Falcon Documentation

Release 1.1.0

Kurt Griffiths et al.

Oct 27, 2016

 Contents

1 What People are Saying 3

2 Features 5

3 Who’s Using Falcon? 7

4 Useful Links 9

5 Resources 11

6 Documentation 13
6.1 Community Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6.2 User Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
6.3 Classes and Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
6.4 Changelogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

Python Module Index 105

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Release v1.1 (Installation)

Falcon is a minimalist WSGI library for building speedy web APIs and app backends. We like to think of Falcon as
the Dieter Rams of web frameworks.
When it comes to building HTTP APIs, other frameworks weigh you down with tons of dependencies and unnecessary
abstractions. Falcon cuts to the chase with a clean design that embraces HTTP and the REST architectural style.

class CatalogItem(object):

# ...

@falcon.before(hooks.to_oid)
def on_get(self, id):
return self._collection.find_one(id)

app = falcon.API(after=[hooks.serialize])
app.add_route('/items/{id}', CatalogItem())

Contents 1
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2 Contents
 CHAPTER 1

What People are Saying

“Falcon looks great so far. I hacked together a quick test for a tiny server of mine and was ~40% faster with only 20
minutes of work.”
“I’m loving #falconframework! Super clean and simple, I finally have the speed and flexibility I need!”
“I feel like I’m just talking HTTP at last, with nothing in the middle. Falcon seems like the requests of backend.”
“The source code for falcon is so good, I almost prefer it to documentation. It basically can’t be wrong.”
“What other framework has integrated support for ‘786 TRY IT NOW’ ?”

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4 Chapter 1. What People are Saying

 CHAPTER 2

Features

Falcon tries to do as little as possible while remaining highly effective.

• Routes based on URI templates RFC
• REST-inspired mapping of URIs to resources
• Global, resource, and method hooks
• Idiomatic HTTP error responses
• Full Unicode support
• Intuitive request and response objects
• Works great with async libraries like gevent
• Minimal attack surface for writing secure APIs
• 100% code coverage with a comprehensive test suite
• Only depends on six and mimeparse
• Supports Python 2.6, 2.7, 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5
• Compatible with PyPy and Jython

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 CHAPTER 3

Who’s Using Falcon?

Falcon is used around the world by a growing number of organizations, including:

• 7ideas
• Cronitor
• EMC
• Hurricane Electric
• Leadpages
• OpenStack
• Rackspace
• Shiftgig
• tempfil.es
• Opera Software
If you are using the Falcon framework for a community or commercial project, please consider adding your informa-
tion to our wiki under Who’s Using Falcon?
You might also like to view our Add-on Catalog, where you can find a list of add-ons maintained by the community.

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 CHAPTER 4

Useful Links

• Falcon Home
• Falcon @ PyPI
• Falcon @ GitHub

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10 Chapter 4. Useful Links

 CHAPTER 5

Resources

• An Unladen Web Framework

• The Definitive Introduction to Falcon

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12 Chapter 5. Resources
 CHAPTER 6

Documentation

6.1 Community Guide

6.1.1 Get Help

Welcome to the Falcon community! We are a pragmatic group of HTTP enthusiasts working on the next generation of
web apps and cloud services. We would love to have you join us and share your ideas.
Please help us spread the word and grow the community!

IRC

Chat with fellow community members in the official Falcon IRC channel. It’s a great place to ask questions and share
your ideas. You can find us in #falconframework on Freenode.

Discussion Group

The Falcon community maintains a discussion group that you can use to share your ideas and ask questions about the
framework. To join the discussion, please visit https://groups.google.com/d/forum/falconframework.
Per our Code of Conduct, we expect everyone who participates in community discussions to act professionally, and
lead by example in encouraging constructive discussions. Each individual in the community is responsible for creating
a positive, constructive, and productive culture.

Submit Issues

If you have an idea for a feature, run into something that is harder to use than it should be, or find a bug, please let the
crew know in #falconframework and/or by submitting an issue. We need your help to make Falcon awesome!

Pay it Forward

We’d like to invite you to help other community members with their questions in IRC and on the mailing list, and to
help peer-review pull requests. If you use the Chrome browser, we recommend installing the NotHub extension to stay
up to date with PRs. If you would like to contribute a new feature or fix a bug in the framework, please check out our
Contributor’s Guide for more information.
We’d love to have your help!

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Code of Conduct

All contributors and maintainers of this project are subject to our Code of Conduct.

6.1.2 Contribute to Falcon

Thanks for your interest in the project! We welcome pull requests from developers of all skill levels. To get started,
simply fork the master branch on GitHub to your personal account and then clone the fork into your development
environment.
Kurt Griffiths (kgriffs on IRC and Twitter) is the original creator of the Falcon framework, and currently co-maintains
the project along with John Vrbanac (jvrbanac on IRC and Twitter). Falcon is developed by a growing community of
users and contributors just like you.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions, or just need a little help getting started. You can find us
in #falconframework on Freenode. It’s the best way to discuss ideas, ask questions, and generally stay in touch with
fellow contributors.
Please check out our Contributor’s Guide for more information.
Thanks!

6.1.3 FAQ

How do I use WSGI middleware with Falcon?

Instances of falcon.API are first-class WSGI apps, so you can use the standard pattern outlined in PEP-3333. In your
main “app” file, you would simply wrap your api instance with a middleware app. For example:

import my_restful_service
import some_middleware

app = some_middleware.DoSomethingFancy(my_restful_service.api)

See also the WSGI middleware example given in PEP-3333.

Why doesn’t Falcon come with batteries included?

The Python ecosystem offers a bunch of great libraries that you are welcome to use from within your responders,
hooks, and middleware components. Falcon doesn’t try to dictate what you should use, since that would take away
your freedom to choose the best tool for the job.

How do I authenticate requests?

Hooks and middleware components can be used together to authenticate and authorize requests. For example, a mid-
dleware component could be used to parse incoming credentials and place the results in req.context. Downstream
components or hooks could then use this information to authorize the request, taking into account the user’s role and
the requested resource.

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Why doesn’t Falcon create a new Resource instance for every request?

Falcon generally tries to minimize the number of objects that it instantiates. It does this for two reasons: first, to
avoid the expense of creating the object, and second to reduce memory usage. Therefore, when adding a route, Falcon
requires an instance of your resource class, rather than the class type. That same instance will be used to serve all
requests coming in on that route.

Is Falcon thread-safe?

New Request and Response objects are created for each incoming HTTP request. However, a single instance of each
resource class attached to a route is shared among all requests. Therefore, as long as you are careful about the way
responders access class member variables to avoid conflicts, your WSGI app should be thread-safe.
That being said, Falcon-based services are usually deployed using green threads (via the gevent library or similar)
which aren’t truly running concurrently, so there may be some edge cases where Falcon is not thread-safe that haven’t
been discovered yet.
Caveat emptor!

How do I implement both POSTing and GETing items for the same resource?

Suppose you wanted to implement the following endpoints:

# Resource Collection
POST /resources
GET /resources{?marker, limit}

# Resource Item
GET /resources/{id}
PATCH /resources/{id}
DELETE /resources/{id}

You can implement this sort of API by simply using two Python classes, one to represent a single resource, and another
to represent the collection of said resources. It is common to place both classes in the same module.
The Falcon community did some experimenting with routing both singleton and collection-based operations to the
same Python class, but it turned out to make routing definitions more complicated and less intuitive. That being said,
we are always open to new ideas, so please let us know if you discover another way.
See also this section of the tutorial.

How can I pass data from a hook to a responder, and between hooks?

You can inject extra responder kwargs from a hook by adding them to the params dict passed into the hook. You can
also add custom data to the req.context dict, as a way of passing contextual information around.

Does Falcon set Content-Length or do I need to do that explicitly?

Falcon will try to do this for you, based on the value of resp.body, resp.data, or resp.stream_len (whichever is set in
the response, checked in that order.)
For dynamically-generated content, you can choose to leave off stream_len, in which case Falcon will then leave off
the Content-Length header, and hopefully your WSGI server will do the Right Thing™ (assuming you’ve told it to
enable keep-alive).

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Note: PEP-333 prohibits apps from setting hop-by-hop headers itself, such as Transfer-Encoding.

I’m setting a response body, but it isn’t getting returned. What’s going on?

Falcon skips processing the response body when, according to the HTTP spec, no body should be returned. If the
client sends a HEAD request, the framework will always return an empty body. Falcon will also return an empty body
whenever the response status is any of the following:

falcon.HTTP_100
falcon.HTTP_204
falcon.HTTP_416
falcon.HTTP_304

If you have another case where you body isn’t being returned to the client, it’s probably a bug! Let us know in IRC or
on the mailing list so we can help.

My app is setting a cookie, but it isn’t being passed back in subsequent requests.

By default, Falcon enables the secure cookie attribute. Therefore, if you are testing your app over HTTP (instead of
HTTPS), the client will not send the cookie in subsequent requests. See also the cookie documentation

Why does raising an error inside a resource crash my app?

Generally speaking, Falcon assumes that resource responders (such as on_get, on_post, etc.) will, for the most part,
do the right thing. In other words, Falcon doesn’t try very hard to protect responder code from itself.
This approach reduces the number of (often) extraneous checks that Falcon would otherwise have to perform, making
the framework more efficient. With that in mind, writing a high-quality API based on Falcon requires that:
1. Resource responders set response variables to sane values.
2. Your code is well-tested, with high code coverage.
3. Errors are anticipated, detected, and handled appropriately within each responder and with the aid of custom
error handlers.

Tip: Falcon will re-raise errors that do not inherit from falcon.HTTPError unless you have registered a custom
error handler for that type (see also: falcon.API).

Why are trailing slashes trimmed from req.path?

Falcon normalizes incoming URI paths to simplify later processing and improve the predictability of application logic.
In addition to stripping a trailing slashes, if any, Falcon will convert empty paths to “/”.
Note also that routing is also normalized, so adding a route for “/foo/bar” also implicitly adds a route for “/foo/bar/”.
Requests coming in for either path will be sent to the same resource.

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Why are field names in URI templates restricted to certain characters?

Field names are restricted to the ASCII characters in the set [a-zA-Z_]. Using a restricted set of characters allows
the framework to make simplifying assumptions that reduce the overhead of parsing incoming requests.

Why is my query parameter missing from the req object?

If a query param does not have a value, Falcon will by default ignore that parameter. For example, passing ‘foo’ or
‘foo=’ will result in the parameter being ignored.
If you would like to recognize such parameters, you must set the keep_blank_qs_values request option to True.
Request options are set globally for each instance of falcon.API through the req_options attribute. For example:

api.req_options.keep_blank_qs_values = True

6.2 User Guide

6.2.1 Introduction

Falcon is a minimalist, high-performance web framework for building RESTful services and app backends with
Python. Falcon works with any WSGI container that is compliant with PEP-3333, and works great with Python
2.6, Python 2.7, Python 3.3, Python 3.4 and PyPy, giving you a wide variety of deployment options.

How is Falcon different?

First, Falcon is one of the fastest WSGI frameworks available. When there is a conflict between saving the developer
a few keystrokes and saving a few microseconds to serve a request, Falcon is strongly biased toward the latter. That
being said, Falcon strives to strike a good balance between usability and speed.
Second, Falcon is lean. It doesn’t try to be everything to everyone, focusing instead on a single use case: HTTP
APIs. Falcon doesn’t include a template engine, form helpers, or an ORM (although those are easy enough to add
yourself). When you sit down to write a web service with Falcon, you choose your own adventure in terms of async
I/O, serialization, data access, etc. In fact, Falcon only has two dependencies: six, to make it easier to support both
Python 2 and 3, and mimeparse for handling complex Accept headers. Neither of these packages pull in any further
dependencies of their own.
Third, Falcon eschews magic. When you use the framework, it’s pretty obvious which inputs lead to which outputs.
Also, it’s blatantly obvious where variables originate. All this makes it easier to reason about the code and to debug
edge cases in large-scale deployments of your application.

About Apache 2.0

Falcon is released under the terms of the Apache 2.0 License. This means that you can use it in your commercial
applications without having to also open-source your own code. It also means that if someone happens to contribute
code that is associated with a patent, you are granted a free license to use said patent. That’s a pretty sweet deal.
Now, if you do make changes to Falcon itself, please consider contributing your awesome work back to the community.

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Falcon License

Copyright 2012-2016 by Rackspace Hosting, Inc. and other contributors, as noted in the individual source code files.
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with
the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an
“AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the
License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.
By contributing to this project, you agree to also license your source code under the terms of the Apache License,
Version 2.0, as described above.

6.2.2 Installation

PyPy

PyPy is the fastest way to run your Falcon app. However, note that only the PyPy 2.7 compatible release is currently
supported.

$ pip install falcon

CPython

Falcon also fully supports CPython 2.6-3.5.

A universal wheel is available on PyPI for the the Falcon framework. Installing it is as simple as:

$ pip install falcon

Installing the wheel is a great way to get up and running with Falcon quickly in a development environment, but for
an extra speed boost when deploying your application in production, Falcon can compile itself with Cython.
The following commands tell pip to install Cython, and then to invoke Falcon’s setup.py, which will in turn detect
the presence of Cython and then compile (AKA cythonize) the Falcon framework with the system’s default C compiler.

$ pip install cython

$ pip install --no-binary :all: falcon

Installing on OS X
Xcode Command Line Tools are required to compile Cython. Install them with this command:

$ xcode-select --install

The Clang compiler treats unrecognized command-line options as errors; this can cause problems under Python 2.6,
for example:

clang: error: unknown argument: '-mno-fused-madd' [-Wunused-command-line-argument-

˓→hard-error-in-future]

You might also see warnings about unused functions. You can work around these issues by setting additional Clang C
compiler flags as follows:

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$ export CFLAGS="-Qunused-arguments -Wno-unused-function"

Dependencies

Falcon depends on six and python-mimeparse. python-mimeparse is a better-maintained fork of the similarly named
mimeparse project. Normally the correct package will be selected by Falcon’s setup.py. However, if you are using
an alternate strategy to manage dependencies, please take care to install the correct package in order to avoid errors.

WSGI Server

Falcon speaks WSGI, and so in order to serve a Falcon app, you will need a WSGI server. Gunicorn and uWSGI are
some of the more popular ones out there, but anything that can load a WSGI app will do.

$ pip install [gunicorn|uwsgi]

Source Code

Falcon lives on GitHub, making the code easy to browse, download, fork, etc. Pull requests are always welcome!
Also, please remember to star the project if it makes you happy. :)
Once you have cloned the repo or downloaded a tarball from GitHub, you can install Falcon like this:

$ cd falcon
$ pip install .

Or, if you want to edit the code, first fork the main repo, clone the fork to your desktop, and then run the following to
install it using symbolic linking, so that when you change your code, the changes will be automagically available to
your app without having to reinstall the package:

$ cd falcon
$ pip install -e .

You can manually test changes to the Falcon framework by switching to the directory of the cloned repo and then
running pytest:

$ cd falcon
$ pip install -r tools/test-requires
$ pytest tests

Or, to run the default set of tests:

$ pip install tox && tox

Tip: See also the tox.ini file for a full list of available environments.

Finally, to build Falcon’s docs from source, simply run:

$ pip install tox && tox -e docs

Once the docs have been built, you can view them by opening the following index page in your browser. On OS X it’s
as simple as:

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$ open docs/_build/html/index.html

Or on Linux:
$ xdg-open docs/_build/html/index.html

6.2.3 Quickstart

If you haven’t done so already, please take a moment to install the Falcon web framework before continuing.

Learning by Example

Here is a simple example from Falcon’s README, showing how to get started writing an API:
# things.py

# Let's get this party started!

import falcon

# Falcon follows the REST architectural style, meaning (among

# other things) that you think in terms of resources and state
# transitions, which map to HTTP verbs.
class ThingsResource(object):
def on_get(self, req, resp):
"""Handles GET requests"""
resp.status = falcon.HTTP_200 # This is the default status
resp.body = ('\nTwo things awe me most, the starry sky '
'above me and the moral law within me.\n'
'\n'
' ~ Immanuel Kant\n\n')

# falcon.API instances are callable WSGI apps

app = falcon.API()

# Resources are represented by long-lived class instances

things = ThingsResource()

# things will handle all requests to the '/things' URL path

app.add_route('/things', things)

You can run the above example using any WSGI server, such as uWSGI or Gunicorn. For example:
$ pip install gunicorn
$ gunicorn things:app

Then, in another terminal:

$ curl localhost:8000/things

More Features

Here is a more involved example that demonstrates reading headers and query parameters, handling errors, and work-
ing with request and response bodies.

