is there a better way to handle index.html with Tornado?

Question

I want to know if there is a better way to handle my index.html file with Tornado.

I use StaticFileHandler for all the request,and use a specific MainHandler to handle my main request. If I only use StaticFileHandler I got a 403: Forbidden error

GET http://localhost:9000/
WARNING:root:403 GET / (127.0.0.1):  is not a file

here how I doing now:

import os
import tornado.ioloop
import tornado.web
from  tornado import web

__author__ = 'gvincent'

root = os.path.dirname(__file__)
port = 9999

class MainHandler(tornado.web.RequestHandler):
    def get(self):
        try:
            with open(os.path.join(root, 'index.html')) as f:
                self.write(f.read())
        except IOError as e:
            self.write("404: Not Found")

application = tornado.web.Application([
    (r"/", MainHandler),
    (r"/(.*)", web.StaticFileHandler, dict(path=root)),
    ])

if __name__ == '__main__':
    application.listen(port)
    tornado.ioloop.IOLoop.instance().start()

It would be better to replace `r"/"` and `r"/(.*)"` with `r"/$"` and `r"/(.*)$"`. — akaRem, Jul 17 '13 at 19:40

score 29 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 11 '15 at 19:47

Turns out that Tornado's StaticFileHandler already includes default filename functionality.

Feature was added in Tornado release 1.2.0: https://github.com/tornadoweb/tornado/commit/638a151d96d681d3bdd6ba5ce5dcf2bd1447959c

To specify a default file name you need to set the "default_filename" parameter as part of the WebStaticFileHandler initialization.

Updating your example:

import os
import tornado.ioloop
import tornado.web

root = os.path.dirname(__file__)
port = 9999

application = tornado.web.Application([
    (r"/(.*)", tornado.web.StaticFileHandler, {"path": root, "default_filename": "index.html"})
])

if __name__ == '__main__':
    application.listen(port)
    tornado.ioloop.IOLoop.instance().start()

This handles root requests:

/ -> /index.html

sub-directory requests:

/tests/ -> /tests/index.html

and appears to correctly handle redirects for directories, which is nice:

/tests -> /tests/index.html

This took me about 5 hours to actually found this amazing answer, a thousand thanks! — windsound, Sep 11 '17 at 06:57

score 12 · Answer 2 · edited May 01 '13 at 23:05

12

Thanks to the previous answer, here is the solution I prefer:

import Settings
import tornado.web
import tornado.httpserver


class Application(tornado.web.Application):
    def __init__(self):
        handlers = [
            (r"/", MainHandler)
        ]
        settings = {
            "template_path": Settings.TEMPLATE_PATH,
            "static_path": Settings.STATIC_PATH,
        }
        tornado.web.Application.__init__(self, handlers, **settings)


class MainHandler(tornado.web.RequestHandler):
    def get(self):
        self.render("index.html")


def main():
    applicaton = Application()
    http_server = tornado.httpserver.HTTPServer(applicaton)
    http_server.listen(9999)

    tornado.ioloop.IOLoop.instance().start()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

And Settings.py

import os
dirname = os.path.dirname(__file__)

STATIC_PATH = os.path.join(dirname, 'static')
TEMPLATE_PATH = os.path.join(dirname, 'templates')

edited May 01 '13 at 23:05

Randall Bohn

2,597
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answered Apr 16 '13 at 08:51

Guillaume Vincent

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can your changes to `index.html` be seen with just refreshing the browser and without restarting the app? – Xuan Dec 24 '13 at 12:20
@xuan i don't understand what you want me to do ? – Guillaume Vincent Dec 24 '13 at 13:48
sorry, should be more clear. say during developing your app, you make changes to `index.html`, and you want to see the changes from your browser. if `index.html` is a rendered template rather than a static file, can you see the changes with just refreshing the page? – Xuan Dec 24 '13 at 13:53
with tornado.autoreload certainly : http://www.tornadoweb.org/en/stable/autoreload.html – Guillaume Vincent Dec 24 '13 at 14:04
pay attention to the ABSOLUTE path,not a relative static path! – Codefor Dec 24 '13 at 15:15

score 5 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '14 at 00:12

Use this code instead

class IndexDotHTMLAwareStaticFileHandler(tornado.web.StaticFileHandler):
    def parse_url_path(self, url_path):
        if not url_path or url_path.endswith('/'):
            url_path += 'index.html'

        return super(IndexDotHTMLAwareStaticFileHandler, self).parse_url_path(url_path)

now use that class instead of vanilla StaticFileHandler in your Application... job's done!

Wesley Baugh · Answer 4 · 2013-01-18T03:11:22.750

4

There is no need to explicitly add a StaticFileHandler; just specify the static_path and it will serve those pages.

You are correct that you need a MainHandler, as for some reason Tornado will not serve the index.html file, even if you append the filename to the URL.

In that case, this slight modification to your code should work for you:

import os
import tornado.ioloop
import tornado.web
from tornado import web

__author__ = 'gvincent'

root = os.path.dirname(__file__)
port = 9999

class MainHandler(tornado.web.RequestHandler):
    def get(self):
        self.render("index.html")

application = tornado.web.Application([
    (r"/", MainHandler),
    ], template_path=root,
    static_path=root)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    application.listen(port)
    tornado.ioloop.IOLoop.instance().start()

edited Jan 18 '13 at 03:11

answered Jan 18 '13 at 02:56

Wesley Baugh

3,720
4
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1

I can't serve *.html file in my root folder with this solution. I need a handler for those files too. – Guillaume Vincent Jan 18 '13 at 13:30
What version of Tornado are you using? I tested both your original and my answer, and each can serve arbitrary *.html files. I am using Tornado `version = "2.4.post1"`, `version_info = (2, 4, 0, 1)` (found in `__init__.py`). – Wesley Baugh Jan 18 '13 at 20:55
version = "2.4.1" version_info = (2, 4, 1, 0) I use the same version – Guillaume Vincent Jan 21 '13 at 09:00
These are mapped to /static/ – vrdhn Apr 09 '13 at 11:07

score 4 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 24 '15 at 04:52

I have been trying this. Don't use render it has additional overhead of parsing templates and gives error on template type strings in static html. I found this is the simplest way. Tornado is looking for a capturing parenthesis in regex , just give it an empty capturing group.

import os
import tornado.ioloop
import tornado.web

root = os.path.dirname(__file__)
port = 9999

application = tornado.web.Application([
    (r"/()", tornado.web.StaticFileHandler, {"path": root, "default_filename": "index.html"})
])

This has effect of resolving / to index.html and also avoid unwanted resolves like /views.html to static_dir/views.html

score 0 · Answer 6 · edited Mar 09 '16 at 17:19

0

This worked for me From the tornado docs:

To serve a file like index.html automatically when a directory is requested, set static_handler_args=dict(default_filename="index.html") in your application settings, or add default_filename as an initializer argument for your StaticFileHandler.

edited Mar 09 '16 at 17:19

Martin Tournoij

26,737
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answered Mar 09 '16 at 17:02

user3594056

11
1

is there a better way to handle index.html with Tornado?

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