Feature Tour

Class-Based Views

Class-based views (and setting some headers and stuff):

@api.route("/{greeting}")
class GreetingResource:
    def on_request(self, req, resp, *, greeting):   # or on_get...
        resp.text = f"{greeting}, world!"
        resp.headers.update({'X-Life': '42'})
        resp.status_code = api.status_codes.HTTP_416

Background Tasks

Here, you can spawn off a background thread to run any function, out-of-request:

@api.route("/")
def hello(req, resp):

    @api.background.task
    def sleep(s=10):
        time.sleep(s)
        print("slept!")

    sleep()
    resp.content = "processing"

GraphQL

Serve a GraphQL API:

import graphene

class Query(graphene.ObjectType):
    hello = graphene.String(name=graphene.String(default_value="stranger"))

    def resolve_hello(self, info, name):
        return f"Hello {name}"

schema = graphene.Schema(query=Query)
view = responder.ext.GraphQLView(api=api, schema=schema)

api.add_route("/graph", view)

Visiting the endpoint will render a GraphiQL instance, in the browser.

You can make use of Responder’s Request and Response objects in your GraphQL resolvers through info.context['request'] and info.context['response'].

OpenAPI Schema Support

Responder comes with built-in support for OpenAPI / marshmallow:

import responder
from marshmallow import Schema, fields

description = "This is a sample server for a pet store."
terms_of_service = "http://example.com/terms/"
contact = {
    "name": "API Support",
    "url": "http://www.example.com/support",
    "email": "support@example.com",
}
license = {
    "name": "Apache 2.0",
    "url": "https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html",
}

api = responder.API(
    title="Web Service",
    version="1.0",
    openapi="3.0.2",
    docs_route='/docs',
    description=description,
    terms_of_service=terms_of_service,
    contact=contact,
    license=license,
)


@api.schema("Pet")
class PetSchema(Schema):
    name = fields.Str()


@api.route("/")
def route(req, resp):
    """A cute furry animal endpoint.
    ---
    get:
        description: Get a random pet
        responses:
            200:
                description: A pet to be returned
                schema:
                    $ref = "#/components/schemas/Pet"
    """
    resp.media = PetSchema().dump({"name": "little orange"})

>>> r = api.session().get("http://;/schema.yml")

>>> print(r.text)
components:
parameters: {}
schemas:
    Pet:
    properties:
        name: {type: string}
    type: object
info: {title: Web Service, version: 1.0}
openapi: '3.0'
paths:
  /:
    get:
      description: Get a random pet
      responses:
        200: {description: A pet to be returned, schema: $ref = "#/components/schemas/Pet"}
tags: []

Interactive Documentation

Responder can automatically supply API Documentation for you. Using the example above:

api = responder.API(title="Web Service", version="1.0", openapi="3.0.0", docs_route="/docs")

This will make /docs render interactive documentation for your API.

Mount a WSGI App (e.g. Flask)

Responder gives you the ability to mount another ASGI / WSGI app at a subroute:

import responder
from flask import Flask

api = responder.API()
flask = Flask(__name__)

@flask.route('/')
def hello():
    return 'hello'

api.mount('/flask', flask)

That’s it!

Single-Page Web Apps

If you have a single-page webapp, you can tell Responder to serve up your static/index.html at a route, like so:

api.add_route("/", static=True)

This will make index.html the default response to all undefined routes.

Reading / Writing Cookies

Responder makes it very easy to interact with cookies from a Request, or add some to a Response:

>>> resp.cookies["hello"] = "world"

>>> req.cookies
{"hello": "world"}

To set cookies directives, you should use resp.set_cookie:

>>> resp.set_cookie("hello", value="world", max_age=60)

Supported directives:

  • key - Reduired
  • value - [OPTIONAL] - Defaults to "".
  • expires - Defaults to None.
  • max_age - Defaults to None.
  • domain - Defaults to None.
  • path - Defaults to "/".
  • secure - Defaults to False.
  • httponly - Defaults to True.

For more information see directives

Using before_request

If you’d like a view to be executed before every request, simply do the following:

@api.route(before_request=True)
def prepare_response(req, resp):
    resp.headers["X-Pizza"] = "42"

Now all requests to your HTTP Service will include an X-Pizza header.

WebSocket Support

Responder supports WebSockets:

@api.route('/ws', websocket=True)
async def websocket(ws):
    await ws.accept()
    while True:
        name = await ws.receive_text()
        await ws.send_text(f"Hello {name}!")
    await ws.close()

Accepting the connection:

await websocket.accept()

Sending and receiving data:

await websocket.send_{format}(data)
await websocket.receive_{format}(data)

Supported formats: text, json, bytes.

Closing the connection:

await websocket.close()

Using Requests Test Client

Responder comes with a first-class, well supported test client for your ASGI web services: Requests.

Here’s an example of a test (written with pytest):

import myapi

@pytest.fixture
def api():
    return myapi.api

def test_response(api):
    hello = "hello, world!"

    @api.route('/some-url')
    def some_view(req, resp):
        resp.text = hello

    r = api.requests.get(url=api.url_for(some_view))
    assert r.text == hello

HSTS (Redirect to HTTPS)

Want HSTS (to redirect all traffic to HTTPS)?

api = responder.API(enable_hsts=True)

Boom.

CORS

Want CORS ?

api = responder.API(cors=True)

The default parameters used by Responder are restrictive by default, so you’ll need to explicitly enable particular origins, methods, or headers, in order for browsers to be permitted to use them in a Cross-Domain context.

In order to set custom parameters, you need to set the cors_params argument of api, a dictionary containing the following entries:

  • allow_origins - A list of origins that should be permitted to make cross-origin requests. eg. ['https://example.org', 'https://www.example.org']. You can use ['*'] to allow any origin.
  • allow_origin_regex - A regex string to match against origins that should be permitted to make cross-origin requests. eg. 'https://.*\.example\.org'.
  • allow_methods - A list of HTTP methods that should be allowed for cross-origin requests. Defaults to [‘GET’]. You can use ['*'] to allow all standard methods.
  • allow_headers - A list of HTTP request headers that should be supported for cross-origin requests. Defaults to []. You can use ['*'] to allow all headers. The Accept, Accept-Language, Content-Language and Content-Type headers are always allowed for CORS requests.
  • allow_credentials - Indicate that cookies should be supported for cross-origin requests. Defaults to False.
  • expose_headers - Indicate any response headers that should be made accessible to the browser. Defaults to [].
  • max_age - Sets a maximum time in seconds for browsers to cache CORS responses. Defaults to 60.

Trusted Hosts

Make sure that all the incoming requests headers have a valid host, that matches one of the provided patterns in the allowed_hosts attribute, in order to prevent HTTP Host Header attacks.

A 400 response will be raised, if a request does not match any of the provided patterns in the allowed_hosts attribute.

api = responder.API(allowed_hosts=[example.com, tenant.example.com])
  • allowed_hosts - A list of allowed hostnames.

Note:

  • By default, all hostnames are allowed.
  • Wildcard domains such as *.example.com are supported.
  • To allow any hostname use allowed_hosts=["*"].