')
      folder_path = root / 'static'
      return send_from_directory(folder_path, filename, as_attachment=True)

Upvotes: 1

Farzad Amirjavid
Farzad Amirjavid

Reputation: 705

You should remove "/" before "/static" in your code:

send_from_directory('/static', filename)

change it to:

send_from_directory('static', filename)

However, in some environments, the server itself does not let running this command on the static folder/directory. Because it is set to be a static file server. For example, with the google cloud, you should build a directory called tmp beside the static folder and then do the send_from_directory command with the tmp folder:

return(send_from_directory('tmp', filename))

Upvotes: 2

codegeek
codegeek

Reputation: 33289

In production, you don't want to serve static files using the flask server. I suggest you use a proper web server to do that.

For dev, since you don't want to use url_for, you can try to initialize your flask app as below. This way, flask knows where your static files are. 

app = Flask(__name__, static_folder='static')  

@app.route('/<path:filename>')  
def send_file(filename):  
    return send_from_directory(app.static_folder, filename)

See this post with a lot of info Static files in Flask - robot.txt, sitemap.xml (mod_wsgi)

Upvotes: 34

Markus Unterwaditzer
Markus Unterwaditzer

Reputation: 8244

I think a better way to do this would be:

import flask

# ...

@app.route('/img/<fname>')
def legacy_images(fname):
    return flask.redirect(flask.url_for('static', filename='img/' + fname), code=301)

Instead of sending the files on two different locations, this would do a permanent redirect to the proper URL. As others have said, it's also a good idea to serve static files directly with nginx or Apache.

Upvotes: 3

dAnjou
dAnjou

Reputation: 3923

Don't use Flask's built-in server in production. It is for development only! And don't use Flask to serve static assets. It's slow! In production use a webserver in front of Flask like apache2, nginx or lighttpd. These servers are able to rewrite a URL and serve static assets.

How to deploy Flask: http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/deploying/

How to rewrite a URL: apache2, nginx, lighttpd.

Upvotes: 7

Sean Vieira
Sean Vieira

Reputation: 159865

If you look at the docs for send_from_directory you'll see that it takes the path to the directory in which the files are held on disk. Unless you have your image files saved in a root-level directory named static, you'll want to update your file path:

send_from_directory("/some/path/to/static", "my_image_file.jpg")

That being said, if you are using this for anything that will be under any load, it is better to ensure that your web server serves the files, rather than serving static files from your application.

Upvotes: 14

Related Questions