In Flask convert form POST object into a representation suitable for mongodb

Question

I am using Flask and MongoDB. I am trying to convert the content of request.form into something suitable for saving via PyMongo. It seems like something that should come up

Answer 1

Comparison of dict() and .to_dict() method before and after python version 3.6.

from werkzeug.datastructures import ImmutableMultiDict
imd = ImmutableMultiDict([('default', u''), ('required', u'on'), ('name', u'short_text'), ('name', u'another'), ('submit', u'Submit')])

Till python3.5

dict(imd)
#output: {'default': [''], 'required': ['on'], 'name': ['short_text', 'another'], 'submit': ['Submit']}

imd.to_dict(flat=false)
#output: {'default': [''], 'required': ['on'], 'name': ['short_text', 'another'], 'submit': ['Submit']}

imd.to_dict(flat=True) # or imd.to_dict() 
#output: {'default': '', 'required': 'on', 'name': 'short_text', 'submit': 'Submit'}

Thus,

dict(imd) == imd.to_dict(flat=False)
#output: True

From python3.6 onwards

dict(imd)
#output: {'default': '', 'required': 'on', 'name': 'short_text', 'submit': 'Submit'}

imd.to_dict(flat=false)
#output: {'default': [''], 'required': ['on'], 'name': ['short_text', 'another'], 'submit': ['Submit']}

imd.to_dict(flat=True) # or imd.to_dict() 
#output: {'default': '', 'required': 'on', 'name': 'short_text', 'submit': 'Submit'}

Thus,

dict(imd) == imd.to_dict(flat=False)
#output: False

Using .to_dict() with flat=True/False is a safer option.