Developer(s) Armin Ronacher Operating system | Written in Python | |
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Initial release April 1, 2010; 6 years ago (2010-04-01) Stable release 0.12 / December 21, 2016; 2 months ago (2016-12-21) Repository github.com/pallets/flask | ||
Flask is a micro web framework written in Python and based on the Werkzeug toolkit and Jinja2 template engine. It is BSD licensed.
Contents
The latest stable version of Flask is 0.12 as of December 2016. Applications that use the Flask framework include Pinterest, LinkedIn, and the community web page for Flask itself.
Flask is called a micro framework because it does not require particular tools or libraries. It has no database abstraction layer, form validation, or any other components where pre-existing third-party libraries provide common functions. However, Flask supports extensions that can add application features as if they were implemented in Flask itself. Extensions exist for object-relational mappers, form validation, upload handling, various open authentication technologies and several common framework related tools. Extensions are updated far more regularly than the core Flask program.
History
In 2004, Pocoo was formed as an international group of Python enthusiasts.
Flask was created by Armin Ronacher of Pocoo:
"It came out of an April Fool's joke but proved popular enough to make into a serious application in its own right."
Flask is based on the Werkzeug WSGI toolkit and Jinja2 template engine, both of them Pocoo projects that were created when Ronacher and Georg Brandl were building a bulletin board system written in Python.
Despite the lack of a major release, Flask has become extremely popular among Python enthusiasts. As of mid 2016, it was the most popular Python web development framework on GitHub.
Features
Example
The following code shows a simple web application that prints "Hello World!":