WSGI Helpers

The following classes and functions are designed to make working with the WSGI specification easier or operate on the WSGI layer. All the functionality from this module is available on the high-level Request / Response Objects.

Iterator / Stream Helpers

These classes and functions simplify working with the WSGI application iterator and the input stream.

class werkzeug.wsgi.ClosingIterator(iterable, callbacks=None)

The WSGI specification requires that all middlewares and gateways respect the close callback of the iterable returned by the application. Because it is useful to add another close action to a returned iterable and adding a custom iterable is a boring task this class can be used for that:

return ClosingIterator(app(environ, start_response), [cleanup_session,
                                                      cleanup_locals])

If there is just one close function it can be passed instead of the list.

A closing iterator is not needed if the application uses response objects and finishes the processing if the response is started:

try:
    return response(environ, start_response)
finally:
    cleanup_session()
    cleanup_locals()

Parameters

iterable (Iterable[bytes]) –
callbacks (Optional[Union[Callable[[], None], Iterable[Callable[[], None]]]]) –

Return type

None

class werkzeug.wsgi.FileWrapper(file, buffer_size=8192)

This class can be used to convert a file-like object into an iterable. It yields buffer_size blocks until the file is fully read.

You should not use this class directly but rather use the wrap_file() function that uses the WSGI server’s file wrapper support if it’s available.

Changelog

New in version 0.5.

If you’re using this object together with a Response you have to use the direct_passthrough mode.

Parameters

file (BinaryIO) – a file-like object with a read() method.
buffer_size (int) – number of bytes for one iteration.

Return type

None

class werkzeug.wsgi.LimitedStream(stream, limit)

Wraps a stream so that it doesn’t read more than n bytes. If the stream is exhausted and the caller tries to get more bytes from it on_exhausted() is called which by default returns an empty string. The return value of that function is forwarded to the reader function. So if it returns an empty string read() will return an empty string as well.

The limit however must never be higher than what the stream can output. Otherwise readlines() will try to read past the limit.

Note on WSGI compliance

calls to readline() and readlines() are not WSGI compliant because it passes a size argument to the readline methods. Unfortunately the WSGI PEP is not safely implementable without a size argument to readline() because there is no EOF marker in the stream. As a result of that the use of readline() is discouraged.

For the same reason iterating over the LimitedStream is not portable. It internally calls readline().

We strongly suggest using read() only or using the make_line_iter() which safely iterates line-based over a WSGI input stream.

Parameters

stream (BinaryIO) – the stream to wrap.
limit (int) – the limit for the stream, must not be longer than what the string can provide if the stream does not end with EOF (like wsgi.input)

Return type

None

exhaust(chunk_size=65536)

Exhaust the stream. This consumes all the data left until the limit is reached.

Parameters: chunk_size (int) – the size for a chunk. It will read the chunk until the stream is exhausted and throw away the results.
Return type: None

property is_exhausted: bool: If the stream is exhausted this attribute is True.

on_disconnect()

What should happen if a disconnect is detected? The return value of this function is returned from read functions in case the client went away. By default a ClientDisconnected exception is raised.

Return type: bytes

on_exhausted()

This is called when the stream tries to read past the limit. The return value of this function is returned from the reading function.

Return type: bytes

read(size=None)

Read size bytes or if size is not provided everything is read.

Parameters: size (Optional[int]) – the number of bytes read.
Return type: bytes

readable()

Return whether object was opened for reading.

If False, read() will raise OSError.

Return type: bool

readline(size=None)

Reads one line from the stream.

Parameters: size (Optional[int]) –
Return type: bytes

readlines(size=None)

Reads a file into a list of strings. It calls readline() until the file is read to the end. It does support the optional size argument if the underlying stream supports it for readline.

Parameters: size (Optional[int]) –
Return type: List[bytes]

tell()

Returns the position of the stream.

Changelog

New in version 0.9.

Return type: int

werkzeug.wsgi.make_line_iter(stream, limit=None, buffer_size=10240, cap_at_buffer=False)

Safely iterates line-based over an input stream. If the input stream is not a LimitedStream the limit parameter is mandatory.

