Async Techniques and Examples in Python Transcripts
Chapter: asyncio-based web frameworks
Lecture: There is no async support for Flask
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I made a statement that Flask does not operate in the async world. It does not support asyncio and there's no capabilities or way to turn that on.
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We cannot have async def view method. It just doesn't work. So I want to highlight a piece of the documentation
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in Flask 1.0 and then actually give you some news. If you go to docs1.0/design you'll see this block in there somewhere.
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Design decisions in Flask it says ... However Flask is just not designed for large applications or Asychronous servers.
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Flask wants to make it quick and easy to write a traditional web application, period. Flask will not support async, that's what it says right
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in the design decisions. It's not intended for asynchronous servers. So what the heck is Flask doing in this course?
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Well, two things, first of all, we're going to have something that's very, very much like Flask.
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It's compatible with Flask but does support asychronous servers perfectly. Second I actually recently spoke with David Lord
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who is in charge of Flask these days. I interviewed him on Talk Python, the podcast and I asked him about this. I said, it says this right in the docs.
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He said, yes, but. He says that but we're intending to support asynchronous at some point. Maybe it's going to take a year, maybe even two years
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but they're going to support it. So there may be a point where you're watching this video and you can just put async def on those Flask methods
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and magic is going to happen but at the time of the recording, like I said, 2018 fall, this is not an option.
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It does not support it and it's still a couple years out. Actually the guy that's working on the framework
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that does may be collaborating with the Flask folks to make this happen natively in Flask. Okay so no async for Flask, maybe just not yet.
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Anyway that's the news.