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import json
import logging
import uuid
from wsgiref import simple_server

import falcon
import requests

class StorageEngine(object):

def get_things(self, marker, limit):

return [{'id': str(uuid.uuid4()), 'color': 'green'}]

def add_thing(self, thing):

thing['id'] = str(uuid.uuid4())
return thing

class StorageError(Exception):

@staticmethod
def handle(ex, req, resp, params):
description = ('Sorry, couldn\'t write your thing to the '
'database. It worked on my box.')

raise falcon.HTTPError(falcon.HTTP_725,
'Database Error',
description)

class SinkAdapter(object):

engines = {
'ddg': 'https://duckduckgo.com',
'y': 'https://search.yahoo.com/search',
}

def __call__(self, req, resp, engine):

url = self.engines[engine]
params = {'q': req.get_param('q', True)}
result = requests.get(url, params=params)

resp.status = str(result.status_code) + ' ' + result.reason

resp.content_type = result.headers['content-type']
resp.body = result.text

class AuthMiddleware(object):

def process_request(self, req, resp):

token = req.get_header('Authorization')
account_id = req.get_header('Account-ID')

challenges = ['Token type="Fernet"']

if token is None:
description = ('Please provide an auth token '

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'as part of the request.')

raise falcon.HTTPUnauthorized('Auth token required',

description,
challenges,
href='http://docs.example.com/auth')

if not self._token_is_valid(token, account_id):

description = ('The provided auth token is not valid. '
'Please request a new token and try again.')

raise falcon.HTTPUnauthorized('Authentication required',

description,
challenges,
href='http://docs.example.com/auth')

def _token_is_valid(self, token, account_id):

return True # Suuuuuure it's valid...

class RequireJSON(object):

def process_request(self, req, resp):

if not req.client_accepts_json:
raise falcon.HTTPNotAcceptable(
'This API only supports responses encoded as JSON.',
href='http://docs.examples.com/api/json')

if req.method in ('POST', 'PUT'):

if 'application/json' not in req.content_type:
raise falcon.HTTPUnsupportedMediaType(
'This API only supports requests encoded as JSON.',
href='http://docs.examples.com/api/json')

class JSONTranslator(object):

def process_request(self, req, resp):

# req.stream corresponds to the WSGI wsgi.input environ variable,
# and allows you to read bytes from the request body.
#
# See also: PEP 3333
if req.content_length in (None, 0):
# Nothing to do
return

body = req.stream.read()
if not body:
raise falcon.HTTPBadRequest('Empty request body',
'A valid JSON document is required.')

try:
req.context['doc'] = json.loads(body.decode('utf-8'))

except (ValueError, UnicodeDecodeError):

raise falcon.HTTPError(falcon.HTTP_753,
'Malformed JSON',
'Could not decode the request body. The '

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'JSON was incorrect or not encoded as '

'UTF-8.')

def process_response(self, req, resp, resource):

if 'result' not in req.context:
return

resp.body = json.dumps(req.context['result'])

def max_body(limit):

def hook(req, resp, resource, params):

length = req.content_length
if length is not None and length > limit:
msg = ('The size of the request is too large. The body must not '
'exceed ' + str(limit) + ' bytes in length.')

raise falcon.HTTPRequestEntityTooLarge(
'Request body is too large', msg)

return hook

class ThingsResource(object):

def __init__(self, db):

self.db = db
self.logger = logging.getLogger('thingsapp.' + __name__)

def on_get(self, req, resp, user_id):

marker = req.get_param('marker') or ''
limit = req.get_param_as_int('limit') or 50

try:
result = self.db.get_things(marker, limit)
except Exception as ex:
self.logger.error(ex)

description = ('Aliens have attacked our base! We will '

'be back as soon as we fight them off. '
'We appreciate your patience.')

raise falcon.HTTPServiceUnavailable(
'Service Outage',
description,
30)

# An alternative way of doing DRY serialization would be to

# create a custom class that inherits from falcon.Request. This
# class could, for example, have an additional 'doc' property
# that would serialize to JSON under the covers.
req.context['result'] = result

resp.set_header('Powered-By', 'Falcon')
resp.status = falcon.HTTP_200

@falcon.before(max_body(64 * 1024))

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def on_post(self, req, resp, user_id):

try:
doc = req.context['doc']
except KeyError:
raise falcon.HTTPBadRequest(
'Missing thing',
'A thing must be submitted in the request body.')

proper_thing = self.db.add_thing(doc)

resp.status = falcon.HTTP_201
resp.location = '/%s/things/%s' % (user_id, proper_thing['id'])

# Configure your WSGI server to load "things.app" (app is a WSGI callable)

app = falcon.API(middleware=[
AuthMiddleware(),
RequireJSON(),
JSONTranslator(),
])

db = StorageEngine()
things = ThingsResource(db)
app.add_route('/{user_id}/things', things)

# If a responder ever raised an instance of StorageError, pass control to

# the given handler.
app.add_error_handler(StorageError, StorageError.handle)

# Proxy some things to another service; this example shows how you might
# send parts of an API off to a legacy system that hasn't been upgraded
# yet, or perhaps is a single cluster that all data centers have to share.
sink = SinkAdapter()
app.add_sink(sink, r'/search/(?P<engine>ddg|y)\Z')

# Useful for debugging problems in your API; works with pdb.set_trace(). You
# can also use Gunicorn to host your app. Gunicorn can be configured to
# auto-restart workers when it detects a code change, and it also works
# with pdb.
if __name__ == '__main__':
httpd = simple_server.make_server('127.0.0.1', 8000, app)
httpd.serve_forever()

6.2.4 Tutorial

In this tutorial we’ll walk through building an API for a simple image sharing service. Along the way, we’ll discuss
Falcon’s major features and introduce the terminology used by the framework.

First Steps

Before continuing, be sure you’ve got Falcon installed. Then, create a new project folder called “look” and cd into it:

$ mkdir look
$ cd look

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Next, let’s create a new file that will be the entry point into your app:

$ touch app.py

Open that file in your favorite text editor and add the following lines:

import falcon

api = application = falcon.API()

That creates your WSGI application and aliases it as api. You can use any variable names you like, but we’ll use
application since that is what Gunicorn expects it to be called, by default.
A WSGI application is just a callable with a well-defined signature so that you can host the application with any web
server that understands the WSGI protocol. Let’s take a look at the falcon.API class.
First, install IPython (if you don’t already have it), and fire it up:

$ pip install ipython

$ ipython

Now, type the following to introspect the falcon.API callable:

In [1]: import falcon

In [2]: falcon.API.__call__?

Alternatively, you can use the built-in help function:

In [3]: help(falcon.API.__call__)

Note the method signature. env and start_response are standard WSGI params. Falcon adds a thin abstraction
on top of these params so you don’t have to interact with them directly.
The Falcon framework contains extensive inline documentation that you can query using the above technique. The
team has worked hard to optimize the docstrings for readability, so that you can quickly scan them and find what you
need.

Tip: bpython is another super- powered REPL that is good to have in your toolbox when exploring a new library.

Hosting Your App

Now that you have a simple Falcon app, you can take it for a spin with a WSGI server. Python includes a reference
server for self-hosting, but let’s use something that you would actually deploy in production.

$ pip install gunicorn

$ gunicorn app

Now try querying it with curl:

$ curl localhost:8000 -v

You should get a 404. That’s actually OK, because we haven’t specified any routes yet. Note that Falcon includes a
default 404 response handler that will fire for any requested path that doesn’t match any routes.
Curl is a bit of a pain to use, so let’s install HTTPie and use it from now on.

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$ pip install --upgrade httpie

$ http localhost:8000

Creating Resources

Falcon borrows some of its terminology from the REST architectural style, so if you are familiar with that mindset,
Falcon should be familiar. On the other hand, if you have no idea what REST is, no worries; Falcon was designed to
be as intuitive as possible for anyone who understands the basics of HTTP.
In Falcon, you map incoming requests to things called “Resources”. A Resource is just a regular Python class that
includes some methods that follow a certain naming convention. Each of these methods corresponds to an action that
the API client can request be performed in order to fetch or transform the resource in question.
Since we are building an image-sharing API, let’s create an “images” resource. Create a new file, images.py within
your project directory, and add the following to it:

import falcon

class Resource(object):

def on_get(self, req, resp):

resp.body = '{"message": "Hello world!"}'
resp.status = falcon.HTTP_200

As you can see, Resource is just a regular class. You can name the class anything you like. Falcon uses duck-typing,
so you don’t need to inherit from any sort of special base class.
The image resource above defines a single method, on_get. For any HTTP method you want your resource to
support, simply add an on_x class method to the resource, where x is any one of the standard HTTP methods,
lowercased (e.g., on_get, on_put, on_head, etc.).
We call these well-known methods “responders”. Each responder takes (at least) two params, one representing the
HTTP request, and one representing the HTTP response to that request. By convention, these are called req and
resp, respectively. Route templates and hooks can inject extra params, as we shall see later on.
Right now, the image resource responds to GET requests with a simple 200 OK and a JSON body. Falcon’s Internet
media type defaults to application/json but you can set it to whatever you like. For example, you could use
MessagePack, or any other serialization format.
If you’d like to use MessagePack in the above example, you’ll need to install the (de)serializer for Python running
pip install msgpack-python and then update your responder to set the response data and content_type ac-
cordingly:

import falcon

import msgpack

class Resource(object):

def on_get(self, req, resp):

resp.data = msgpack.packb({'message': 'Hello world!'})
resp.content_type = 'application/msgpack'
resp.status = falcon.HTTP_200

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Note the use of resp.data in lieu of resp.body. If you assign a bytestring to the latter, Falcon will figure it out,
but you can get a little performance boost by assigning directly to resp.data.
OK, now let’s wire up this resource and see it in action. Go back to app.py and modify it so it looks something like
this:
import falcon

import images

api = application = falcon.API()

images = images.Resource()
api.add_route('/images', images)

Now, when a request comes in for “/images”, Falcon will call the responder on the images resource that corresponds
to the requested HTTP method.
Restart gunicorn, and then try sending a GET request to the resource:
$ http GET localhost:8000/images

Request and Response Objects

Each responder in a resource receives a request object that can be used to read the headers, query parameters, and body
of the request. You can use the help function mentioned earlier to list the Request class members:
In [1]: import falcon

In [2]: help(falcon.Request)

Each responder also receives a response object that can be used for setting the status code, headers, and body of the
response. You can list the Response class members using the same technique used above:
In [3]: help(falcon.Response)

Let’s see how this works. When a client POSTs to our images collection, we want to create a new image resource.
First, we’ll need to specify where the images will be saved (for a real service, you would want to use an object storage
service instead, such as Cloud Files or S3).
Edit your images.py file and add the following to the resource:
def __init__(self, storage_path):
self.storage_path = storage_path

Then, edit app.py and pass in a path to the resource initializer.

Next, let’s implement the POST responder:
import os
import uuid
import mimetypes

import falcon

class Resource(object):

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def __init__(self, storage_path):

self.storage_path = storage_path

def on_post(self, req, resp):

ext = mimetypes.guess_extension(req.content_type)
filename = '{uuid}{ext}'.format(uuid=uuid.uuid4(), ext=ext)
image_path = os.path.join(self.storage_path, filename)

with open(image_path, 'wb') as image_file:

while True:
chunk = req.stream.read(4096)
if not chunk:
break

image_file.write(chunk)

resp.status = falcon.HTTP_201
resp.location = '/images/' + filename

As you can see, we generate a unique ID and filename for the new image, and then write it out by reading from
req.stream. It’s called stream instead of body to emphasize the fact that you are really reading from an input
stream; Falcon never spools or decodes request data, instead giving you direct access to the incoming binary stream
provided by the WSGI server.
Note that we are setting the HTTP response status code to “201 Created”. For a full list of predefined status strings,
simply call help on falcon.status_codes:

In [4]: help(falcon.status_codes)

The last line in the on_post responder sets the Location header for the newly created resource. (We will create a
route for that path in just a minute.) Note that the Request and Response classes contain convenience attributes for
reading and setting common headers, but you can always access any header by name with the req.get_header
and resp.set_header methods.
Restart gunicorn, and then try sending a POST request to the resource (substituting test.jpg for a path to any JPEG you
like.)

$ http POST localhost:8000/images Content-Type:image/jpeg < test.jpg

Now, if you check your storage directory, it should contain a copy of the image you just POSTed.

Serving Images

Now that we have a way of getting images into the service, we need a way to get them back out. What we want to do
is return an image when it is requested using the path that came back in the Location header, like so:

$ http GET localhost:8000/images/87db45ff42

Now, we could add an on_get responder to our images resource, and that is fine for simple resources like this, but
that approach can lead to problems when you need to respond differently to the same HTTP method (e.g., GET),
depending on whether the user wants to interact with a collection of things, or a single thing.
With that in mind, let’s create a separate class to represent a single image, as opposed to a collection of images. We
will then add an on_get responder to the new class.
Go ahead and edit your images.py file to look something like this:

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import os
import uuid
import mimetypes

import falcon

class Collection(object):

def __init__(self, storage_path):

self.storage_path = storage_path

def on_post(self, req, resp):

ext = mimetypes.guess_extension(req.content_type)
filename = '{uuid}{ext}'.format(uuid=uuid.uuid4(), ext=ext)
image_path = os.path.join(self.storage_path, filename)

with open(image_path, 'wb') as image_file:

while True:
chunk = req.stream.read(4096)
if not chunk:
break

image_file.write(chunk)

resp.status = falcon.HTTP_201
resp.location = '/images/' + filename

class Item(object):

def __init__(self, storage_path):

self.storage_path = storage_path

def on_get(self, req, resp, name):

resp.content_type = mimetypes.guess_type(name)[0]
image_path = os.path.join(self.storage_path, name)
resp.stream = open(image_path, 'rb')
resp.stream_len = os.path.getsize(image_path)

As you can see, we renamed Resource to Collection and added a new Item class to represent a single image
resource. Also, note the name parameter for the on_get responder. Any URI parameters that you specify in your
routes will be turned into corresponding kwargs and passed into the target responder as such. We’ll see how to specify
URI parameters in a moment.
Inside the on_get responder, we set the Content-Type header based on the filename extension, and then stream out
the image directly from an open file handle. Note the use of resp.stream_len. Whenever using resp.stream
instead of resp.body or resp.data, you have to also specify the expected length of the stream so that the web
client knows how much data to read from the response.

Note: If you do not know the size of the stream in advance, you can work around that by using chunked encoding,
but that’s beyond the scope of this tutorial.

If resp.status is not set explicitly, it defaults to 200 OK, which is exactly what we want the on_get responder
to do.
Now, let’s wire things up and give this a try. Go ahead and edit app.py to look something like this:

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import falcon

import images

api = application = falcon.API()

storage_path = '/usr/local/var/look'

image_collection = images.Collection(storage_path)
image = images.Item(storage_path)

api.add_route('/images', image_collection)
api.add_route('/images/{name}', image)

As you can see, we specified a new route, /images/{name}. This causes Falcon to expect all associated responders
to accept a name argument.

Note: Falcon also supports more complex parameterized path segments containing multiple values. For example, a
GH-like API could use the following template to add a route for diffing two branches:

/repos/{org}/{repo}/compare/{usr0}:{branch0}...{usr1}:{branch1}

Now, restart gunicorn and post another picture to the service:

$ http POST localhost:8000/images Content-Type:image/jpeg < test.jpg

Make a note of the path returned in the Location header, and use it to try GETing the image:

$ http localhost:8000/images/6daa465b7b.jpeg

HTTPie won’t download the image by default, but you can see that the response headers were set correctly. Just for
fun, go ahead and paste the above URI into your web browser. The image should display correctly.

Introducing Hooks

At this point you should have a pretty good understanding of the basic parts that make up a Falcon-based API. Before
we finish up, let’s just take a few minutes to clean up the code and add some error handling.
First of all, let’s check the incoming media type when something is posted to make sure it is a common image type.
We’ll do this by using a Falcon before hook.
First, let’s define a list of media types our service will accept. Place this constant near the top, just after the import
statements in images.py:

ALLOWED_IMAGE_TYPES = (
'image/gif',
'image/jpeg',
'image/png',
)

The idea here is to only accept GIF, JPEG, and PNG images. You can add others to the list if you like.
Next, let’s create a hook that will run before each request to post a message. Add this method below the definition of
ALLOWED_IMAGE_TYPES:

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def validate_image_type(req, resp, resource, params):

if req.content_type not in ALLOWED_IMAGE_TYPES:
msg = 'Image type not allowed. Must be PNG, JPEG, or GIF'
raise falcon.HTTPBadRequest('Bad request', msg)

And then attach the hook to the on_post responder like so:

@falcon.before(validate_image_type)
def on_post(self, req, resp):

Now, before every call to that responder, Falcon will first invoke the validate_image_type method. There
isn’t anything special about that method, other than it must accept four arguments. Every hook takes, as its first two
arguments, a reference to the same req and resp objects that are passed into responders. resource argument is a
Resource instance associated with the request. The fourth argument, named params by convention, is a reference to
the kwarg dictionary Falcon creates for each request. params will contain the route’s URI template params and their
values, if any.
As you can see in the example above, you can use req to get information about the incoming request. However, you
can also use resp to play with the HTTP response as needed, and you can even inject extra kwargs for responders in
a DRY way, e.g.,:

def extract_project_id(req, resp, resource, params):

"""Adds `project_id` to the list of params for all responders.

Meant to be used as a `before` hook.

"""
params['project_id'] = req.get_header('X-PROJECT-ID')

Now, you can imagine that such a hook should apply to all responders for a resource. You can apply hooks to an entire
resource like so:

@falcon.before(extract_project_id)
class Message(object):

# ...

Similar logic can be applied globally with middleware. (See falcon.middleware)

To learn more about hooks, take a look at the docstring for the API class, as well the docstrings for the
falcon.before and falcon.after decorators.
Now that you’ve added a hook to validate the media type when an image is POSTed, you can see it in action by passing
in something nefarious:

$ http POST localhost:8000/images Content-Type:image/jpx < test.jpx

That should return a 400 Bad Request status and a nicely structured error body. When something goes wrong,
you usually want to give your users some info to help them resolve the issue. The exception to this rule is when an
error occurs because the user is requested something they are not authorized to access. In that case, you may wish to
simply return 404 Not Found with an empty body, in case a malicious user is fishing for information that will help
them crack your API.

Error Handling

Generally speaking, Falcon assumes that resource responders (on_get, on_post, etc.) will, for the most part, do the
right thing. In other words, Falcon doesn’t try very hard to protect responder code from itself.

