Flask-Session

Welcome to Flask-Session’s documentation. Flask-Session is an extension for Flask that adds support for Server-side Session to your application. Flask 0.8 or newer is required, if you are using an older version, check Support for Old and New Sessions out.

If you are not familiar with Flask, I highly recommend you to give it a try. Flask is a microframework for Python and it is really Fun to work with. If you want to dive into its documentation, check out the following links:

Installation

Install the extension with the following command:

$ easy_install Flask-Session

or alternatively if you have pip installed:

$ pip install Flask-Session

Quickstart

Flask-Session is really easy to use.

Basically for the common use of having one Flask application all you have to do is to create your Flask application, load the configuration of choice and then create the Session object by passing it the application.

The Session instance is not used for direct access, you should always use flask.session:

from flask import Flask, session
from flask_session import Session

app = Flask(__name__)
# Check Configuration section for more details
SESSION_TYPE = 'redis'
app.config.from_object(__name__)
Session(app)

@app.route('/set/')
def set():
    session['key'] = 'value'
    return 'ok'

@app.route('/get/')
def get():
    return session.get('key', 'not set')

You may also set up your application later using init_app() method:

sess = Session()
sess.init_app(app)

Configuration

The following configuration values exist for Flask-Session. Flask-Session loads these values from your Flask application config, so you should configure your app first before you pass it to Flask-Session. Note that these values cannot be modified after the init_app was applyed so make sure to not modify them at runtime.

We are not supplying something like SESSION_REDIS_HOST and SESSION_REDIS_PORT, if you want to use the RedisSessionInterface, you should configure SESSION_REDIS to your own redis.Redis instance. This gives you more flexibility, like maybe you want to use the same redis.Redis instance for cache purpose too, then you do not need to keep two redis.Redis instance in the same process.

The following configuration values are builtin configuration values within Flask itself that are related to session. They are all understood by Flask-Session, for example, you should use PERMANENT_SESSION_LIFETIME to control your session lifetime.

SESSION_COOKIE_NAME

the name of the session cookie

SESSION_COOKIE_DOMAIN

the domain for the session cookie. If this is not set, the cookie will be valid for all subdomains of SERVER_NAME.

SESSION_COOKIE_PATH

the path for the session cookie. If this is not set the cookie will be valid for all of APPLICATION_ROOT or if that is not set for '/'.

SESSION_COOKIE_HTTPONLY

controls if the cookie should be set with the httponly flag. Defaults to True.

SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE

controls if the cookie should be set with the secure flag. Defaults to False.

PERMANENT_SESSION_LIFETIME

the lifetime of a permanent session as datetime.timedelta object. Starting with Flask 0.8 this can also be an integer representing seconds.

A list of configuration keys also understood by the extension:

SESSION_TYPE

Specifies which type of session interface to use. Built-in session types:

  • null: NullSessionInterface (default)

  • redis: RedisSessionInterface

  • memcached: MemcachedSessionInterface

  • filesystem: FileSystemSessionInterface

  • mongodb: MongoDBSessionInterface

  • sqlalchemy: SqlAlchemySessionInterface

SESSION_PERMANENT

Whether use permanent session or not, default to be True

SESSION_USE_SIGNER

Whether sign the session cookie sid or not, if set to True, you have to set flask.Flask.secret_key, default to be False

SESSION_KEY_PREFIX

A prefix that is added before all session keys. This makes it possible to use the same backend storage server for different apps, default “session:”

SESSION_REDIS

A redis.Redis instance, default connect to 127.0.0.1:6379

SESSION_MEMCACHED

A memcache.Client instance, default connect to 127.0.0.1:11211

SESSION_FILE_DIR

The directory where session files are stored. Default to use flask_session directory under current working directory.

SESSION_FILE_THRESHOLD

The maximum number of items the session stores before it starts deleting some, default 500

SESSION_FILE_MODE

The file mode wanted for the session files, default 0600

SESSION_MONGODB

A pymongo.MongoClient instance, default connect to 127.0.0.1:27017

SESSION_MONGODB_DB

The MongoDB database you want to use, default “flask_session”

SESSION_MONGODB_COLLECT

The MongoDB collection you want to use, default “sessions”

SESSION_SQLALCHEMY

A flask_sqlalchemy.SQLAlchemy instance whose database connection URI is configured using the SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI parameter

SESSION_SQLALCHEMY_TABLE

The name of the SQL table you want to use, default “sessions”

Basically you only need to configure SESSION_TYPE.

Note

By default, all non-null sessions in Flask-Session are permanent.

New in version 0.2: SESSION_TYPE: sqlalchemy, SESSION_USE_SIGNER

Built-in Session Interfaces

NullSessionInterface

If you do not configure a different SESSION_TYPE, this will be used to generate nicer error messages. Will allow read-only access to the empty session but fail on setting.

RedisSessionInterface

Uses the Redis key-value store as a session backend. (redis-py required)

Relevant configuration values:

  • SESSION_REDIS

MemcachedSessionInterface

Uses the Memcached as a session backend. (pylibmc or memcache required)

  • SESSION_MEMCACHED

FileSystemSessionInterface

Uses the werkzeug.contrib.cache.FileSystemCache as a session backend.

  • SESSION_FILE_DIR

  • SESSION_FILE_THRESHOLD

  • SESSION_FILE_MODE

MongoDBSessionInterface

Uses the MongoDB as a session backend. (pymongo required)

  • SESSION_MONGODB

  • SESSION_MONGODB_DB

  • SESSION_MONGODB_COLLECT

SqlAlchemySessionInterface

New in version 0.2.

Uses SQLAlchemy as a session backend. (Flask-SQLAlchemy required)

  • SESSION_SQLALCHEMY

  • SESSION_SQLALCHEMY_TABLE

API

Changelog

Version 0.1

First public preview release.

Version 0.1.1

Fixed MongoDB backend InvalidDocument Error.

Version 0.2

  • Added SqlAlchemySessionInterface.

  • Added support for cookie session id signing.

  • Various bugfixes.

Version 0.2.1

Fixed signing failure.

Version 0.2.2

Added support for non-permanent session.

Version 0.2.3

  • Fixed signing failure in Python 3.x

  • Fixed MongoDBSessionInterface failure in Python 3.x

  • Fixed SqlAlchemySessionInterface failure in Python 3.x

  • Fixed StrictRedis support

Version 0.3

  • SqlAlchemySessionInterface is using LargeBinary type to store data now

  • Fixed MongoDBSessionInterface delete method not found

  • Fixed TypeError when getting store_id using a signer

Version 0.3.1

  • SqlAlchemySessionInterface is using VARCHAR(255) to store session id now

  • SqlAlchemySessionInterface won’t run db.create_all anymore

Version 0.3.2

  • Changed werkzeug.contrib.cache to cachelib