This uses the stream’s read() method internally as opposite to the readline() method that is unsafe and can only be used in violation of the WSGI specification. The same problem applies to the __iter__ function of the input stream which calls readline() without arguments.

If you need line-by-line processing it’s strongly recommended to iterate over the input stream using this helper function.

Changelog

New in version 0.11.10: added support for the cap_at_buffer parameter.

New in version 0.9: added support for iterators as input stream.

Changed in version 0.8: This function now ensures that the limit was reached.

Parameters

stream (Union[Iterable[bytes], BinaryIO]) – the stream or iterate to iterate over.
limit (Optional[int]) – the limit in bytes for the stream. (Usually content length. Not necessary if the stream is a LimitedStream.
buffer_size (int) – The optional buffer size.
cap_at_buffer (bool) – if this is set chunks are split if they are longer than the buffer size. Internally this is implemented that the buffer size might be exhausted by a factor of two however.

Return type

Iterator[bytes]

werkzeug.wsgi.make_chunk_iter(stream, separator, limit=None, buffer_size=10240, cap_at_buffer=False)

Works like make_line_iter() but accepts a separator which divides chunks. If you want newline based processing you should use make_line_iter() instead as it supports arbitrary newline markers.

Changelog

New in version 0.11.10: added support for the cap_at_buffer parameter.

New in version 0.9: added support for iterators as input stream.

New in version 0.8.

Parameters

stream (Union[Iterable[bytes], BinaryIO]) – the stream or iterate to iterate over.
separator (bytes) – the separator that divides chunks.
limit (Optional[int]) – the limit in bytes for the stream. (Usually content length. Not necessary if the stream is otherwise already limited).
buffer_size (int) – The optional buffer size.
cap_at_buffer (bool) – if this is set chunks are split if they are longer than the buffer size. Internally this is implemented that the buffer size might be exhausted by a factor of two however.

Return type

Iterator[bytes]

werkzeug.wsgi.wrap_file(environ, file, buffer_size=8192)

Wraps a file. This uses the WSGI server’s file wrapper if available or otherwise the generic FileWrapper.

Changelog

New in version 0.5.

If the file wrapper from the WSGI server is used it’s important to not iterate over it from inside the application but to pass it through unchanged. If you want to pass out a file wrapper inside a response object you have to set Response.direct_passthrough to True.

More information about file wrappers are available in PEP 333.

Parameters

file (BinaryIO) – a file-like object with a read() method.
buffer_size (int) – number of bytes for one iteration.
environ (WSGIEnvironment) –

Return type

Iterable[bytes]

Environ Helpers

These functions operate on the WSGI environment. They extract useful information or perform common manipulations:

werkzeug.wsgi.get_host(environ, trusted_hosts=None)

Return the host for the given WSGI environment.

The Host header is preferred, then SERVER_NAME if it’s not set. The returned host will only contain the port if it is different than the standard port for the protocol.

Optionally, verify that the host is trusted using host_is_trusted() and raise a SecurityError if it is not.

Parameters

environ (WSGIEnvironment) – A WSGI environment dict.
trusted_hosts (Optional[Iterable[str]]) – A list of trusted host names.

Returns

Host, with port if necessary.

Raises

SecurityError – If the host is not trusted.

Return type

str

werkzeug.wsgi.get_content_length(environ)

Returns the content length from the WSGI environment as integer. If it’s not available or chunked transfer encoding is used, None is returned.

Changelog

New in version 0.9.

Parameters: environ (WSGIEnvironment) – the WSGI environ to fetch the content length from.
Return type: Optional[int]

werkzeug.wsgi.get_input_stream(environ, safe_fallback=True)

Returns the input stream from the WSGI environment and wraps it in the most sensible way possible. The stream returned is not the raw WSGI stream in most cases but one that is safe to read from without taking into account the content length.

If content length is not set, the stream will be empty for safety reasons. If the WSGI server supports chunked or infinite streams, it should set the wsgi.input_terminated value in the WSGI environ to indicate that.

