Flask-RESTful - Return custom Response format

Question

I have defined a custom Response format as per the Flask-RESTful documentation as follow.

app = Flask(__name__)
api = restful.Api(app)

@api.representation('application/octet-stream')
def binary(data, code, headers=None):
    resp = api.make_response(data, code)
    resp.headers.extend(headers or {})
    return resp

api.add_resource(Foo, '/foo')

I have the following Resource class.

class Foo(restful.Resource):

    def get(self):
        return something

    def put(self, fname):
        return something

I want the get() function to return the application/octet-stream type and the put() function to return the default application/json.

How do I go about doing this? The documentation isn't very clear on this point.

Martijn Pieters · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-24 20:48:43Z

26

What representation is used is determined by the request, the Accept header mime type.

A request of application/octet-stream will be responded to by using your binary function.

If you need a specific response type from an API method, then you'll have to use flask.make_response() to return a 'pre-baked' response object:

def get(self):
    response = flask.make_response(something)
    response.headers['content-type'] = 'application/octet-stream'
    return response

edited Sep 24, 2014 at 20:48

answered Nov 27, 2013 at 15:09

Martijn Pieters

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Comments

Martijn Pieters · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-27 14:59:49Z

4

Just return Flask response objects in your methods.

A response class allows you to provide custom headers (including the content-type): http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/api/#response-objects

edited Nov 27, 2013 at 14:59

Martijn Pieters

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answered Nov 27, 2013 at 13:45

Alex

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3 Comments

Ayrx Over a year ago

How would this work within the Resource class? Some code snippets will be helpful.

Alex Over a year ago

I'm looking at github.com/twilio/flask-restful/blob/master/flask_restful/… line 475 dispatch_request and it's possible to return flask Response object

Martijn Pieters Over a year ago

I stand corrected. This does not explain how to use the custom representations, however.

Kudehinbu Oluwaponle · Accepted Answer · 2019-12-24 02:01:52Z

1

In addition to @Martijin Pieters' answer here - https://stackoverflow.com/a/20246014/1869562. Where you return a raw response object, Flask-Restful also allows you to set status code and headers in your return values directly.

So in your case, this should also work

class Foo(restful.Resource):

    def get(self):
        return something, 201, {'content-type': 'application/octet-stream'}

The default mediatype for Flask-REstful is 'application/json', so put should work as is.

answered Dec 24, 2019 at 2:01

Kudehinbu Oluwaponle

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1 Comment

JackTheKnife Over a year ago

I have tried to use it but still getting TypeError: Object of type bytes is not JSON serializable

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