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This approach reduces the number of (often) extraneous checks that Falcon would otherwise have to perform, making
the framework more efficient. With that in mind, writing a high-quality API based on Falcon requires that:
1. Resource responders set response variables to sane values.
2. Your code is well-tested, with high code coverage.
3. Errors are anticipated, detected, and handled appropriately within each responder.

Tip: Falcon will re-raise errors that do not inherit from falcon.HTTPError unless you have registered a custom
error handler for that type (see also: falcon.API).

Speaking of error handling, when something goes horribly (or mildly) wrong, you could manually set the error status,
appropriate response headers, and even an error body using the resp object. However, Falcon tries to make things a
bit easier by providing a set of exceptions you can raise when something goes wrong. In fact, if Falcon catches any
exception your responder throws that inherits from falcon.HTTPError, the framework will convert that exception
to an appropriate HTTP error response.
You may raise an instance of falcon.HTTPError, or use any one of a number of predefined error classes that try
to do “the right thing” in setting appropriate headers and bodies. Have a look at the docs for any of the following to
get more information on how you can use them in your API:
falcon.HTTPBadGateway
falcon.HTTPBadRequest
falcon.HTTPConflict
falcon.HTTPError
falcon.HTTPForbidden
falcon.HTTPInternalServerError
falcon.HTTPLengthRequired
falcon.HTTPMethodNotAllowed
falcon.HTTPNotAcceptable
falcon.HTTPNotFound
falcon.HTTPPreconditionFailed
falcon.HTTPRangeNotSatisfiable
falcon.HTTPServiceUnavailable
falcon.HTTPUnauthorized
falcon.HTTPUnsupportedMediaType
falcon.HTTPUpgradeRequired

For example, you could handle a missing image file like this:
try:
resp.stream = open(image_path, 'rb')
except IOError:
raise falcon.HTTPNotFound()

Or you could handle a bogus filename like this:

VALID_IMAGE_NAME = re.compile(r'[a-f0-9]{10}\.(jpeg|gif|png)$')

# ...

class Item(object):

def __init__(self, storage_path):

self.storage_path = storage_path

def on_get(self, req, resp, name):

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if not VALID_IMAGE_NAME.match(name):
raise falcon.HTTPNotFound()

Sometimes you don’t have much control over the type of exceptions that get raised. To address this, Falcon lets
you create custom handlers for any type of error. For example, if your database throws exceptions that inherit from
NiftyDBError, you can install a special error handler just for NiftyDBError, so you don’t have to copy-paste your
handler code across multiple responders.
Have a look at the docstring for falcon.API.add_error_handler for more information on using this feature
to DRY up your code:

In [71]: help(falcon.API.add_error_handler)

What Now?

Our friendly community is available to answer your questions and help you work through sticky problems. See also:
Getting Help.
As mentioned previously, Falcon’s docstrings are quite extensive, and so you can learn a lot just by poking around
Falcon’s modules from a Python REPL, such as IPython or bpython.
Also, don’t be shy about pulling up Falcon’s source code on GitHub or in your favorite text editor. The team has tried
to make the code as straightforward and readable as possible; where other documentation may fall short, the code
basically “can’t be wrong.”

6.3 Classes and Functions

6.3.1 API Class

Falcon’s API class is a WSGI “application” that you can host with any standard-compliant WSGI server.

import falcon

api = application = falcon.API()

class falcon.API(media_type=’application/json; charset=UTF-8’, request_type=<class ‘fal-

con.request.Request’>, response_type=<class ‘falcon.response.Response’>, mid-
dleware=None, router=None)
This class is the main entry point into a Falcon-based app.
Each API instance provides a callable WSGI interface and a routing engine.
Parameters
• media_type (str, optional) – Default media type to use as the value for the
Content-Type header on responses (default ‘application/json’).
• middleware (object or list, optional) – One or more objects (instantiated
classes) that implement the following middleware component interface:

class ExampleComponent(object):
def process_request(self, req, resp):
"""Process the request before routing it.

Args:

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req: Request object that will eventually be

routed to an on_* responder method.
resp: Response object that will be routed to
the on_* responder.
"""

def process_resource(self, req, resp, resource, params):

"""Process the request and resource *after* routing.

Note:
This method is only called when the request matches
a route to a resource.

Args:
req: Request object that will be passed to the
routed responder.
resp: Response object that will be passed to the
responder.
resource: Resource object to which the request was
routed. May be None if no route was found for
the request.
params: A dict-like object representing any
additional params derived from the route's URI
template fields, that will be passed to the
resource's responder method as keyword
arguments.
"""

def process_response(self, req, resp, resource, req_succeeded)

"""Post-processing of the response (after routing).

Args:
req: Request object.
resp: Response object.
resource: Resource object to which the request was
routed. May be None if no route was found
for the request.
req_succeeded: True if no exceptions were raised
while the framework processed and routed the
request; otherwise False.
"""

See also Middleware.

• request_type (Request, optional) – Request-like class to use instead of
Falcon’s default class. Among other things, this feature affords inheriting from
falcon.request.Request in order to override the context_type class variable.
(default falcon.request.Request)
• response_type (Response, optional) – Response-like class to use instead of
Falcon’s default class. (default falcon.response.Response)
• router (object, optional) – An instance of a custom router to use in lieu of the
default engine. See also: Routing.
req_options
A set of behavioral options related to incoming requests. See also: RequestOptions
add_error_handler(exception, handler=None)

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Registers a handler for a given exception error type.

A handler can raise an instance of HTTPError or HTTPStatus to communicate information about the
issue to the client. Alternatively, a handler may modify resp directly.
Error handlers are matched in LIFO order. In other words, when searching for an error handler to match
a raised exception, and more than one handler matches the exception type, the framework will choose the
one that was most recently registered. Therefore, more general error handlers (e.g., for the Exception
type) should be added first, to avoid masking more specific handlers for subclassed types.
Parameters
• exception (type) – Whenever an error occurs when handling a request that is an
instance of this exception class, the associated handler will be called.
• handler (callable) – A function or callable object taking the form
func(ex,req,resp,params).
If not specified explicitly, the handler will default to exception.handle, where
exception is the error type specified above, and handle is a static method (i.e., deco-
rated with @staticmethod) that accepts the same params just described. For example:

class CustomException(CustomBaseException):

@staticmethod
def handle(ex, req, resp, params):
# TODO: Log the error
# Convert to an instance of falcon.HTTPError
raise falcon.HTTPError(falcon.HTTP_792)

add_route(uri_template, resource, *args, **kwargs)

Associates a templatized URI path with a resource.

Note: The following information describes the behavior of Falcon’s default router.

A resource is an instance of a class that defines various “responder” methods, one for each HTTP method
the resource allows. Responder names start with on_ and are named according to which HTTP method
they handle, as in on_get, on_post, on_put, etc.
If your resource does not support a particular HTTP method, simply omit the corresponding responder and
Falcon will reply with “405 Method not allowed” if that method is ever requested.
Responders must always define at least two arguments to receive request and response objects, respectively.
For example:

def on_post(self, req, resp):

pass

In addition, if the route’s template contains field expressions, any responder that desires to receive requests
for that route must accept arguments named after the respective field names defined in the template. A
field expression consists of a bracketed field name.

Note: Since field names correspond to argument names in responder methods, they must be valid Python
identifiers.

For example, given the following template:

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/user/{name}

A PUT request to “/user/kgriffs” would be routed to:

def on_put(self, req, resp, name):

pass

Individual path segments may contain one or more field expressions:

/repos/{org}/{repo}/compare/{usr0}:{branch0}...{usr1}:{branch1}

Parameters
• uri_template (str) – A templatized URI. Care must be taken to ensure the template
does not mask any sink patterns, if any are registered (see also add_sink).
• resource (instance) – Object which represents a REST resource. Falcon will pass
“GET” requests to on_get, “PUT” requests to on_put, etc. If any HTTP methods are not
supported by your resource, simply don’t define the corresponding request handlers, and
Falcon will do the right thing.

Note: Any additional args and kwargs not defined above are passed through to the underlying router’s
add_route() method. The default router does not expect any additional arguments, but custom routers
may take advantage of this feature to receive additional options when setting up routes.

add_sink(sink, prefix=’/’)
Registers a sink method for the API.
If no route matches a request, but the path in the requested URI matches a sink prefix, Falcon will pass
control to the associated sink, regardless of the HTTP method requested.
Using sinks, you can drain and dynamically handle a large number of routes, when creating static resources
and responders would be impractical. For example, you might use a sink to create a smart proxy that
forwards requests to one or more backend services.
Parameters
• sink (callable) – A callable taking the form func(req,resp).
• prefix (str) – A regex string, typically starting with ‘/’, which will trigger the sink if it
matches the path portion of the request’s URI. Both strings and precompiled regex objects
may be specified. Characters are matched starting at the beginning of the URI path.

Note: Named groups are converted to kwargs and passed to the sink as such.

Warning: If the prefix overlaps a registered route template, the route will take prece-
dence and mask the sink (see also add_route).

set_error_serializer(serializer)
Override the default serializer for instances of HTTPError.

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When a responder raises an instance of HTTPError, Falcon converts it to an HTTP response automatically.
The default serializer supports JSON and XML, but may be overridden by this method to use a custom
serializer in order to support other media types.
The falcon.HTTPError class contains helper methods, such as to_json() and to_dict(), that can be
used from within custom serializers. For example:

def my_serializer(req, resp, exception):

representation = None

preferred = req.client_prefers(('application/x-yaml',
'application/json'))

if preferred is not None:

if preferred == 'application/json':
representation = exception.to_json()
else:
representation = yaml.dump(exception.to_dict(),
encoding=None)
resp.body = representation
resp.content_type = preferred

Note: If a custom media type is used and the type includes a “+json” or “+xml” suffix, the default
serializer will convert the error to JSON or XML, respectively. If this is not desirable, a custom error
serializer may be used to override this behavior.

Parameters serializer (callable) – A function taking the form

func(req,resp,exception), where req is the request object that was passed
to the responder method, resp is the response object, and exception is an instance of
falcon.HTTPError.

class falcon.RequestOptions
Defines a set of configurable request options.
An instance of this class is exposed via API.req_options for configuring certain Request behaviors.
keep_blank_qs_values
bool – Set to True to keep query string fields even if they do not have a value (default False). For
comma-separated values, this option also determines whether or not empty elements in the parsed list are
retained.
auto_parse_form_urlencoded
Set to True in order to automatically consume the request stream and merge the results into the re-
quest’s query string params when the request’s content type is application/x-www-form-urlencoded (de-
fault False). In this case, the request’s content stream will be left at EOF.

Note: The character encoding for fields, before percent-encoding non-ASCII bytes, is assumed to be
UTF-8. The special _charset_ field is ignored if present.
Falcon expects form-encoded request bodies to be encoded according to the standard W3C algorithm (see
also http://goo.gl/6rlcux).

auto_parse_qs_csv
Set to False to treat commas in a query string value as literal characters, rather than as a comma- sepa-
rated list (default True). When this option is enabled, the value will be split on any non-percent-encoded

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commas. Disable this option when encoding lists as multiple occurrences of the same parameter, and when
values may be encoded in alternative formats in which the comma character is significant.

6.3.2 req/resp

Instances of the Request and Response classes are passed into responders as the second and third arguments, respec-
tively.

import falcon

class Resource(object):

def on_get(self, req, resp):

resp.body = '{"message": "Hello world!"}'
resp.status = falcon.HTTP_200

Request

class falcon.Request(env, options=None)

Represents a client’s HTTP request.

Note: Request is not meant to be instantiated directly by responders.

Parameters env (dict) – A WSGI environment dict passed in from the server. See also PEP-3333.

Keyword Arguments options (dict): Set of global options passed from the API handler.

protocol
str – Either ‘http’ or ‘https’.
method
str – HTTP method requested (e.g., ‘GET’, ‘POST’, etc.)
host
str – Hostname requested by the client
subdomain
str – Leftmost (i.e., most specific) subdomain from the hostname. If only a single domain name is given,
subdomain will be None.

Note: If the hostname in the request is an IP address, the value for subdomain is undefined.

env
dict – Reference to the WSGI environ dict passed in from the server. See also PEP-3333.
app
str – Name of the WSGI app (if using WSGI’s notion of virtual hosting).
access_route
list – IP address of the original client, as well as any known addresses of proxies fronting the WSGI server.
The following request headers are checked, in order of preference, to determine the addresses:

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•Forwarded
•X-Forwarded-For
•X-Real-IP
If none of these headers are available, the value of remote_addr is used instead.

Note: Per RFC 7239, the access route may contain “unknown” and obfuscated identifiers, in addition to
IPv4 and IPv6 addresses

Warning: Headers can be forged by any client or proxy. Use this property with caution and validate
all values before using them. Do not rely on the access route to authorize requests.

remote_addr
str – IP address of the closest client or proxy to the WSGI server.
This property is determined by the value of REMOTE_ADDR in the WSGI environment dict. Since this
address is not derived from an HTTP header, clients and proxies can not forge it.

Note: If your application is behind one or more reverse proxies, you can use access_route to retrieve
the real IP address of the client.

context
dict – Dictionary to hold any data about the request which is specific to your app (e.g. session object).
Falcon itself will not interact with this attribute after it has been initialized.
context_type
class – Class variable that determines the factory or type to use for initializing the context attribute. By
default, the framework will instantiate standard dict objects. However, you may override this behavior
by creating a custom child class of falcon.Request, and then passing that new class to falcon.API()
by way of the latter’s request_type parameter.

Note: When overriding context_type with a factory function (as opposed to a class), the function is called
like a method of the current Request instance. Therefore the first argument is the Request instance itself
(self).

uri
str – The fully-qualified URI for the request.
url
str – alias for uri.
relative_uri
str – The path + query string portion of the full URI.
path
str – Path portion of the request URL (not including query string).

Note: req.path may be set to a new value by a process_request() middleware method in order to influence
routing.

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query_string
str – Query string portion of the request URL, without the preceding ‘?’ character.
uri_template
str – The template for the route that was matched for this request. May be None if the request has not
yet been routed, as would be the case for process_request() middleware methods. May also be None if
your app uses a custom routing engine and the engine does not provide the URI template when resolving
a route.
user_agent
str – Value of the User-Agent header, or None if the header is missing.
accept
str – Value of the Accept header, or ‘/ ‘ if the header is missing.
auth
str – Value of the Authorization header, or None if the header is missing.
client_accepts_json
bool – True if the Accept header indicates that the client is willing to receive JSON, otherwise False.
client_accepts_msgpack
bool – True if the Accept header indicates that the client is willing to receive MessagePack, otherwise
False.
client_accepts_xml
bool – True if the Accept header indicates that the client is willing to receive XML, otherwise False.
content_type
str – Value of the Content-Type header, or None if the header is missing.
content_length
int – Value of the Content-Length header converted to an int, or None if the header is missing.
stream
File-like input object for reading the body of the request, if any. Since this object is provided by the WSGI
server itself, rather than by Falcon, it may behave differently depending on how you host your app. For
example, attempting to read more bytes than are expected (as determined by the Content-Length header)
may or may not block indefinitely. It’s a good idea to test your WSGI server to find out how it behaves.
This can be particulary problematic when a request body is expected, but none is given. In this case, the
following call blocks under certain WSGI servers:

# Blocks if Content-Length is 0
data = req.stream.read()

The workaround is fairly straightforward, if verbose:

# If Content-Length happens to be 0, or the header is

# missing altogether, this will not block.
data = req.stream.read(req.content_length or 0)

Alternatively, when passing the stream directly to a consumer, it may be necessary to branch off the value
of the Content-Length header:

if req.content_length:
doc = json.load(req.stream)

For a slight performance cost, you may instead wish to use bounded_stream, which wraps the native
WSGI input object to normalize its behavior.

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Note: If an HTML form is POSTed to the API using the application/x-www-form-urlencoded media type,
and the auto_parse_form_urlencoded option is set, the framework will consume stream in order
to parse the parameters and merge them into the query string parameters. In this case, the stream will be
left at EOF.

bounded_stream
File-like wrapper around stream to normalize certain differences between the native input objects em-
ployed by different WSGI servers. In particular, bounded_stream is aware of the expected Content-Length
of the body, and will never block on out-of-bounds reads, assuming the client does not stall while trans-
mitting the data to the server.
For example, the following will not block when Content-Length is 0 or the header is missing altogether:

data = req.bounded_stream.read()

This is also safe:

doc = json.load(req.stream)

date
datetime – Value of the Date header, converted to a datetime instance. The header value is assumed to
conform to RFC 1123.
expect
str – Value of the Expect header, or None if the header is missing.
range
tuple of int – A 2-member tuple parsed from the value of the Range header.
The two members correspond to the first and last byte positions of the requested resource, inclusive. Neg-
ative indices indicate offset from the end of the resource, where -1 is the last byte, -2 is the second-to-last
byte, and so forth.
Only continous ranges are supported (e.g., “bytes=0-0,-1” would result in an HTTPBadRequest exception
when the attribute is accessed.)
range_unit
str – Unit of the range parsed from the value of the Range header, or None if the header is missing
if_match
str – Value of the If-Match header, or None if the header is missing.
if_none_match
str – Value of the If-None-Match header, or None if the header is missing.
if_modified_since
datetime – Value of the If-Modified-Since header, or None if the header is missing.
if_unmodified_since
datetime – Value of the If-Unmodified-Since header, or None if the header is missing.
if_range
str – Value of the If-Range header, or None if the header is missing.
headers
dict – Raw HTTP headers from the request with canonical dash-separated names. Parsing all the headers
to create this dict is done the first time this attribute is accessed. This parsing can be costly, so unless
you need all the headers in this format, you should use the get_header method or one of the convenience
attributes instead, to get a value for a specific header.