Changelog

New in version 0.9.

Parameters

environ (WSGIEnvironment) – the WSGI environ to fetch the stream from.
safe_fallback (bool) – use an empty stream as a safe fallback when the content length is not set. Disabling this allows infinite streams, which can be a denial-of-service risk.

Return type

BinaryIO

werkzeug.wsgi.get_current_url(environ, root_only=False, strip_querystring=False, host_only=False, trusted_hosts=None)

Recreate the URL for a request from the parts in a WSGI environment.

The URL is an IRI, not a URI, so it may contain Unicode characters. Use iri_to_uri() to convert it to ASCII.

Parameters

environ (WSGIEnvironment) – The WSGI environment to get the URL parts from.
root_only (bool) – Only build the root path, don’t include the remaining path or query string.
strip_querystring (bool) – Don’t include the query string.
host_only (bool) – Only build the scheme and host.
trusted_hosts (Optional[Iterable[str]]) – A list of trusted host names to validate the host against.

Return type

str

werkzeug.wsgi.get_query_string(environ)

Returns the QUERY_STRING from the WSGI environment. This also takes care of the WSGI decoding dance. The string returned will be restricted to ASCII characters.

Parameters: environ (WSGIEnvironment) – WSGI environment to get the query string from.
Return type: str

Changelog

New in version 0.9.

werkzeug.wsgi.get_script_name(environ, charset='utf-8', errors='replace')

Return the SCRIPT_NAME from the WSGI environment and decode it unless charset is set to None.

Parameters

environ (WSGIEnvironment) – WSGI environment to get the path from.
charset (str) – The charset for the path, or None if no decoding should be performed.
errors (str) – The decoding error handling.

Return type

str

Changelog

New in version 0.9.

werkzeug.wsgi.get_path_info(environ, charset='utf-8', errors='replace')

Return the PATH_INFO from the WSGI environment and decode it unless charset is None.

Parameters

environ (WSGIEnvironment) – WSGI environment to get the path from.
charset (str) – The charset for the path info, or None if no decoding should be performed.
errors (str) – The decoding error handling.

Return type

str

Changelog

New in version 0.9.

werkzeug.wsgi.pop_path_info(environ, charset='utf-8', errors='replace')

Removes and returns the next segment of PATH_INFO, pushing it onto SCRIPT_NAME. Returns None if there is nothing left on PATH_INFO.

If the charset is set to None bytes are returned.

If there are empty segments ('/foo//bar) these are ignored but properly pushed to the SCRIPT_NAME:

>>> env = {'SCRIPT_NAME': '/foo', 'PATH_INFO': '/a/b'}
>>> pop_path_info(env)
'a'
>>> env['SCRIPT_NAME']
'/foo/a'
>>> pop_path_info(env)
'b'
>>> env['SCRIPT_NAME']
'/foo/a/b'

Changelog

Changed in version 0.9: The path is now decoded and a charset and encoding parameter can be provided.

New in version 0.5.

Parameters

environ (WSGIEnvironment) – the WSGI environment that is modified.
charset (str) – The encoding parameter passed to bytes.decode().
errors (str) – The errors paramater passed to bytes.decode().

Return type

Optional[str]

werkzeug.wsgi.peek_path_info(environ, charset='utf-8', errors='replace')

Returns the next segment on the PATH_INFO or None if there is none. Works like pop_path_info() without modifying the environment:

>>> env = {'SCRIPT_NAME': '/foo', 'PATH_INFO': '/a/b'}
>>> peek_path_info(env)
'a'
>>> peek_path_info(env)
'a'

If the charset is set to None bytes are returned.

Changelog

Changed in version 0.9: The path is now decoded and a charset and encoding parameter can be provided.

New in version 0.5.

Parameters

environ (WSGIEnvironment) – the WSGI environment that is checked.
charset (str) –
errors (str) –

Return type

Optional[str]

werkzeug.wsgi.extract_path_info(environ_or_baseurl, path_or_url, charset='utf-8', errors='werkzeug.url_quote', collapse_http_schemes=True)

Extracts the path info from the given URL (or WSGI environment) and path. The path info returned is a string. The URLs might also be IRIs.

