The Application class¶
The Application class in BlackSheep is responsible of handling the
application life cicle (start, working state, stop), routing, web requests,
exceptions. This page describes details of the Application class:
- How to handle errors.
- Application events and life cycle.
Handling errors¶
BlackSheep catches any unhandled exception that happens during the execution of
request handlers, producing a HTTP 500 Internal Server Error response. To see
this in practice, start an application like the following:
from blacksheep import Application
app = Application()
get = app.router.get
@get("/")
def crash_test():
raise Exception("Crash test")
And observe how a request to its root produces a response with HTTP status 500, and the text "Internal server error".
Exception details are hidden to the client by default: it would be a security issue if the web application returned error details to the client. However, while developing and occasionally while investigating issues, it is useful to be able to obtain error details directly from the web requests that are failing. To enable error details, update the app declaration as follows:
app = Application(show_error_details=True)
Now the application returns the details of the exception with the full stack trace, serving a page like the following:
Consider using environmental variables to handle this kind of settings that can vary across environments. For example:
import os
from blacksheep import Application
app = Application(show_error_details=bool(os.environ.get("SHOW_ERROR_DETAILS", None)))
get = app.router.get
@get("/")
def crash_test():
raise Exception("Crash test")
Info
BlackSheep project templates use a library to handle application
settings and configuration roots. Consider using
essentials-configuration
for this.
Configuring exceptions handlers¶
The BlackSheep Application object has a exception_handlers dictionary that
defines how errors should be handled. When an exception happens while handling
a web request and reaches the application, the application checks if there is a
matching handler for that kind of exception. An exception handler is defined as
a function with the following signature:
from blacksheep import Request, Response
async def exception_handler(self, request: Request, exc: Exception) -> Response:
pass
In the exception below
class CustomException(Exception):
pass
async def exception_handler(self, request, exc: CustomException):
nonlocal app
assert self is app
assert isinstance(exc, CustomException)
return Response(200, content=TextContent('Called'))
# Register the exception handler for the CustomException type:
app.exceptions_handlers[CustomException] = exception_handler
@app.router.get(b'/')
async def home(request):
# of course, the exception can be risen at any point
# for example in the business logic layer
raise CustomException()
Exceptions inheriting from HTTPException can be mapped to handlers by their type or by
their status code, using int keys; while user defined exceptions are mapped to handlers
by their type.
Configuring exception handlers using decorators¶
It is also possible to register exception handlers using decorators, instead
of interacting with app.exceptions_handlers dictionary:
class CustomException(Exception):
pass
@app.exception_handler(CustomException)
async def handler_example(self, request, exc: CustomException):
...
Application events¶
A BlackSheep application exposes three events: on_start, after_start, on_stop.
on_start¶
This event should be used to configure things such as new request handlers,
and service registered in app.services, such as database connection pools,
HTTP client sessions.
after_start¶
This event should be used to configure things that must happen after request handlers are normalized. At this point, the application router contains information about actual routes handled by the web application, and routes can be inspected. For example, the built-in generation of OpenAPI Documentation generates the API specification file at this point.
on_stop¶
This event should be used to fire callbacks that need to happen when the application is stopped. For example, disposing of services that require disposal, such as database connection pools, HTTP client sessions using connection pools.
Application life cycle¶
Refer to the following diagram to know more about when application events are fired, and the state of the application when they are executed.
How to register event handlers¶
Event handlers can be registered using decorators.
from blacksheep import Application, Request, Response, text
app = Application()
get = app.router.get
@get("/")
async def home(request: Request) -> Response:
return text("Example Async")
@app.on_start
async def before_start(application: Application) -> None:
print("Before start")
@app.after_start
async def after_start(application: Application) -> None:
print("After start")
@app.on_stop
async def on_stop(application: Application) -> None:
print("On stop")
In alternative to decorators, event handlers can be registered using +=:
from blacksheep import Application, Request, Response, text
app = Application()
get = app.router.get
@get("/")
async def home(request: Request) -> Response:
return text("Example Async")
async def before_start(application: Application) -> None:
print("Before start")
async def after_start(application: Application) -> None:
print("After start")
async def on_stop(application: Application) -> None:
print("On stop")
app.on_start += before_start
app.after_start += after_start
app.on_stop += on_stop
Info
For example, to define an after_start callback that logs all routes registered
in the application router:
@app.after_start
async def after_start_print_routes(application: Application) -> None:
print(application.router.routes)
Next¶
Read about the details of routing in BlackSheep.
Last modified on: 2022-03-13 13:09:28