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params
dict – The mapping of request query parameter names to their values. Where the parameter appears
multiple times in the query string, the value mapped to that parameter key will be a list of all the values in
the order seen.
options
dict – Set of global options passed from the API handler.
cookies
dict – A dict of name/value cookie pairs. See also: Getting Cookies
client_accepts(media_type)
Determines whether or not the client accepts a given media type.
Parameters media_type (str) – An Internet media type to check.
Returns True if the client has indicated in the Accept header that it accepts the specified media
type. Otherwise, returns False.
Return type bool
client_prefers(media_types)
Returns the client’s preferred media type, given several choices.
Parameters media_types (iterable of str) – One or more Internet media types from
which to choose the client’s preferred type. This value must be an iterable collection of
strings.
Returns The client’s preferred media type, based on the Accept header. Returns None if the
client does not accept any of the given types.
Return type str
get_header(name, required=False)
Retrieve the raw string value for the given header.
Parameters
• name (str) – Header name, case-insensitive (e.g., ‘Content-Type’)
• required (bool, optional) – Set to True to raise HTTPBadRequest instead of
returning gracefully when the header is not found (default False).
Returns The value of the specified header if it exists, or None if the header is not found and is
not required.
Return type str
Raises HTTPBadRequest – The header was not found in the request, but it was required.
get_header_as_datetime(header, required=False, obs_date=False)
Return an HTTP header with HTTP-Date values as a datetime.
Parameters
• name (str) – Header name, case-insensitive (e.g., ‘Date’)
• required (bool, optional) – Set to True to raise HTTPBadRequest instead of
returning gracefully when the header is not found (default False).
• obs_date (bool, optional) – Support obs-date formats according to RFC 7231,
e.g.: “Sunday, 06-Nov-94 08:49:37 GMT” (default False).
Returns The value of the specified header if it exists, or None if the header is not found and is
not required.

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Return type datetime

Raises
• HTTPBadRequest – The header was not found in the request, but it was required.
• HttpInvalidHeader – The header contained a malformed/invalid value.
get_param(name, required=False, store=None, default=None)
Return the raw value of a query string parameter as a string.

Note: If an HTML form is POSTed to the API using the application/x-www-form-urlencoded media
type, Falcon can automatically parse the parameters from the request body and merge them into the query
string parameters. To enable this functionality, set auto_parse_form_urlencoded to True via
API.req_options.
If a key appears more than once in the form data, one of the values will be returned as a string, but it is
undefined which one. Use req.get_param_as_list() to retrieve all the values.

Note: Similar to the way multiple keys in form data is handled, if a query parameter is assigned a comma-
separated list of values (e.g., ‘foo=a,b,c’), only one of those values will be returned, and it is undefined
which one. Use req.get_param_as_list() to retrieve all the values.

Parameters
• name (str) – Parameter name, case-sensitive (e.g., ‘sort’).
• required (bool, optional) – Set to True to raise HTTPBadRequest instead of
returning None when the parameter is not found (default False).
• store (dict, optional) – A dict-like object in which to place the value of the
param, but only if the param is present.
• default (any, optional) – If the param is not found returns the given value instead
of None
Returns The value of the param as a string, or None if param is not found and is not required.
Return type str
Raises HTTPBadRequest – A required param is missing from the request.

get_param_as_bool(name, required=False, store=None, blank_as_true=False)

Return the value of a query string parameter as a boolean
The following boolean strings are supported:

TRUE_STRINGS = ('true', 'True', 'yes', '1', 'on')

FALSE_STRINGS = ('false', 'False', 'no', '0', 'off')

Parameters
• name (str) – Parameter name, case-sensitive (e.g., ‘detailed’).
• required (bool, optional) – Set to True to raise HTTPBadRequest instead
of returning None when the parameter is not found or is not a recognized boolean string
(default False).

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• store (dict, optional) – A dict-like object in which to place the value of the
param, but only if the param is found (default None).
• blank_as_true (bool) – If True, an empty string value will be treated as True.
Normally empty strings are ignored; if you would like to recognize such parameters, you
must set the keep_blank_qs_values request option to True. Request options are set glob-
ally for each instance of falcon.API through the req_options attribute.
Returns The value of the param if it is found and can be converted to a bool. If the param is
not found, returns None unless required is True.
Return type bool
Raises HTTPBadRequest – A required param is missing from the request.

get_param_as_date(name, format_string=’%Y-%m-%d’, required=False, store=None)

Return the value of a query string parameter as a date.
Parameters
• name (str) – Parameter name, case-sensitive (e.g., ‘ids’).
• format_string (str) – String used to parse the param value into a date. Any format
recognized by strptime() is supported. (default "%Y-%m-%d")
• required (bool, optional) – Set to True to raise HTTPBadRequest instead of
returning None when the parameter is not found (default False).
• store (dict, optional) – A dict-like object in which to place the value of the
param, but only if the param is found (default None).
Returns The value of the param if it is found and can be converted to a date according to the
supplied format string. If the param is not found, returns None unless required is True.
Return type datetime.date
Raises
• HTTPBadRequest – A required param is missing from the request.
• HTTPInvalidParam – A transform function raised an instance of ValueError.
get_param_as_dict(name, required=False, store=None)
Return the value of a query string parameter as a dict.
Given a JSON value, parse and return it as a dict.
Parameters
• name (str) – Parameter name, case-sensitive (e.g., ‘payload’).
• required (bool, optional) – Set to True to raise HTTPBadRequest instead of
returning None when the parameter is not found (default False).
• store (dict, optional) – A dict-like object in which to place the value of the
param, but only if the param is found (default None).
Returns The value of the param if it is found. Otherwise, returns None unless required is True.
Return type dict
Raises
• HTTPBadRequest – A required param is missing from the request.
• HTTPInvalidParam – The parameter’s value could not be parsed as JSON.

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get_param_as_int(name, required=False, min=None, max=None, store=None)

Return the value of a query string parameter as an int.
Parameters
• name (str) – Parameter name, case-sensitive (e.g., ‘limit’).
• required (bool, optional) – Set to True to raise HTTPBadRequest instead of
returning None when the parameter is not found or is not an integer (default False).
• min (int, optional) – Set to the minimum value allowed for this param. If the param
is found and it is less than min, an HTTPError is raised.
• max (int, optional) – Set to the maximum value allowed for this param. If the
param is found and its value is greater than max, an HTTPError is raised.
• store (dict, optional) – A dict-like object in which to place the value of the
param, but only if the param is found (default None).
Returns The value of the param if it is found and can be converted to an integer. If the param is
not found, returns None, unless required is True.
Return type int

Raises
HTTPBadRequest: The param was not found in the request, even though it was required to be
there. Also raised if the param’s value falls outside the given interval, i.e., the value must be in
the interval: min <= value <= max to avoid triggering an error.

get_param_as_list(name, transform=None, required=False, store=None)

Return the value of a query string parameter as a list.
List items must be comma-separated or must be provided as multiple instances of the same param in the
query string ala application/x-www-form-urlencoded.
Parameters
• name (str) – Parameter name, case-sensitive (e.g., ‘ids’).
• transform (callable, optional) – An optional transform function that takes as
input each element in the list as a str and outputs a transformed element for inclusion
in the list that will be returned. For example, passing int will transform list items into
numbers.
• required (bool, optional) – Set to True to raise HTTPBadRequest instead of
returning None when the parameter is not found (default False).
• store (dict, optional) – A dict-like object in which to place the value of the
param, but only if the param is found (default None).
Returns
The value of the param if it is found. Otherwise, returns None unless required is True.
Empty list elements will be discarded. For example, the following query strings would both
result in [‘1’, ‘3’]:

things=1,,3
things=1&things=&things=3

Return type list

Raises

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• HTTPBadRequest – A required param is missing from the request.

• HTTPInvalidParam – A transform function raised an instance of ValueError.
log_error(message)
Write an error message to the server’s log.
Prepends timestamp and request info to message, and writes the result out to the WSGI server’s error
stream (wsgi.error).
Parameters message (str or unicode) – Description of the problem. On Python 2, in-
stances of unicode will be converted to UTF-8.

Response

class falcon.Response
Represents an HTTP response to a client request.

Note: Response is not meant to be instantiated directly by responders.

status
str – HTTP status line (e.g., ‘200 OK’). Falcon requires the full status line, not just the code (e.g., 200).
This design makes the framework more efficient because it does not have to do any kind of conversion or
lookup when composing the WSGI response.
If not set explicitly, the status defaults to ‘200 OK’.

Note: Falcon provides a number of constants for common status codes. They all start with the HTTP_
prefix, as in: falcon.HTTP_204.

body
str or unicode – String representing response content. If Unicode, Falcon will encode as UTF-8 in the
response. If data is already a byte string, use the data attribute instead (it’s faster).
data
bytes – Byte string representing response content.
Use this attribute in lieu of body when your content is already a byte string (str or bytes in Python 2,
or simply bytes in Python 3). See also the note below.

Note: Under Python 2.x, if your content is of type str, using the data attribute instead of body is the
most efficient approach. However, if your text is of type unicode, you will need to use the body attribute
instead.
Under Python 3.x, on the other hand, the 2.x str type can be thought of as having been replaced by what
was once the unicode type, and so you will need to always use the body attribute for strings to ensure
Unicode characters are properly encoded in the HTTP response.

stream
Either a file-like object with a read() method that takes an optional size argument and returns a block of
bytes, or an iterable object, representing response content, and yielding blocks as byte strings. Falcon will
use wsgi.file_wrapper, if provided by the WSGI server, in order to efficiently serve file-like objects.

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stream_len
int – Expected length of stream. If stream is set, but stream_len is not, Falcon will not supply a Content-
Length header to the WSGI server. Consequently, the server may choose to use chunked encoding or one
of the other strategies suggested by PEP-3333.
context
dict – Dictionary to hold any data about the response which is specific to your app. Falcon itself will not
interact with this attribute after it has been initialized.
context_type
class – Class variable that determines the factory or type to use for initializing the context attribute. By
default, the framework will instantiate standard dict objects. However, you may override this behavior
by creating a custom child class of falcon.Response, and then passing that new class to falcon.API()
by way of the latter’s response_type parameter.

Note: When overriding context_type with a factory function (as opposed to a class), the function is called
like a method of the current Response instance. Therefore the first argument is the Response instance itself
(self).

accept_ranges
Sets the Accept-Ranges header.
The Accept-Ranges header field indicates to the client which range units are supported (e.g. “bytes”) for
the target resource.
If range requests are not supported for the target resource, the header may be set to “none” to advise the
client not to attempt any such requests.

Note: “none” is the literal string, not Python’s built-in None type.

add_link(target, rel, title=None, title_star=None, anchor=None, hreflang=None, type_hint=None)

Add a link header to the response.
See also: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988

Note: Calling this method repeatedly will cause each link to be appended to the Link header value,
separated by commas.

Note: So-called “link-extension” elements, as defined by RFC 5988, are not yet supported. See also Issue
#288.

Parameters
• target (str) – Target IRI for the resource identified by the link. Will be converted to a
URI, if necessary, per RFC 3987, Section 3.1.
• rel (str) – Relation type of the link, such as “next” or “bookmark”. See also http:
//goo.gl/618GHr for a list of registered link relation types.

Kwargs:

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title (str): Human-readable label for the destination of the link (default None). If the title in-
cludes non-ASCII characters, you will need to use title_star instead, or provide both a US-ASCII
version using title and a Unicode version using title_star.
title_star (tuple of str): Localized title describing the destination of the link (default None). The
value must be a two-member tuple in the form of (language-tag, text), where language-tag is a
standard language identifier as defined in RFC 5646, Section 2.1, and text is a Unicode string.
Note: language-tag may be an empty string, in which case the client will assume the language
from the general context of the current request.
Note: text will always be encoded as UTF-8. If the string contains non-ASCII characters, it
should be passed as a unicode type string (requires the ‘u’ prefix in Python 2).
anchor (str): Override the context IRI with a different URI (default None). By default, the con-
text IRI for the link is simply the IRI of the requested resource. The value provided may be a
relative URI.
hreflang (str or iterable): Either a single language-tag, or a list or tuple of such tags to pro-
vide a hint to the client as to the language of the result of following the link. A list of tags may be
given in order to indicate to the client that the target resource is available in multiple languages.
type_hint(str): Provides a hint as to the media type of the result of dereferencing the link (default
None). As noted in RFC 5988, this is only a hint and does not override the Content-Type header
returned when the link is followed.

append_header(name, value)
Set or append a header for this response.

Warning: If the header already exists, the new value will be appended to it, delimited by a comma.
Most header specifications support this format, Set-Cookie being the notable exceptions.

Warning: For setting cookies, see set_cookie()

Parameters
• name (str) – Header name (case-insensitive). The restrictions noted below for the
header’s value also apply here.
• value (str) – Value for the header. Must be of type str or StringType and con-
tain only US-ASCII characters. Under Python 2.x, the unicode type is also accepted,
although such strings are also limited to US-ASCII.

cache_control
Sets the Cache-Control header.
Used to set a list of cache directives to use as the value of the Cache-Control header. The list will be joined
with ”, ” to produce the value for the header.
content_location
Sets the Content-Location header.
This value will be URI encoded per RFC 3986. If the value that is being set is already URI encoded it
should be decoded first or the header should be set manually using the set_header method.

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content_range
A tuple to use in constructing a value for the Content-Range header.
The tuple has the form (start, end, length, [unit]), where start and end designate the range (inclusive), and
length is the total length, or ‘*’ if unknown. You may pass int‘s for these numbers (no need to convert to
str beforehand). The optional value unit describes the range unit and defaults to ‘bytes’

Note: You only need to use the alternate form, ‘bytes */1234’, for responses that use the status ‘416
Range Not Satisfiable’. In this case, raising falcon.HTTPRangeNotSatisfiable will do the right
thing.
See also: http://goo.gl/Iglhp

content_type
Sets the Content-Type header.
etag
Sets the ETag header.
get_header(name)
Retrieve the raw string value for the given header.
Parameters name (str) – Header name, case-insensitive. Must be of type str or
StringType, and only character values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms
that use wide characters.
Returns The header’s value if set, otherwise None.
Return type str
last_modified
Sets the Last-Modified header. Set to a datetime (UTC) instance.

Note: Falcon will format the datetime as an HTTP date string.

location
Sets the Location header.
This value will be URI encoded per RFC 3986. If the value that is being set is already URI encoded it
should be decoded first or the header should be set manually using the set_header method.
retry_after
Sets the Retry-After header.
The expected value is an integral number of seconds to use as the value for the header. The HTTP-date
syntax is not supported.
set_cookie(name, value, expires=None, max_age=None, domain=None, path=None, secure=True,
http_only=True)
Set a response cookie.

Note: This method can be called multiple times to add one or more cookies to the response.

See also:
To learn more about setting cookies, see Setting Cookies. The parameters listed below correspond to those
defined in RFC 6265.

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Parameters
• name (str) – Cookie name
• value (str) – Cookie value
Keyword Arguments
• expires (datetime) – Specifies when the cookie should expire. By default, cookies expire
when the user agent exits.
(See also: RFC 6265, Section 4.1.2.1)
• max_age (int) – Defines the lifetime of the cookie in seconds. By default, cookies expire
when the user agent exits. If both max_age and expires are set, the latter is ignored by the
user agent.

Note: Coercion to int is attempted if provided with float or str.

(See also: RFC 6265, Section 4.1.2.2)

• domain (str) – Restricts the cookie to a specific domain and any subdomains of that do-
main. By default, the user agent will return the cookie only to the origin server. When
overriding this default behavior, the specified domain must include the origin server. Oth-
erwise, the user agent will reject the cookie.
(See also: RFC 6265, Section 4.1.2.3)
• path (str) – Scopes the cookie to the given path plus any subdirectories under that path
(the “/” character is interpreted as a directory separator). If the cookie does not specify a
path, the user agent defaults to the path component of the requested URI.

Warning: User agent interfaces do not always isolate cookies by path, and so this
should not be considered an effective security measure.

(See also: RFC 6265, Section 4.1.2.4)

• secure (bool) – Direct the client to only return the cookie in subsequent requests if they are
made over HTTPS (default: True). This prevents attackers from reading sensitive cookie
data.

Warning: For the secure cookie attribute to be effective, your application will need
to enforce HTTPS.

(See also: RFC 6265, Section 4.1.2.5)

• http_only (bool) – Direct the client to only transfer the cookie with unscripted HTTP
requests (default: True). This is intended to mitigate some forms of cross-site scripting.
(See also: RFC 6265, Section 4.1.2.6)
Raises
• KeyError – name is not a valid cookie name.
• ValueError – value is not a valid cookie value.

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set_header(name, value)
Set a header for this response to a given value.

Warning: Calling this method overwrites the existing value, if any.

Warning: For setting cookies, see instead set_cookie()

Parameters
• name (str) – Header name (case-insensitive). The restrictions noted below for the
header’s value also apply here.
• value (str) – Value for the header. Must be of type str or StringType and con-
tain only US-ASCII characters. Under Python 2.x, the unicode type is also accepted,
although such strings are also limited to US-ASCII.

set_headers(headers)
Set several headers at once.

Warning: Calling this method overwrites existing values, if any.

Parameters headers (dict or list) – A dictionary of header names and values to set, or
a list of (name, value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType
and contain only US-ASCII characters. Under Python 2.x, the unicode type is also ac-
cepted, although such strings are also limited to US-ASCII.