If the path info could not be determined, None is returned.

Some examples:

>>> extract_path_info('http://example.com/app', '/app/hello')
'/hello'
>>> extract_path_info('http://example.com/app',
...                   'https://example.com/app/hello')
'/hello'
>>> extract_path_info('http://example.com/app',
...                   'https://example.com/app/hello',
...                   collapse_http_schemes=False) is None
True

Instead of providing a base URL you can also pass a WSGI environment.

Parameters

environ_or_baseurl (Union[str, WSGIEnvironment]) – a WSGI environment dict, a base URL or base IRI. This is the root of the application.
path_or_url (Union[str, werkzeug.urls._URLTuple]) – an absolute path from the server root, a relative path (in which case it’s the path info) or a full URL.
charset (str) – the charset for byte data in URLs
errors (str) – the error handling on decode
collapse_http_schemes (bool) – if set to False the algorithm does not assume that http and https on the same server point to the same resource.

Return type

Optional[str]

Changelog

Changed in version 0.15: The errors parameter defaults to leaving invalid bytes quoted instead of replacing them.

New in version 0.6.

werkzeug.wsgi.host_is_trusted(hostname, trusted_list)

Check if a host matches a list of trusted names.

Parameters

hostname (str) – The name to check.
trusted_list (Iterable[str]) – A list of valid names to match. If a name starts with a dot it will match all subdomains.

Return type

bool

Changelog

New in version 0.9.

Convenience Helpers

werkzeug.wsgi.responder(f)

Marks a function as responder. Decorate a function with it and it will automatically call the return value as WSGI application.

Example:

@responder
def application(environ, start_response):
    return Response('Hello World!')

Parameters: f (Callable[[...], WSGIApplication]) –
Return type: WSGIApplication

werkzeug.testapp.test_app(environ, start_response)

Simple test application that dumps the environment. You can use it to check if Werkzeug is working properly:

>>> from werkzeug.serving import run_simple
>>> from werkzeug.testapp import test_app
>>> run_simple('localhost', 3000, test_app)
 * Running on http://localhost:3000/

The application displays important information from the WSGI environment, the Python interpreter and the installed libraries.

Parameters

environ (WSGIEnvironment) –
start_response (StartResponse) –

Return type

Iterable[bytes]

Bytes, Strings, and Encodings

The values in HTTP requests come in as bytes representing (or encoded to) ASCII. The WSGI specification (PEP 3333) decided to always use the str type to represent values. To accomplish this, the raw bytes are decoded using the ISO-8859-1 charset to produce a string.

Strings in the WSGI environment are restricted to ISO-8859-1 code points. If a string read from the environment might contain characters outside that charset, it must first be decoded to bytes as ISO-8859-1, then encoded to a string using the proper charset (typically UTF-8). The reverse is done when writing to the environ. This is known as the “WSGI encoding dance”.

Werkzeug provides functions to deal with this automatically so that you don’t need to be aware of the inner workings. Use the functions on this page as well as EnvironHeaders() to read data out of the WSGI environment.

Applications should avoid manually creating or modifying a WSGI environment unless they take care of the proper encoding or decoding step. All high level interfaces in Werkzeug will apply the encoding and decoding as necessary.

Raw Request URI and Path Encoding

The PATH_INFO in the environ is the path value after percent-decoding. For example, the raw path /hello%2fworld would show up from the WSGI server to Werkzeug as /hello/world. This loses the information that the slash was a raw character as opposed to a path separator.

The WSGI specification (PEP 3333) does not provide a way to get the original value, so it is impossible to route some types of data in the path. The most compatible way to work around this is to send problematic data in the query string instead of the path.

However, many WSGI servers add a non-standard environ key with the raw path. To match this behavior, Werkzeug’s test client and development server will add the raw value to both the REQUEST_URI and RAW_URI keys. If you want to route based on this value, you can use middleware to replace PATH_INFO in the environ before it reaches the application. However, keep in mind that these keys are non-standard and not guaranteed to be present.