Static files in Flask - robot.txt, sitemap.xml (mod_wsgi)

Question

Is there any clever solution to store static files in Flask\'s application root directory. robots.txt and sitemap.xml are expected to be found in /, so my idea was to create

Answer 1

Another way to send static files is to use a catch-all rule like this:

@app.route('/')
def catch_all(path):
    if not app.debug:
        flask.abort(404)
    try:
        f = open(path)
    except IOError, e:
        flask.abort(404)
        return
    return f.read()

I use this to try to minimise the set-up when developing. I got the idea from http://flask.pocoo.org/snippets/57/

Further, I'm developing using flask on my standalone machine but deploying with Apache in production server. I use:

file_suffix_to_mimetype = {
    '.css': 'text/css',
    '.jpg': 'image/jpeg',
    '.html': 'text/html',
    '.ico': 'image/x-icon',
    '.png': 'image/png',
    '.js': 'application/javascript'
}
def static_file(path):
    try:
        f = open(path)
    except IOError, e:
        flask.abort(404)
        return
    root, ext = os.path.splitext(path)
    if ext in file_suffix_to_mimetype:
        return flask.Response(f.read(), mimetype=file_suffix_to_mimetype[ext])
    return f.read()

[...]

if __name__ == '__main__':
    parser = optparse.OptionParser()
    parser.add_option('-d', '--debug', dest='debug', default=False,
                      help='turn on Flask debugging', action='store_true')

    options, args = parser.parse_args()

    if options.debug:
        app.debug = True
        # set up flask to serve static content
        app.add_url_rule('/', 'static_file', static_file)
    app.run()