Note: Falcon can process a list of tuples slightly faster than a dict.

Raises ValueError – headers was not a dict or list of tuple.

set_stream(stream, stream_len)
Convenience method for setting both stream and stream_len.
Although the stream and stream_len properties may be set directly, using this method ensures stream_len
is not accidentally neglected when the length of the stream is known in advance.

Note: If the stream length is unknown, you can set stream directly, and ignore stream_len. In this case, the
WSGI server may choose to use chunked encoding or one of the other strategies suggested by PEP-3333.

unset_cookie(name)
Unset a cookie in the response
Clears the contents of the cookie, and instructs the user agent to immediately expire its own copy of the
cookie.

Warning: In order to successfully remove a cookie, both the path and the domain must match the
values that were used when the cookie was created.

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vary
Value to use for the Vary header.
Set this property to an iterable of header names. For a single asterisk or field value, simply pass a single-
element list or tuple.
“Tells downstream proxies how to match future request headers to decide whether the cached response can
be used rather than requesting a fresh one from the origin server.”
(Wikipedia)
See also: http://goo.gl/NGHdL

6.3.3 Cookies

Cookie support is available in Falcon version 0.3 or later.

Getting Cookies

Cookies can be read from a request via the cookies request attribute:

class Resource(object):
def on_get(self, req, resp):

cookies = req.cookies

if 'my_cookie' in cookies:
my_cookie_value = cookies['my_cookie']
# ....

The cookies attribute is a regular dict object.

Tip: The cookies attribute returns a copy of the response cookie dictionary. Assign it to a variable, as shown in the
above example, to improve performance when you need to look up more than one cookie.

Setting Cookies

Setting cookies on a response is done via set_cookie().

The set_cookie() method should be used instead of set_header() or append_header(). With
set_header() you cannot set multiple headers with the same name (which is how multiple cookies are sent to
the client). Furthermore, append_header() appends multiple values to the same header field in a way that is not
compatible with the special format required by the Set-Cookie header.
Simple example:

class Resource(object):
def on_get(self, req, resp):

# Set the cookie 'my_cookie' to the value 'my cookie value'

resp.set_cookie('my_cookie', 'my cookie value')

You can of course also set the domain, path and lifetime of the cookie.

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class Resource(object):
def on_get(self, req, resp):
# Set the maximum age of the cookie to 10 minutes (600 seconds)
# and the cookie's domain to 'example.com'
resp.set_cookie('my_cookie', 'my cookie value',
max_age=600, domain='example.com')

You can also instruct the client to remove a cookie with the unset_cookie() method:

class Resource(object):
def on_get(self, req, resp):
resp.set_cookie('bad_cookie', ':(')

# Clear the bad cookie

resp.unset_cookie('bad_cookie')

The Secure Attribute

By default, Falcon sets the secure attribute for cookies. This instructs the client to never transmit the cookie in the
clear over HTTP, in order to protect any sensitive data that cookie might contain. If a cookie is set, and a subsequent
request is made over HTTP (rather than HTTPS), the client will not include that cookie in the request.

Warning: For this attribute to be effective, your application will need to enforce HTTPS when setting the cookie,
as well as in all subsequent requests that require the cookie to be sent back from the client.

When running your application in a development environment, you can disable this behavior by passing secure=False
to set_cookie(). This lets you test your app locally without having to set up TLS. You can make this option
configurable to easily switch between development and production environments.
See also: RFC 6265, Section 4.1.2.5

6.3.4 Status Codes

Falcon provides a list of constants for common HTTP response status codes.
For example:

# Override the default "200 OK" response status

resp.status = falcon.HTTP_409

Or, using the more verbose name:

resp.status = falcon.HTTP_CONFLICT

Using these constants helps avoid typos and cuts down on the number of string objects that must be created when
preparing responses.
Falcon also provides a generic HTTPStatus class. Raise this class from a hook, middleware, or a responder to stop
handling the request and skip to the response handling. It takes status, additional headers and body as input arguments.

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HTTPStatus

class falcon.HTTPStatus(status, headers=None, body=None)

Represents a generic HTTP status.
Raise an instance of this class from a hook, middleware, or responder to short-circuit request processing in a
manner similar to falcon.HTTPError, but for non-error status codes.
status
str – HTTP status line, e.g. ‘748 Confounded by Ponies’.
headers
dict – Extra headers to add to the response.
body
str or unicode – String representing response content. If Unicode, Falcon will encode as UTF-8 in the
response.

Parameters
• status (str) – HTTP status code and text, such as ‘748 Confounded by Ponies’.
• headers (dict) – Extra headers to add to the response.
• body (str or unicode) – String representing response content. If Unicode, Falcon
will encode as UTF-8 in the response.

1xx Informational

HTTP_CONTINUE = HTTP_100
HTTP_SWITCHING_PROTOCOLS = HTTP_101

HTTP_100 = '100 Continue'

HTTP_101 = '101 Switching Protocols'

2xx Success

HTTP_OK = HTTP_200
HTTP_CREATED = HTTP_201

HTTP_200 = '200 OK'

HTTP_201 = '201 Created'
HTTP_202 = '202 Accepted'
HTTP_203 = '203 Non-Authoritative Information'
HTTP_204 = '204 No Content'
HTTP_205 = '205 Reset Content'
HTTP_206 = '206 Partial Content'
HTTP_226 = '226 IM Used'

3xx Redirection

HTTP_MULTIPLE_CHOICES = HTTP_300
HTTP_MOVED_PERMANENTLY = HTTP_301
HTTP_FOUND = HTTP_302
HTTP_SEE_OTHER = HTTP_303

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HTTP_NOT_MODIFIED = HTTP_304
HTTP_USE_PROXY = HTTP_305
HTTP_TEMPORARY_REDIRECT = HTTP_307

HTTP_300 = '300 Multiple Choices'

HTTP_301 = '301 Moved Permanently'
HTTP_302 = '302 Found'
HTTP_303 = '303 See Other'
HTTP_304 = '304 Not Modified'
HTTP_305 = '305 Use Proxy'
HTTP_307 = '307 Temporary Redirect'

4xx Client Error

HTTP_BAD_REQUEST = HTTP_400
HTTP_UNAUTHORIZED = HTTP_401 # <-- Really means "unauthenticated"
HTTP_PAYMENT_REQUIRED = HTTP_402
HTTP_FORBIDDEN = HTTP_403 # <-- Really means "unauthorized"
HTTP_NOT_FOUND = HTTP_404
HTTP_METHOD_NOT_ALLOWED = HTTP_405
HTTP_NOT_ACCEPTABLE = HTTP_406
HTTP_PROXY_AUTHENTICATION_REQUIRED = HTTP_407
HTTP_REQUEST_TIMEOUT = HTTP_408
HTTP_CONFLICT = HTTP_409
HTTP_GONE = HTTP_410
HTTP_LENGTH_REQUIRED = HTTP_411
HTTP_PRECONDITION_FAILED = HTTP_412
HTTP_REQUEST_ENTITY_TOO_LARGE = HTTP_413
HTTP_REQUEST_URI_TOO_LONG = HTTP_414
HTTP_UNSUPPORTED_MEDIA_TYPE = HTTP_415
HTTP_REQUESTED_RANGE_NOT_SATISFIABLE = HTTP_416
HTTP_EXPECTATION_FAILED = HTTP_417
HTTP_IM_A_TEAPOT = HTTP_418
HTTP_UNPROCESSABLE_ENTITY = HTTP_422
HTTP_UPGRADE_REQUIRED = HTTP_426
HTTP_PRECONDITION_REQUIRED = HTTP_428
HTTP_TOO_MANY_REQUESTS = HTTP_429
HTTP_REQUEST_HEADER_FIELDS_TOO_LARGE = HTTP_431
HTTP_UNAVAILABLE_FOR_LEGAL_REASONS = HTTP_451

HTTP_400 = '400 Bad Request'

HTTP_401 = '401 Unauthorized' # <-- Really means "unauthenticated"
HTTP_402 = '402 Payment Required'
HTTP_403 = '403 Forbidden' # <-- Really means "unauthorized"
HTTP_404 = '404 Not Found'
HTTP_405 = '405 Method Not Allowed'
HTTP_406 = '406 Not Acceptable'
HTTP_407 = '407 Proxy Authentication Required'
HTTP_408 = '408 Request Time-out'
HTTP_409 = '409 Conflict'
HTTP_410 = '410 Gone'
HTTP_411 = '411 Length Required'
HTTP_412 = '412 Precondition Failed'
HTTP_413 = '413 Payload Too Large'
HTTP_414 = '414 URI Too Long'
HTTP_415 = '415 Unsupported Media Type'

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HTTP_416 = '416 Range Not Satisfiable'

HTTP_417 = '417 Expectation Failed'
HTTP_418 = "418 I'm a teapot"
HTTP_422 = "422 Unprocessable Entity"
HTTP_426 = '426 Upgrade Required'
HTTP_428 = '428 Precondition Required'
HTTP_429 = '429 Too Many Requests'
HTTP_431 = '431 Request Header Fields Too Large'
HTTP_451 = '451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons'

5xx Server Error

HTTP_INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR = HTTP_500
HTTP_NOT_IMPLEMENTED = HTTP_501
HTTP_BAD_GATEWAY = HTTP_502
HTTP_SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE = HTTP_503
HTTP_GATEWAY_TIMEOUT = HTTP_504
HTTP_HTTP_VERSION_NOT_SUPPORTED = HTTP_505
HTTP_NETWORK_AUTHENTICATION_REQUIRED = HTTP_511

HTTP_500 = '500 Internal Server Error'

HTTP_501 = '501 Not Implemented'
HTTP_502 = '502 Bad Gateway'
HTTP_503 = '503 Service Unavailable'
HTTP_504 = '504 Gateway Time-out'
HTTP_505 = '505 HTTP Version not supported'
HTTP_511 = '511 Network Authentication Required'

6.3.5 Error Handling

When a request results in an error condition, you can manually set the error status, appropriate response headers, and
even an error body using the resp object. However, Falcon tries to make things a bit easier and more consistent by
providing a set of error classes you can raise from within your app. Falcon catches any exception that inherits from
falcon.HTTPError, and automatically converts it to an appropriate HTTP response.
You may raise an instance of falcon.HTTPError directly, or use any one of a number of predefined error classes
that try to be idiomatic in setting appropriate headers and bodies.
All classes are available directly from the falcon package namespace:

import falcon

class MessageResource(object):
def on_get(self, req, resp):

# ...

raise falcon.HTTPBadRequest(
'TTL Out of Range',
'The message's TTL must be between 60 and 300 seconds, inclusive.'
)

# ...

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Base Class

class falcon.HTTPError(status, title=None, description=None, headers=None, href=None,

href_text=None, code=None)
Represents a generic HTTP error.
Raise this or a child class to have Falcon automagically return pretty error responses (with an appropriate HTTP
status code) to the client when something goes wrong.
status
str – HTTP status line, e.g. ‘748 Confounded by Ponies’.
has_representation
bool – Read-only property that determines whether error details will be serialized when compos-
ing the HTTP response. In HTTPError this property always returns True, but child classes
may override it in order to return False when an empty HTTP body is desired. See also the
falcon.http_error.NoRepresentation mixin.
title
str – Error title to send to the client.
description
str – Description of the error to send to the client.
headers
dict – Extra headers to add to the response.
link
str – An href that the client can provide to the user for getting help.
code
int – An internal application code that a user can reference when requesting support for the error.

Parameters status (str) – HTTP status code and text, such as “400 Bad Request”
Keyword Arguments
• title (str) – Human-friendly error title. If not provided, defaults to the HTTP status line as
determined by the status argument.
• description (str) – Human-friendly description of the error, along with a helpful suggestion
or two (default None).
• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.

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• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).
• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).

to_dict(obj_type=<type ‘dict’>)
Returns a basic dictionary representing the error.
This method can be useful when serializing the error to hash-like media types, such as YAML, JSON, and
MessagePack.
Parameters obj_type – A dict-like type that will be used to store the error information (de-
fault dict).
Returns A dictionary populated with the error’s title, description, etc.
Return type dict
to_json()
Returns a pretty-printed JSON representation of the error.
Returns A JSON document for the error.
Return type str
to_xml()
Returns an XML-encoded representation of the error.
Returns An XML document for the error.
Return type str

Mixins

class falcon.http_error.NoRepresentation
Mixin for HTTPError child classes that have no representation.
This class can be mixed in when inheriting from HTTPError, in order to override the has_representation
property such that it always returns False. This, in turn, will cause Falcon to return an empty response body
to the client.
You can use this mixin when defining errors that either should not have a body (as dictated by HTTP standards
or common practice), or in the case that a detailed error response may leak information to an attacker.

Note: This mixin class must appear before HTTPError in the base class list when defining the child; other-
wise, it will not override the has_representation property as expected.

Predefined Errors

exception falcon.HTTPBadRequest(title=None, description=None, **kwargs)

400 Bad Request.
The server cannot or will not process the request due to something that is perceived to be a client error (e.g.,
malformed request syntax, invalid request message framing, or deceptive request routing).
(See also: RFC 7231, Section 6.5.1)
Keyword Arguments

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• title (str) – Error title (default ‘400 Bad Request’).

• description (str) – Human-friendly description of the error, along with a helpful suggestion
or two.
• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.
• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).
• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).
exception falcon.HTTPInvalidHeader(msg, header_name, **kwargs)
400 Bad Request.
One of the headers in the request is invalid.
Parameters
• msg (str) – A description of why the value is invalid.
• header_name (str) – The name of the invalid header.
Keyword Arguments
• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.
• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).

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• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).
exception falcon.HTTPMissingHeader(header_name, **kwargs)
400 Bad Request
A header is missing from the request.
Parameters header_name (str) – The name of the missing header.
Keyword Arguments
• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.
• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).
• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).
exception falcon.HTTPInvalidParam(msg, param_name, **kwargs)
400 Bad Request
A parameter in the request is invalid. This error may refer to a parameter in a query string, form, or document
that was submitted with the request.
Parameters
• msg (str) – A description of the invalid parameter.
• param_name (str) – The name of the parameter.
Keyword Arguments
• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

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• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.
• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).
• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).
exception falcon.HTTPMissingParam(param_name, **kwargs)
400 Bad Request
A parameter is missing from the request. This error may refer to a parameter in a query string, form, or document
that was submitted with the request.
Parameters param_name (str) – The name of the missing parameter.
Keyword Arguments
• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.
• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).
• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).
exception falcon.HTTPUnauthorized(title=None, description=None, challenges=None, **kwargs)
401 Unauthorized.
The request has not been applied because it lacks valid authentication credentials for the target resource.
The server generating a 401 response MUST send a WWW-Authenticate header field containing at least one
challenge applicable to the target resource.
If the request included authentication credentials, then the 401 response indicates that authorization has been
refused for those credentials. The user agent MAY repeat the request with a new or replaced Authorization
header field. If the 401 response contains the same challenge as the prior response, and the user agent has
already attempted authentication at least once, then the user agent SHOULD present the enclosed representation
to the user, since it usually contains relevant diagnostic information.
(See also: RFC 7235, Section 3.1)
Keyword Arguments

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• title (str) – Error title (default ‘401 Unauthorized’).

• description (str) – Human-friendly description of the error, along with a helpful suggestion
or two.
• challenges (iterable of str) – One or more authentication challenges to use as the value of
the WWW-Authenticate header in the response (see also RFC 7235, Section 2.1).
• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.
• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).
• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).
exception falcon.HTTPForbidden(title=None, description=None, **kwargs)
403 Forbidden.
The server understood the request but refuses to authorize it.
A server that wishes to make public why the request has been forbidden can describe that reason in the response
payload (if any).
If authentication credentials were provided in the request, the server considers them insufficient to grant access.
The client SHOULD NOT automatically repeat the request with the same credentials. The client MAY repeat
the request with new or different credentials. However, a request might be forbidden for reasons unrelated to the
credentials.
An origin server that wishes to “hide” the current existence of a forbidden target resource MAY instead respond
with a status code of 404 Not Found.
(See also: RFC 7231, Section 6.5.4)
Keyword Arguments
• title (str) – Error title (default ‘403 Forbidden’).
• description (str) – Human-friendly description of the error, along with a helpful suggestion
or two.
• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

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Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.
• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).
• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).
exception falcon.HTTPNotFound(**kwargs)
404 Not Found.
The origin server did not find a current representation for the target resource or is not willing to disclose that
one exists.
A 404 status code does not indicate whether this lack of representation is temporary or permanent; the 410 Gone
status code is preferred over 404 if the origin server knows, presumably through some configurable means, that
the condition is likely to be permanent.
A 404 response is cacheable by default; i.e., unless otherwise indicated by the method definition or explicit
cache controls.
(See also: RFC 7231, Section 6.5.3)
Keyword Arguments
• title (str) – Human-friendly error title. If not provided, and description is also not provided,
no body will be included in the response.
• description (str) – Human-friendly description of the error, along with a helpful suggestion
or two (default None).
• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.

