URL building with Flask and non-unique handler names

flask, python, url, url-routing, wsgi

Solution

I don't know how you could do with all the views routed by the same module.

What I usually do is separate my views in different modules (like you did with module `A` and `B`), and register them as blueprints, after that, when using the `url_for()` function, you can prefix the view name with your blueprint name and then avoid conflicts and potential problems.

Here is an example:

main_views.py:

from flask import Blueprint
main = Blueprint('main', __name__)

@main.route('/')
def index():
    pass

admin_views.py:

from flask import Blueprint
admin = Blueprint('admin', __name__)

@admin.route('/admin')
def index():
    pass

application.py:

from flask import Flask
from main_views import main
from admin_views import admin

app = Flask('my_application')
app.register_blueprint(main)
app.register_blueprint(admin)

Now, to access the 2 index views and still distinguish one from the other, just use `url_for('main.index')` or `url_for('admin.index')`

EDIT:

Just one more useful details about routing using blueprints, when registering the blueprint, you can pass a `url_prefix` argument, that will apply to every view within this blueprint.

For example, given the following code:

admin_views.py

from flask import Blueprint
admin = Blueprint('admin', __name__)

@admin.route('/')
def index():
    pass

@admin.route('/logout')
def logout():
    pass

application.py:

from flask import Flask
from admin_views import admin

app = Flask('my_application')
app.register_blueprint(admin, url_prefix='/admin')

The 2 views would be available at the URL `/admin/` and `/admin/logout`

Problem

Flask provides a `url_for` function to generate URLs to handlers based on the URL pattern. But this would imply that the handler functions must have unique names across the entire application. Is that correct? Example Module A has a handler `index`: ``` @app.route('/') def index(): pass ``` And Module B has another handler `index`: ``` @app.route('/anotherindex') def index(): pass ``` How to distinguish the handlers called `index` when building URLs? ``` url_for('index') ```

Original source