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• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).
• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).
exception falcon.HTTPMethodNotAllowed(allowed_methods, **kwargs)
405 Method Not Allowed.
The method received in the request-line is known by the origin server but not supported by the target resource.
The origin server MUST generate an Allow header field in a 405 response containing a list of the target re-
source’s currently supported methods.
A 405 response is cacheable by default; i.e., unless otherwise indicated by the method definition or explicit
cache controls.
(See also: RFC 7231, Section 6.5.5)
Parameters allowed_methods (list of str) – Allowed HTTP methods for this resource
(e.g., ['GET','POST','HEAD']).
Keyword Arguments
• title (str) – Human-friendly error title. If not provided, and description is also not provided,
no body will be included in the response.
• description (str) – Human-friendly description of the error, along with a helpful suggestion
or two (default None).
• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.
• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).
• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).
exception falcon.HTTPNotAcceptable(description=None, **kwargs)
406 Not Acceptable.
The target resource does not have a current representation that would be acceptable to the user agent, according
to the proactive negotiation header fields received in the request, and the server is unwilling to supply a default
representation.
The server SHOULD generate a payload containing a list of available representation characteristics and corre-
sponding resource identifiers from which the user or user agent can choose the one most appropriate. A user

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agent MAY automatically select the most appropriate choice from that list. However, this specification does not
define any standard for such automatic selection, as described in RFC 7231, Section 6.4.1
(See also: RFC 7231, Section 6.5.6)
Keyword Arguments
• description (str) – Human-friendly description of the error, along with a helpful suggestion
or two.
• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.
• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).
• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).
exception falcon.HTTPConflict(title=None, description=None, **kwargs)
409 Conflict.
The request could not be completed due to a conflict with the current state of the target resource. This code is
used in situations where the user might be able to resolve the conflict and resubmit the request.
The server SHOULD generate a payload that includes enough information for a user to recognize the source of
the conflict.
Conflicts are most likely to occur in response to a PUT request. For example, if versioning were being used
and the representation being PUT included changes to a resource that conflict with those made by an earlier
(third-party) request, the origin server might use a 409 response to indicate that it can’t complete the request. In
this case, the response representation would likely contain information useful for merging the differences based
on the revision history.
(See also: RFC 7231, Section 6.5.8)
Keyword Arguments
• title (str) – Error title (default ‘409 Conflict’).
• description (str) – Human-friendly description of the error, along with a helpful suggestion
or two.
• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

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Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.
• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).
• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).
exception falcon.HTTPGone(**kwargs)
410 Gone.
The target resource is no longer available at the origin server and this condition is likely to be permanent.
If the origin server does not know, or has no facility to determine, whether or not the condition is permanent,
the status code 404 Not Found ought to be used instead.
The 410 response is primarily intended to assist the task of web maintenance by notifying the recipient that
the resource is intentionally unavailable and that the server owners desire that remote links to that resource
be removed. Such an event is common for limited-time, promotional services and for resources belonging
to individuals no longer associated with the origin server’s site. It is not necessary to mark all permanently
unavailable resources as “gone” or to keep the mark for any length of time – that is left to the discretion of the
server owner.
A 410 response is cacheable by default; i.e., unless otherwise indicated by the method definition or explicit
cache controls.
(See also: RFC 7231, Section 6.5.9)
Keyword Arguments
• title (str) – Human-friendly error title. If not provided, and description is also not provided,
no body will be included in the response.
• description (str) – Human-friendly description of the error, along with a helpful suggestion
or two (default None).
• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

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• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.
• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).
• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).
exception falcon.HTTPLengthRequired(title=None, description=None, **kwargs)
411 Length Required.
The server refuses to accept the request without a defined Content- Length.
The client MAY repeat the request if it adds a valid Content-Length header field containing the length of the
message body in the request message.
(See also: RFC 7231, Section 6.5.10)
Keyword Arguments
• title (str) – Error title (default ‘411 Length Required’).
• description (str) – Human-friendly description of the error, along with a helpful suggestion
or two.
• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.
• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).
• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).
exception falcon.HTTPPreconditionFailed(title=None, description=None, **kwargs)
412 Precondition Failed.
One or more conditions given in the request header fields evaluated to false when tested on the server.
This response code allows the client to place preconditions on the current resource state (its current represen-
tations and metadata) and, thus, prevent the request method from being applied if the target resource is in an
unexpected state.
(See also: RFC 7232, Section 4.2)
Keyword Arguments

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• title (str) – Error title (default ‘412 Precondition Failed’).

• description (str) – Human-friendly description of the error, along with a helpful suggestion
or two.
• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.
• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).
• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).
exception falcon.HTTPRequestEntityTooLarge(title=None, description=None, retry_after=None,
**kwargs)
413 Request Entity Too Large.
The server is refusing to process a request because the request payload is larger than the server is willing or able
to process.
The server MAY close the connection to prevent the client from continuing the request.
If the condition is temporary, the server SHOULD generate a Retry- After header field to indicate that it is
temporary and after what time the client MAY try again.
(See also: RFC 7231, Section 6.5.11)
Keyword Arguments
• title (str) – Error title (default ‘413 Request Entity Too Large’).
• description (str) – Human-friendly description of the error, along with a helpful suggestion
or two.
• retry_after (datetime or int) – Value for the Retry-After header. If a datetime object,
will serialize as an HTTP date. Otherwise, a non-negative int is expected, representing the
number of seconds to wait.
• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

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Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.
• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).
• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).
exception falcon.HTTPUriTooLong(title=None, description=None, **kwargs)
414 URI Too Long.
The server is refusing to service the request because the request- target is longer than the server is willing to
interpret.
This rare condition is only likely to occur when a client has improperly converted a POST request to a GET
request with long query information, when the client has descended into a “black hole” of redirection (e.g., a
redirected URI prefix that points to a suffix of itself) or when the server is under attack by a client attempting to
exploit potential security holes.
A 414 response is cacheable by default; i.e., unless otherwise indicated by the method definition or explicit
cache controls.
(See also: RFC 7231, Section 6.5.12)
Keyword Arguments
• title (str) – Error title (default ‘414 URI Too Long’).
• description (str) – Human-friendly description of the error, along with a helpful suggestion
or two (default None).
• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.
• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).
• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).

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exception falcon.HTTPUnsupportedMediaType(description=None, **kwargs)

415 Unsupported Media Type.
The origin server is refusing to service the request because the payload is in a format not supported by this
method on the target resource.
The format problem might be due to the request’s indicated Content- Type or Content-Encoding, or as a result
of inspecting the data directly.
(See also: RFC 7231, Section 6.5.13)
Keyword Arguments
• description (str) – Human-friendly description of the error, along with a helpful suggestion
or two.
• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.
• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).
• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).
exception falcon.HTTPRangeNotSatisfiable(resource_length)
416 Range Not Satisfiable.
None of the ranges in the request’s Range header field overlap the current extent of the selected resource or that
the set of ranges requested has been rejected due to invalid ranges or an excessive request of small or overlapping
ranges.
For byte ranges, failing to overlap the current extent means that the first-byte-pos of all of the byte-range-spec
values were greater than the current length of the selected representation. When this status code is generated
in response to a byte-range request, the sender SHOULD generate a Content-Range header field specifying the
current length of the selected representation.
(See also: RFC 7233, Section 4.4)
Parameters resource_length – The maximum value for the last-byte-pos of a range request.
Used to set the Content-Range header.
exception falcon.HTTPUnprocessableEntity(title=None, description=None, **kwargs)
422 Unprocessable Entity.

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The server understands the content type of the request entity (hence a 415 Unsupported Media Type status
code is inappropriate), and the syntax of the request entity is correct (thus a 400 Bad Request status code is
inappropriate) but was unable to process the contained instructions.
For example, this error condition may occur if an XML request body contains well-formed (i.e., syntactically
correct), but semantically erroneous, XML instructions.
(See also: RFC 4918, Section 11.2)
Keyword Arguments
• title (str) – Error title (default ‘422 Unprocessable Entity’).
• description (str) – Human-friendly description of the error, along with a helpful suggestion
or two.
• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.
• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).
• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).
exception falcon.HTTPTooManyRequests(title=None, description=None, retry_after=None,
**kwargs)
429 Too Many Requests.
The user has sent too many requests in a given amount of time (“rate limiting”).
The response representations SHOULD include details explaining the condition, and MAY include a Retry-After
header indicating how long to wait before making a new request.
Responses with the 429 status code MUST NOT be stored by a cache.
(See also: RFC 6585, Section 4)
Keyword Arguments
• title (str) – Error title (default ‘429 Too Many Requests’).
• description (str) – Human-friendly description of the rate limit that was exceeded.
• retry_after (datetime or int) – Value for the Retry-After header. If a datetime object,
will serialize as an HTTP date. Otherwise, a non-negative int is expected, representing the
number of seconds to wait.

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• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.
• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).
• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).
exception falcon.HTTPUnavailableForLegalReasons(title=None, **kwargs)
451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons.
The server is denying access to the resource as a consequence of a legal demand.
The server in question might not be an origin server. This type of legal demand typically most directly affects
the operations of ISPs and search engines.
Responses using this status code SHOULD include an explanation, in the response body, of the details of the
legal demand: the party making it, the applicable legislation or regulation, and what classes of person and
resource it applies to.
Note that in many cases clients can still access the denied resource by using technical countermeasures such as
a VPN or the Tor network.
A 451 response is cacheable by default; i.e., unless otherwise indicated by the method definition or explicit
cache controls.
(See also: RFC 7725, Section 3)
Keyword Arguments
• title (str) – Error title (default ‘451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons’).
• description (str) – Human-friendly description of the error, along with a helpful suggestion
or two (default None).
• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

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Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.
• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).
• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).
exception falcon.HTTPInternalServerError(title=None, description=None, **kwargs)
500 Internal Server Error.
The server encountered an unexpected condition that prevented it from fulfilling the request.
(See also: RFC 7231, Section 6.6.1)
Keyword Arguments
• title (str) – Error title (default ‘500 Internal Server Error’).
• description (str) – Human-friendly description of the error, along with a helpful suggestion
or two.
• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.
• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).
• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).
exception falcon.HTTPBadGateway(title=None, description=None, **kwargs)
502 Bad Gateway.
The server, while acting as a gateway or proxy, received an invalid response from an inbound server it accessed
while attempting to fulfill the request.
(See also: RFC 7231, Section 6.6.3)
Keyword Arguments
• title (str) – Error title (default ‘502 Bad Gateway’).

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• description (str) – Human-friendly description of the error, along with a helpful suggestion
or two.
• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.
• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).
• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).
exception falcon.HTTPServiceUnavailable(title=None, description=None, retry_after=None,
**kwargs)
503 Service Unavailable.
The server is currently unable to handle the request due to a temporary overload or scheduled maintenance,
which will likely be alleviated after some delay.
The server MAY send a Retry-After header field to suggest an appropriate amount of time for the client to wait
before retrying the request.
Note: The existence of the 503 status code does not imply that a server has to use it when becoming overloaded.
Some servers might simply refuse the connection.
(See also: RFC 7231, Section 6.6.4)
Keyword Arguments
• title (str) – Error title (default ‘503 Service Unavailable’).
• description (str) – Human-friendly description of the error, along with a helpful suggestion
or two.
• retry_after (datetime or int) – Value for the Retry-After header. If a datetime object,
will serialize as an HTTP date. Otherwise, a non-negative int is expected, representing the
number of seconds to wait.
• headers (dict or list) – A dict of header names and values to set, or a list of (name,
value) tuples. Both name and value must be of type str or StringType, and only char-
acter values 0x00 through 0xFF may be used on platforms that use wide characters.

Note: The Content-Type header, if present, will be overridden. If you wish to return custom
error messages, you can create your own HTTP error class, and install an error handler to
convert it into an appropriate HTTP response for the client

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Note: Falcon can process a list of tuple slightly faster than a dict.

• headers (dict) – Extra headers to return in the response to the client (default None).
• href (str) – A URL someone can visit to find out more information (default None). Unicode
characters are percent-encoded.
• href_text (str) – If href is given, use this as the friendly title/description for the link (default
‘API documentation for this error’).
• code (int) – An internal code that customers can reference in their support request or to help
them when searching for knowledge base articles related to this error (default None).

6.3.6 Redirection

Falcon defines a set of exceptions that can be raised within a middleware method, hook, or responder in order to trigger
a 3xx (Redirection) response to the client. Raising one of these classes short-circuits request processing in a manner
similar to raising an instance or subclass of HTTPError

Redirects

exception falcon.HTTPMovedPermanently(location)
301 Moved Permanently.
The 301 (Moved Permanently) status code indicates that the target resource has been assigned a new permanent
URI.

Note: For historical reasons, a user agent MAY change the request method from POST to GET for the subse-
quent request. If this behavior is undesired, the 308 (Permanent Redirect) status code can be used instead.

See also: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7231#section-6.4.2

Parameters location (str) – URI to provide as the Location header in the response.
exception falcon.HTTPFound(location)
302 Found.
The 302 (Found) status code indicates that the target resource resides temporarily under a different URI. Since
the redirection might be altered on occasion, the client ought to continue to use the effective request URI for
future requests.

Note: For historical reasons, a user agent MAY change the request method from POST to GET for the subse-
quent request. If this behavior is undesired, the 307 (Temporary Redirect) status code can be used instead.

See also: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7231#section-6.4.3

Parameters location (str) – URI to provide as the Location header in the response.
exception falcon.HTTPSeeOther(location)
303 See Other.
The 303 (See Other) status code indicates that the server is redirecting the user agent to a different resource, as
indicated by a URI in the Location header field, which is intended to provide an indirect response to the original
request.

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A 303 response to a GET request indicates that the origin server does not have a representation of the target
resource that can be transferred over HTTP. However, the Location header in the response may be dereferenced
to obtain a representation for an alternative resource. The recipient may find this alternative useful, even though
it does not represent the original target resource.

Note: The new URI in the Location header field is not considered equivalent to the effective request URI.

See also: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7231#section-6.4.4

Parameters location (str) – URI to provide as the Location header in the response.
exception falcon.HTTPTemporaryRedirect(location)
307 Temporary Redirect.
The 307 (Temporary Redirect) status code indicates that the target resource resides temporarily under a different
URI and the user agent MUST NOT change the request method if it performs an automatic redirection to that
URI. Since the redirection can change over time, the client ought to continue using the original effective request
URI for future requests.

Note: This status code is similar to 302 (Found), except that it does not allow changing the request method
from POST to GET.

See also: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7231#section-6.4.7

Parameters location (str) – URI to provide as the Location header in the response.
exception falcon.HTTPPermanentRedirect(location)
308 Permanent Redirect.
The 308 (Permanent Redirect) status code indicates that the target resource has been assigned a new permanent
URI.

Note: This status code is similar to 301 (Moved Permanently), except that it does not allow changing the
request method from POST to GET.

See also: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7238#section-3

Parameters location (str) – URI to provide as the Location header in the response.

6.3.7 Middleware

Middleware components provide a way to execute logic before the framework routes each request, after each request
is routed but before the target responder is called, or just before the response is returned for each request. Components
are registered with the middleware kwarg when instantiating Falcon’s API class.

Note: Unlike hooks, middleware methods apply globally to the entire API.

Falcon’s middleware interface is defined as follows:

class ExampleComponent(object):
def process_request(self, req, resp):
"""Process the request before routing it.

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Args:
req: Request object that will eventually be
routed to an on_* responder method.
resp: Response object that will be routed to
the on_* responder.
"""

def process_resource(self, req, resp, resource, params):

"""Process the request after routing.

Note:
This method is only called when the request matches
a route to a resource.

Args:
req: Request object that will be passed to the
routed responder.
resp: Response object that will be passed to the
responder.
resource: Resource object to which the request was
routed.
params: A dict-like object representing any additional
params derived from the route's URI template fields,
that will be passed to the resource's responder
method as keyword arguments.
"""

def process_response(self, req, resp, resource, req_succeeded):

"""Post-processing of the response (after routing).

Args:
req: Request object.
resp: Response object.
resource: Resource object to which the request was
routed. May be None if no route was found
for the request.
req_succeeded: True if no exceptions were raised while
the framework processed and routed the request;
otherwise False.
"""

Tip: Because process_request executes before routing has occurred, if a component modifies req.path in its
process_request method, the framework will use the modified value to route the request.

Tip: The process_resource method is only called when the request matches a route to a resource. To take action when
a route is not found, a sink may be used instead.

Each component’s process_request, process_resource, and process_response methods are executed hierarchically, as
a stack, following the ordering of the list passed via the middleware kwarg of falcon.API. For example, if a list of
middleware objects are passed as [mob1,mob2,mob3], the order of execution is as follows:

mob1.process_request
mob2.process_request
mob3.process_request

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mob1.process_resource
mob2.process_resource
mob3.process_resource
<route to responder method>
mob3.process_response
mob2.process_response
mob1.process_response

Note that each component need not implement all process_* methods; in the case that one of the three methods is
missing, it is treated as a noop in the stack. For example, if mob2 did not implement process_request and mob3 did
not implement process_response, the execution order would look like this:

mob1.process_request
_
mob3.process_request
mob1.process_resource
mob2.process_resource
mob3.process_resource
<route to responder method>
_
mob2.process_response
mob1.process_response

If one of the process_request middleware methods raises an error, it will be processed according to the error type. If
the type matches a registered error handler, that handler will be invoked and then the framework will begin to unwind
the stack, skipping any lower layers. The error handler may itself raise an instance of HTTPError, in which case the
framework will use the latter exception to update the resp object. Regardless, the framework will continue unwinding
the middleware stack. For example, if mob2.process_request were to raise an error, the framework would execute the
stack as follows:

mob1.process_request
mob2.process_request
<skip mob1/mob2 process_resource, mob3, and routing>
mob2.process_response
mob1.process_response

Finally, if one of the process_response methods raises an error, or the routed on_* responder method itself raises an
error, the exception will be handled in a similar manner as above. Then, the framework will execute any remaining
middleware on the stack.

6.3.8 Hooks

Falcon supports before and after hooks. You install a hook simply by applying one of the decorators below, either to
an individual responder or to an entire resource.
For example, consider this hook that validates a POST request for an image resource:

def validate_image_type(req, resp, resource, params):

if req.content_type not in ALLOWED_IMAGE_TYPES:
msg = 'Image type not allowed. Must be PNG, JPEG, or GIF'
raise falcon.HTTPBadRequest('Bad request', msg)

You would attach this hook to an on_post responder like so:

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@falcon.before(validate_image_type)
def on_post(self, req, resp):
pass

Or, suppose you had a hook that you would like to apply to all responders for a given resource. In that case, you would
simply decorate the resource class:

@falcon.before(extract_project_id)
class Message(object):
def on_post(self, req, resp):
pass

def on_get(self, req, resp):

pass

Falcon middleware components can also be used to insert logic before and after requests. However, unlike hooks,
middleware components are triggered globally for all requests.
falcon.before(action)
Decorator to execute the given action function before the responder.
Parameters action (callable) – A function of the form
func(req,resp,resource,params), where resource is a reference to the resource
class instance associated with the request, and params is a dict of URI Template field names, if
any, that will be passed into the resource responder as kwargs.

Note: Hooks may inject extra params as needed. For example:

def do_something(req, resp, resource, params):

try:
params['id'] = int(params['id'])
except ValueError:
raise falcon.HTTPBadRequest('Invalid ID',
'ID was not valid.')

params['answer'] = 42

falcon.after(action)
Decorator to execute the given action function after the responder.
Parameters action (callable) – A function of the form func(req,resp,resource),
where resource is a reference to the resource class instance associated with the request

6.3.9 Routing

The falcon.routing module contains utilities used internally by falcon.API() to route requests. They are exposed
here for use by custom routing engines.
A custom router is any class that implements the following interface:

class FancyRouter(object):
def add_route(self, uri_template, method_map, resource):
"""Adds a route between URI path template and resource.

Args:

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uri_template (str): The URI template to add.

method_map (dict): A method map obtained by calling
falcon.routing.create_http_method_map.
resource (object): Instance of the resource class that
will handle requests for the given URI.
"""

def find(self, uri):

"""Search for a route that matches the given partial URI.

Args:
uri(str): The requested path to route

Returns:
tuple: A 4-member tuple composed of (resource, method_map,
params, uri_template), or ``None`` if no route matches
the requested path
"""

A custom routing engine may be specified when instantiating falcon.API(). For example:

fancy = FancyRouter()
api = API(router=fancy)

Default router and utility functions.

This package implements Falcon’s default routing engine, and also includes utility functions to aid in the implemen-
tation of custom routers.
falcon.routing.create_http_method_map(resource)
Maps HTTP methods (e.g., ‘GET’, ‘POST’) to methods of a resource object.
Parameters resource – An object with responder methods, following the naming con-
vention on_*, that correspond to each method the resource supports. For example, if
a resource supports GET and POST, it should define on_get(self,req,resp) and
on_post(self,req,resp).
Returns A mapping of HTTP methods to responders.
Return type dict
falcon.routing.compile_uri_template(template)
Compile the given URI template string into a pattern matcher.
This function can be used to construct custom routing engines that iterate through a list of possible routes,
attempting to match an incoming request against each route’s compiled regular expression.
Each field is converted to a named group, so that when a match is found, the fields can be easily extracted using
re.MatchObject.groupdict().
This function does not support the more flexible templating syntax used in the default router. Only simple paths
with bracketed field expressions are recognized. For example:

/
/books
/books/{isbn}
/books/{isbn}/characters
/books/{isbn}/characters/{name}

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Also, note that if the template contains a trailing slash character, it will be stripped in order to normalize the
routing logic.
Parameters template (str) – The template to compile. Note that field names are restricted to
ASCII a-z, A-Z, and the underscore character.
Returns (template_field_names, template_regex)
Return type tuple
class falcon.routing.CompiledRouter
Fast URI router which compiles its routing logic to Python code.
Generally you do not need to use this router class directly, as an instance is created by default when the fal-
con.API class is initialized.
The router treats URI paths as a tree of URI segments and searches by checking the URI one segment at a time.
Instead of interpreting the route tree for each look-up, it generates inlined, bespoke Python code to perform the
search, then compiles that code. This makes the route processing quite fast.
add_route(uri_template, method_map, resource)
Adds a route between a URI path template and a resource.
Parameters
• uri_template (str) – A URI template to use for the route
• method_map (dict) – A mapping of HTTP methods (e.g., ‘GET’, ‘POST’) to methods
of a resource object.
• resource (object) – The resource instance to associate with the URI template.
find(uri)
Search for a route that matches the given partial URI.
Parameters uri (str) – The requested path to route
Returns
A 4-member tuple composed of (resource, method_map, params, uri_template), or
None if no route matches the requested path
Return type tuple

6.3.10 Utilities

URI Functions

URI utilities.
This module provides utility functions to parse, encode, decode, and otherwise manipulate a URI. These functions are
not available directly in the falcon module, and so must be explicitly imported:

from falcon import uri

name, port = uri.parse_host('example.org:8080')

falcon.uri.encode(uri)
Encodes a full or relative URI according to RFC 3986.
RFC 3986 defines a set of “unreserved” characters as well as a set of “reserved” characters used as delimiters.
This function escapes all other “disallowed” characters by percent-encoding them.

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Note: This utility is faster in the average case than the similar quote function found in urlib. It also strives
to be easier to use by assuming a sensible default of allowed characters.

Parameters uri (str) – URI or part of a URI to encode. If this is a wide string (i.e.,
six.text_type), it will be encoded to a UTF-8 byte array and any multibyte sequences
will be percent-encoded as-is.
Returns An escaped version of uri, where all disallowed characters have been percent-encoded.
Return type str

falcon.uri.encode_value(uri)
Encodes a value string according to RFC 3986.
Disallowed characters are percent-encoded in a way that models urllib.parse.quote(safe="~").
However, the Falcon function is faster in the average case than the similar quote function found in urlib. It
also strives to be easier to use by assuming a sensible default of allowed characters.
All reserved characters are lumped together into a single set of “delimiters”, and everything in that set is escaped.

Note: RFC 3986 defines a set of “unreserved” characters as well as a set of “reserved” characters used as
delimiters.

Parameters uri (str) – URI fragment to encode. It is assumed not to cross delimiter boundaries,
and so any reserved URI delimiter characters included in it will be escaped. If value is a wide
string (i.e., six.text_type), it will be encoded to a UTF-8 byte array and any multibyte
sequences will be percent-encoded as-is.
Returns An escaped version of uri, where all disallowed characters have been percent-encoded.
Return type str

falcon.uri.decode(encoded_uri)
Decodes percent-encoded characters in a URI or query string.
This function models the behavior of urllib.parse.unquote_plus, but is faster. It is also more robust, in that it
will decode escaped UTF-8 mutibyte sequences.
Parameters encoded_uri (str) – An encoded URI (full or partial).
Returns A decoded URL. Will be of type unicode on Python 2 IFF the URL contained escaped
non-ASCII characters, in which case UTF-8 is assumed per RFC 3986.
Return type str
falcon.uri.parse_host(host, default_port=None)
Parse a canonical ‘host:port’ string into parts.
Parse a host string (which may or may not contain a port) into parts, taking into account that the string may
contain either a domain name or an IP address. In the latter case, both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are supported.
Parameters
• host (str) – Host string to parse, optionally containing a port number.
• default_port (int, optional) – Port number to return when the host string does
not contain one (default None).

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Returns A parsed (host, port) tuple from the given host string, with the port converted to an int. If
the host string does not specify a port, default_port is used instead.
Return type tuple
falcon.uri.parse_query_string(query_string, keep_blank_qs_values=False, parse_qs_csv=True)
Parse a query string into a dict.
Query string parameters are assumed to use standard form-encoding. Only parameters with values are returned.
For example, given ‘foo=bar&flag’, this function would ignore ‘flag’ unless the keep_blank_qs_values option is
set.

Note: In addition to the standard HTML form-based method for specifying lists by repeating a given param
multiple times, Falcon supports a more compact form in which the param may be given a single time but set to
a list of comma-separated elements (e.g., ‘foo=a,b,c’).
When using this format, all commas uri-encoded will not be treated by Falcon as a delimiter. If the client wants
to send a value as a list, it must not encode the commas with the values.
The two different ways of specifying lists may not be mixed in a single query string for the same parameter.

Parameters
• query_string (str) – The query string to parse.
• keep_blank_qs_values (bool) – Set to True to return fields even if they do not have
a value (default False). For comma-separated values, this option also determines whether
or not empty elements in the parsed list are retained.
• parse_qs_csv – Set to False in order to disable splitting query parameters on , (de-
fault True). Depending on the user agent, encoding lists as multiple occurrences of the
same parameter might be preferable. In this case, setting parse_qs_csv to False will cause
the framework to treat commas as literal characters in each occurring parameter value.
Returns A dictionary of (name, value) pairs, one per query parameter. Note that value may be a
single str, or a list of str.
Return type dict
Raises TypeError – query_string was not a str.

falcon.uri.unquote_string(quoted)
Unquote an RFC 7320 “quoted-string”.
Parameters quoted (str) – Original quoted string
Returns unquoted string
Return type str
Raises TypeError – quoted was not a str.

Miscellaneous

falcon.deprecated(instructions)
Flags a method as deprecated.
This function returns a decorator which can be used to mark deprecated functions. Applying this decorator will
result in a warning being emitted when the function is used.

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Parameters instructions (str) – Specific guidance for the developer, e.g.: ‘Please migrate to
add_proxy(...)’‘
falcon.http_now()
Returns the current UTC time as an IMF-fixdate.
Returns The current UTC time as an IMF-fixdate, e.g., ‘Tue, 15 Nov 1994 12:45:26 GMT’.
Return type str
falcon.dt_to_http(dt)
Converts a datetime instance to an HTTP date string.
Parameters dt (datetime) – A datetime instance to convert, assumed to be UTC.
Returns An RFC 1123 date string, e.g.: “Tue, 15 Nov 1994 12:45:26 GMT”.
Return type str
falcon.http_date_to_dt(http_date, obs_date=False)
Converts an HTTP date string to a datetime instance.
Parameters
• http_date (str) – An RFC 1123 date string, e.g.: “Tue, 15 Nov 1994 12:45:26 GMT”.
• obs_date (bool, optional) – Support obs-date formats according to RFC 7231, e.g.:
“Sunday, 06-Nov-94 08:49:37 GMT” (default False).
Returns A UTC datetime instance corresponding to the given HTTP date.
Return type datetime
Raises ValueError – http_date doesn’t match any of the available time formats
falcon.to_query_str(params, comma_delimited_lists=True, prefix=True)
Converts a dictionary of parameters to a query string.
Parameters
• params (dict) – A dictionary of parameters, where each key is a parameter name, and
each value is either a str or something that can be converted into a str, or a list of such
values. If a list, the value will be converted to a comma-delimited string of values (e.g.,
‘thing=1,2,3’).
• comma_delimited_lists (bool) – Set to False to encode list values by specifying
multiple instances of the parameter (e.g., ‘thing=1&thing=2&thing=3’). Otherwise, param-
eters will be encoded as comma-separated values (e.g., ‘thing=1,2,3’). Defaults to True.
• prefix (bool) – Set to False to exclude the ‘?’ prefix in the result string (default
True).
Returns A URI query string, including the ‘?’ prefix (unless prefix is False), or an empty string if
no params are given (the dict is empty).
Return type str
falcon.get_http_status(status_code, default_reason=’Unknown’)
Gets both the http status code and description from just a code
Parameters
• status_code – integer or string that can be converted to an integer
• default_reason – default text to be appended to the status_code if the lookup does not
find a result

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Returns status code e.g. “404 Not Found”

Return type str
Raises ValueError – the value entered could not be converted to an integer
falcon.get_bound_method(obj, method_name)
Get a bound method of the given object by name.
Parameters
• obj – Object on which to look up the method.
• method_name – Name of the method to retrieve.
Returns Bound method, or None if the method does not exist on the object.
Raises AttributeError – The method exists, but it isn’t bound (most likely a class was passed,
rather than an instance of that class).
class falcon.TimezoneGMT
GMT timezone class implementing the datetime.tzinfo interface.
dst(dt)
Return the daylight saving time (DST) adjustment.
Parameters dt (datetime.datetime) – Ignored
Returns DST adjustment for GMT, which is always 0.
Return type datetime.timedelta
tzname(dt)
Get the name of this timezone.
Parameters dt (datetime.datetime) – Ignored
Returns “GMT”
Return type str
utcoffset(dt)
Get the offset from UTC.
Parameters dt (datetime.datetime) – Ignored
Returns GMT offset, which is equivalent to UTC and so is aways 0.
Return type datetime.timedelta

6.3.11 Testing

Testing utilities.
This package contains various test classes and utility functions to support functional testing for both Falcon-based
apps and the Falcon framework itself. Both unittest-style and pytest-style tests are supported:
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
# unittest-style
# -----------------------------------------------------------------

from falcon import testing

import myapp

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class MyTestCase(testing.TestCase):
def setUp(self):
super(MyTestCase, self).setUp()

# Assume the hypothetical `myapp` package has a

# function called `create()` to initialize and
# return a `falcon.API` instance.
self.app = myapp.create()

class TestMyApp(MyTestCase):
def test_get_message(self):
doc = {u'message': u'Hello world!'}

result = self.simulate_get('/messages/42')
self.assertEqual(result.json, doc)

# -----------------------------------------------------------------
# pytest-style
# -----------------------------------------------------------------

from falcon import testing

import pytest

import myapp

@pytest.fixture(scope='module')
def client():
# Assume the hypothetical `myapp` package has a
# function called `create()` to initialize and
# return a `falcon.API` instance.
return testing.TestClient(myapp.create())

def test_get_message(client):
doc = {u'message': u'Hello world!'}

result = client.simulate_get('/messages/42')
assert result.json == doc

class falcon.testing.Result(iterable, status, headers)

Encapsulates the result of a simulated WSGI request.
Parameters
• iterable (iterable) – An iterable that yields zero or more bytestrings, per PEP-3333
• status (str) – An HTTP status string, including status code and reason string
• headers (list) – A list of (header_name, header_value) tuples, per PEP-3333
status
str – HTTP status string given in the response
status_code
int – The code portion of the HTTP status string
headers

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CaseInsensitiveDict – A case-insensitive dictionary containing all the headers in the response, except for
cookies, which may be accessed via the cookies attribute.

Note: Multiple instances of a header in the response are currently not supported; it is unspecified which
value will “win” and be represented in headers.

cookies
dict – A dictionary of falcon.testing.Cookie values parsed from the response, by name.
encoding
str – Text encoding of the response body, or None if the encoding can not be determined.
content
bytes – Raw response body, or bytes if the response body was empty.
text
str – Decoded response body of type unicode under Python 2.6 and 2.7, and of type str otherwise. If
the content type does not specify an encoding, UTF-8 is assumed.
json
dict – Deserialized JSON body. Raises an error if the response is not JSON.
class falcon.testing.Cookie(morsel)
Represents a cookie returned by a simulated request.
Parameters morsel – A Morsel object from which to derive the cookie data.
name
str – The cookie’s name.
value
str – The value of the cookie.
expires
datetime.datetime – Expiration timestamp for the cookie, or None if not specified.
path
str – The path prefix to which this cookie is restricted, or None if not specified.
domain
str – The domain to which this cookie is restricted, or None if not specified.
max_age
int – The lifetime of the cookie in seconds, or None if not specified.
secure
bool – Whether or not the cookie may only only be transmitted from the client via HTTPS.
http_only
bool – Whether or not the cookie may only be included in unscripted requests from the client.
falcon.testing.simulate_request(app, method=’GET’, path=’/’, query_string=None, head-
ers=None, body=None, file_wrapper=None, params=None,
params_csv=True)
Simulates a request to a WSGI application.
Performs a request against a WSGI application. Uses wsgiref.validate to ensure the response is valid
WSGI.
Keyword Arguments
• app (callable) – The WSGI application to call

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• method (str) – An HTTP method to use in the request (default: ‘GET’)

• path (str) – The URL path to request (default: ‘/’)
• params (dict) – A dictionary of query string parameters, where each key is a parameter
name, and each value is either a str or something that can be converted into a str, or a
list of such values. If a list, the value will be converted to a comma-delimited string of
values (e.g., ‘thing=1,2,3’).
• params_csv (bool) – Set to False to encode list values in query string params by spec-
ifying multiple instances of the parameter (e.g., ‘thing=1&thing=2&thing=3’). Otherwise,
parameters will be encoded as comma-separated values (e.g., ‘thing=1,2,3’). Defaults to
True.
• query_string (str) – A raw query string to include in the request (default: None). If speci-
fied, overrides params.
• headers (dict) – Additional headers to include in the request (default: None)
• body (str) – A string to send as the body of the request. Accepts both byte strings and
Unicode strings (default: None). If a Unicode string is provided, it will be encoded as
UTF-8 in the request.
• file_wrapper (callable) – Callable that returns an iterable, to be used as the value for
wsgi.file_wrapper in the environ (default: None). This can be used to test high-performance
file transmission when resp.stream is set to a file-like object.
Returns The result of the request
Return type Result
falcon.testing.simulate_get(app, path, **kwargs)
Simulates a GET request to a WSGI application.
Equivalent to:

simulate_request(app, 'GET', path, **kwargs)

Parameters
• app (callable) – The WSGI application to call
• path (str) – The URL path to request
Keyword Arguments
• params (dict) – A dictionary of query string parameters, where each key is a parameter
name, and each value is either a str or something that can be converted into a str, or a
list of such values. If a list, the value will be converted to a comma-delimited string of
values (e.g., ‘thing=1,2,3’).
• params_csv (bool) – Set to False to encode list values in query string params by spec-
ifying multiple instances of the parameter (e.g., ‘thing=1&thing=2&thing=3’). Otherwise,
parameters will be encoded as comma-separated values (e.g., ‘thing=1,2,3’). Defaults to
True.
• query_string (str) – A raw query string to include in the request (default: None). If speci-
fied, overrides params.
• headers (dict) – Additional headers to include in the request (default: None)

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• file_wrapper (callable) – Callable that returns an iterable, to be used as the value for
wsgi.file_wrapper in the environ (default: None). This can be used to test high-performance
file transmission when resp.stream is set to a file-like object.

falcon.testing.simulate_head(app, path, **kwargs)

Simulates a HEAD request to a WSGI application.
Equivalent to:

simulate_request(app, 'HEAD', path, **kwargs)

Parameters
• app (callable) – The WSGI application to call
• path (str) – The URL path to request
Keyword Arguments
• params (dict) – A dictionary of query string parameters, where each key is a parameter
name, and each value is either a str or something that can be converted into a str, or a
list of such values. If a list, the value will be converted to a comma-delimited string of
values (e.g., ‘thing=1,2,3’).
• params_csv (bool) – Set to False to encode list values in query string params by spec-
ifying multiple instances of the parameter (e.g., ‘thing=1&thing=2&thing=3’). Otherwise,
parameters will be encoded as comma-separated values (e.g., ‘thing=1,2,3’). Defaults to
True.
• query_string (str) – A raw query string to include in the request (default: None). If speci-
fied, overrides params.
• headers (dict) – Additional headers to include in the request (default: None)

falcon.testing.simulate_post(app, path, **kwargs)

Simulates a POST request to a WSGI application.
Equivalent to:

simulate_request(app, 'POST', path, **kwargs)

Parameters
• app (callable) – The WSGI application to call
• path (str) – The URL path to request
Keyword Arguments
• params (dict) – A dictionary of query string parameters, where each key is a parameter
name, and each value is either a str or something that can be converted into a str, or a
list of such values. If a list, the value will be converted to a comma-delimited string of
values (e.g., ‘thing=1,2,3’).
• params_csv (bool) – Set to False to encode list values in query string params by spec-
ifying multiple instances of the parameter (e.g., ‘thing=1&thing=2&thing=3’). Otherwise,
parameters will be encoded as comma-separated values (e.g., ‘thing=1,2,3’). Defaults to
True.
• headers (dict) – Additional headers to include in the request (default: None)

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• body (str) – A string to send as the body of the request. Accepts both byte strings and
Unicode strings (default: None). If a Unicode string is provided, it will be encoded as
UTF-8 in the request.

falcon.testing.simulate_put(app, path, **kwargs)

Simulates a PUT request to a WSGI application.
Equivalent to:

simulate_request(app, 'PUT', path, **kwargs)

Parameters
• app (callable) – The WSGI application to call
• path (str) – The URL path to request
Keyword Arguments
• params (dict) – A dictionary of query string parameters, where each key is a parameter
name, and each value is either a str or something that can be converted into a str, or a
list of such values. If a list, the value will be converted to a comma-delimited string of
values (e.g., ‘thing=1,2,3’).
• params_csv (bool) – Set to False to encode list values in query string params by spec-
ifying multiple instances of the parameter (e.g., ‘thing=1&thing=2&thing=3’). Otherwise,
parameters will be encoded as comma-separated values (e.g., ‘thing=1,2,3’). Defaults to
True.
• headers (dict) – Additional headers to include in the request (default: None)
• body (str) – A string to send as the body of the request. Accepts both byte strings and
Unicode strings (default: None). If a Unicode string is provided, it will be encoded as
UTF-8 in the request.

falcon.testing.simulate_options(app, path, **kwargs)

Simulates an OPTIONS request to a WSGI application.
Equivalent to:

simulate_request(app, 'OPTIONS', path, **kwargs)

Parameters
• app (callable) – The WSGI application to call
• path (str) – The URL path to request
Keyword Arguments
• params (dict) – A dictionary of query string parameters, where each key is a parameter
name, and each value is either a str or something that can be converted into a str, or a
list of such values. If a list, the value will be converted to a comma-delimited string of
values (e.g., ‘thing=1,2,3’).
• params_csv (bool) – Set to False to encode list values in query string params by spec-
ifying multiple instances of the parameter (e.g., ‘thing=1&thing=2&thing=3’). Otherwise,
parameters will be encoded as comma-separated values (e.g., ‘thing=1,2,3’). Defaults to
True.
• headers (dict) – Additional headers to include in the request (default: None)

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falcon.testing.simulate_patch(app, path, **kwargs)

Simulates a PATCH request to a WSGI application.
Equivalent to:

simulate_request(app, 'PATCH', path, **kwargs)

Parameters
• app (callable) – The WSGI application to call
• path (str) – The URL path to request
Keyword Arguments
• params (dict) – A dictionary of query string parameters, where each key is a parameter
name, and each value is either a str or something that can be converted into a str, or a
list of such values. If a list, the value will be converted to a comma-delimited string of
values (e.g., ‘thing=1,2,3’).
• params_csv (bool) – Set to False to encode list values in query string params by spec-
ifying multiple instances of the parameter (e.g., ‘thing=1&thing=2&thing=3’). Otherwise,
parameters will be encoded as comma-separated values (e.g., ‘thing=1,2,3’). Defaults to
True.
• headers (dict) – Additional headers to include in the request (default: None)
• body (str) – A string to send as the body of the request. Accepts both byte strings and
Unicode strings (default: None). If a Unicode string is provided, it will be encoded as
UTF-8 in the request.

falcon.testing.simulate_delete(app, path, **kwargs)

Simulates a DELETE request to a WSGI application.
Equivalent to:

simulate_request(app, 'DELETE', path, **kwargs)

Parameters
• app (callable) – The WSGI application to call
• path (str) – The URL path to request
Keyword Arguments
• params (dict) – A dictionary of query string parameters, where each key is a parameter
name, and each value is either a str or something that can be converted into a str, or a
list of such values. If a list, the value will be converted to a comma-delimited string of
values (e.g., ‘thing=1,2,3’).
• params_csv (bool) – Set to False to encode list values in query string params by spec-
ifying multiple instances of the parameter (e.g., ‘thing=1&thing=2&thing=3’). Otherwise,
parameters will be encoded as comma-separated values (e.g., ‘thing=1,2,3’). Defaults to
True.
• headers (dict) – Additional headers to include in the request (default: None)

class falcon.testing.TestClient(app)
Simulates requests to a WSGI application.

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This class provides a contextual wrapper for Falcon’s simulate_* test functions. It lets you replace this:

simulate_get(app, '/messages')
simulate_head(app, '/messages')

with this:

client = TestClient(app)
client.simulate_get('/messages')
client.simulate_head('/messages')

Parameters app (callable) – A WSGI application to target when simulating requests

simulate_delete(path=’/’, **kwargs)
Simulates a DELETE request to a WSGI application.
See also: falcon.testing.simulate_delete().
simulate_get(path=’/’, **kwargs)
Simulates a GET request to a WSGI application.
See also: falcon.testing.simulate_get().
simulate_head(path=’/’, **kwargs)
Simulates a HEAD request to a WSGI application.
See also: falcon.testing.simulate_head().
simulate_options(path=’/’, **kwargs)
Simulates an OPTIONS request to a WSGI application.
See also: falcon.testing.simulate_options().
simulate_patch(path=’/’, **kwargs)
Simulates a PATCH request to a WSGI application.
See also: falcon.testing.simulate_patch().
simulate_post(path=’/’, **kwargs)
Simulates a POST request to a WSGI application.
See also: falcon.testing.simulate_post().
simulate_put(path=’/’, **kwargs)
Simulates a PUT request to a WSGI application.
See also: falcon.testing.simulate_put().
simulate_request(*args, **kwargs)
Simulates a request to a WSGI application.
Wraps falcon.testing.simulate_request() to perform a WSGI request directly against
self.app. Equivalent to:

falcon.testing.simulate_request(self.app, *args, **kwargs)

class falcon.testing.TestCase(methodName=’runTest’)
Extends unittest to support WSGI functional testing.

Note: If available, uses testtools in lieu of unittest.

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This base class provides some extra plumbing for unittest-style test cases, to help simulate WSGI
calls without having to spin up an actual web server. Various simulation methods are derived from
falcon.testing.TestClient.
Simply inherit from this class in your test case classes instead of unittest.TestCase or
testtools.TestCase.
app
object – A WSGI application to target when simulating requests (default: falcon.API()). When testing
your application, you will need to set this to your own instance of falcon.API. For example:
from falcon import testing
import myapp

class MyTestCase(testing.TestCase):
def setUp(self):
super(MyTestCase, self).setUp()

# Assume the hypothetical `myapp` package has a

# function called `create()` to initialize and
# return a `falcon.API` instance.
self.app = myapp.create()

class TestMyApp(MyTestCase):
def test_get_message(self):
doc = {u'message': u'Hello world!'}

result = self.simulate_get('/messages/42')
self.assertEqual(result.json, doc)

api
object – Deprecated alias for app
api_class
callable – Deprecated class variable; will be removed in a future release.
class falcon.testing.SimpleTestResource(status=None, body=None, json=None, head-
ers=None)
Mock resource for functional testing of framework components.
This class implements a simple test resource that can be extended as needed to test middleware, hooks, and the
Falcon framework itself.
Only noop on_get() and on_post() responders are implemented; when overriding
these, or adding additional responders in child classes, they can be decorated with the
falcon.testing.capture_responder_args() hook in order to capture the req, resp, and
params arguments that are passed to the responder. Responders may also be decorated with the
falcon.testing.set_resp_defaults() hook in order to set resp properties to default status,
body, and header values.
Keyword Arguments
• status (str) – Default status string to use in responses
• body (str) – Default body string to use in responses
• json (dict) – Default JSON document to use in responses. Will be serialized to a string and
encoded as UTF-8. Either json or body may be specified, but not both.
• headers (dict) – Default set of additional headers to include in responses

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captured_req
falcon.Request – The last Request object passed into any one of the responder methods.
captured_resp
falcon.Response – The last Response object passed into any one of the responder methods.
captured_kwargs
dict – The last dictionary of kwargs, beyond req and resp, that were passed into any one of the responder
methods.
class falcon.testing.StartResponseMock
Mock object representing a WSGI start_response callable.
call_count
int – Number of times start_response was called.
status
str – HTTP status line, e.g. ‘785 TPS Cover Sheet not attached’.
headers
list – Raw headers list passed to start_response, per PEP-333.
headers_dict
dict – Headers as a case-insensitive dict-like object, instead of a list.
falcon.testing.capture_responder_args(req, resp, resource, params)
Before hook for capturing responder arguments.
Adds the following attributes to the hooked responder’s resource class:
•captured_req
•captured_resp
•captured_kwargs
falcon.testing.rand_string(min, max)
Returns a randomly-generated string, of a random length.
Parameters
• min (int) – Minimum string length to return, inclusive
• max (int) – Maximum string length to return, inclusive
falcon.testing.create_environ(path=’/’, query_string=’‘, protocol=’HTTP/1.1’, scheme=’http’,
host=’falconframework.org’, port=None, headers=None, app=’‘,
body=’‘, method=’GET’, wsgierrors=None, file_wrapper=None)
Creates a mock PEP-3333 environ dict for simulating WSGI requests.
Keyword Arguments
• path (str) – The path for the request (default ‘/’)
• query_string (str) – The query string to simulate, without a leading ‘?’ (default ‘’)
• protocol (str) – The HTTP protocol to simulate (default ‘HTTP/1.1’). If set to ‘HTTP/1.0’,
the Host header will not be added to the environment.
• scheme (str) – URL scheme, either ‘http’ or ‘https’ (default ‘http’)
• host (str) – Hostname for the request (default ‘falconframework.org’)
• port (str) – The TCP port to simulate. Defaults to the standard port used by the given
scheme (i.e., 80 for ‘http’ and 443 for ‘https’).
• headers (dict) – Headers as a dict or an iterable yielding (key, value) tuple‘s

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• app (str) – Value for the SCRIPT_NAME environ variable, described in PEP-333: ‘The
initial portion of the request URL’s “path” that corresponds to the application object, so that
the application knows its virtual “location”. This may be an empty string, if the application
corresponds to the “root” of the server.’ (default ‘’)
• body (str) – The body of the request (default ‘’). Accepts both byte strings and Unicode
strings. Unicode strings are encoded as UTF-8 in the request.
• method (str) – The HTTP method to use (default ‘GET’)
• wsgierrors (io) – The stream to use as wsgierrors (default sys.stderr)
• file_wrapper – Callable that returns an iterable, to be used as the value for
wsgi.file_wrapper in the environ.

Deprecated

class falcon.testing.TestBase(methodName=’runTest’)
Extends unittest to support WSGI functional testing.

Warning: This class has been deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Please use TestCase
instead.

Note: If available, uses testtools in lieu of unittest.

This base class provides some extra plumbing for unittest-style test cases, to help simulate WSGI calls without
having to spin up an actual web server. Simply inherit from this class in your test case classes instead of
unittest.TestCase or testtools.TestCase.
api
falcon.API – An API instance to target when simulating requests. Defaults to falcon.API().
srmock
falcon.testing.StartResponseMock – Provides a callable that simulates the behavior of the start_response
argument that the server would normally pass into the WSGI app. The mock object captures various
information from the app’s response to the simulated request.
test_route
str – A simple, generated path that a test can use to add a route to the API.
api_class
alias of API
setUp()
Initializer, unittest-style
simulate_request(path, decode=None, **kwargs)
Simulates a request to self.api.
Parameters
• path (str) – The path to request.
• decode (str, optional) – If this is set to a character encoding, such as ‘utf-8’,
simulate_request will assume the response is a single byte string, and will decode it as the
result of the request, rather than simply returning the standard WSGI iterable.
• kwargs (optional) – Same as those defined for falcon.testing.create_environ.

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srmock_class
alias of StartResponseMock
tearDown()
Destructor, unittest-style
class falcon.testing.TestResource
Mock resource for functional testing.

Warning: This class is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Please use
SimpleTestResource instead.

This class implements the on_get responder, captures request data, and sets response body and headers.
Child classes may add additional methods and attributes as needed.
sample_status
str – HTTP status to set in the response
sample_body
str – Random body string to set in the response
resp_headers
dict – Sample headers to use in the response
req
falcon.Request – Request object passed into the on_get responder.
resp
falcon.Response – Response object passed into the on_get responder.
kwargs
dict – Keyword arguments passed into the on_get responder, if any.
called
bool – True if on_get was ever called; False otherwise.
on_get(req, resp, **kwargs)
GET responder.
Captures req, resp, and kwargs. Also sets up a sample response.
Parameters
• req – Falcon Request instance.
• resp – Falcon Response instance.
• kwargs – URI template name=value pairs, if any, along with any extra args injected by
middleware.

6.4 Changelogs

6.4.1 Changelog for Falcon 1.1.0

Breaking Changes

(None)

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New & Improved

• A new bounded_stream property was added to falcon.Request that can be used in place of the stream
property to mitigate the blocking behavior of input objects used by some WSGI servers.
• A new uri_template property was added to Request to expose the template for the route corresponding to the
path requested by the user agent.
• A context property was added to Response to mirror the same property that is already available for Request.
• JSON-encoded query parameter values can now be retrieved and decoded in a single step via
get_param_as_dict().
• CSV-style parsing of query parameter values can now be disabled.
• get_param_as_bool() now recognizes “on” and “off” in support of IE’s default checkbox values.
• An accept_ranges property was added to Response to facilitate setting the Accept-Ranges header.
• Added the HTTPUriTooLong and HTTPGone error classes.
• When a title is not specified for HTTPError, it now defaults to the HTTP status text.
• All parameters are now optional for most error classes.
• Cookie-related documentation has been clarified and expanded
• The falcon.testing.Cookie class was added to represent a cookie returned by a simulated request.
falcon.testing.Result now exposes a cookies attribute for examining returned cookies.
• pytest support was added to Falcon’s testing framework. Apps can now choose to either write unittest- or
pytest-style tests.
• The test runner for Falcon’s own tests was switched from nose to pytest.
• When simulating a request using Falcon’s testing framework, query string parameters can now be specified as a
dict, as an alternative to passing a raw query string.
• A flag is now passed to the process_request middleware method to signal whether or not an exception was raised
while processing the request. A shim was added to avoid breaking existing middleware methods that do not yet
accept this new parameter.
• A new CLI utility, falcon-print-routes, was added that takes in a module:callable, introspects the routes, and
prints the results to stdout. This utility is automatically installed along with the framework:

$ falcon-print-routes commissaire:api
-> /api/v0/status
-> /api/v0/cluster/{name}
-> /api/v0/cluster/{name}/hosts
-> /api/v0/cluster/{name}/hosts/{address}

• Custom attributes can now be attached to instances of Request and Response. This can be used as an
alternative to adding values to the context property, or implementing custom subclasses.
• get_http_status() was implemented to provide a way to look up a full HTTP status line, given just a
status code.

Fixed

• When auto_parse_form_urlencoded is set to True, the framework now checks the HTTP method
before attempting to consume and parse the body.

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• Before attempting to read the body of a form-encoded request, the framework now checks the Content-Length
header to ensure that a non-empty body is expected. This helps prevent bad requests from causing a blocking
read when running behind certain WSGI servers.
• When the requested method is not implemented for the target resource, the framework now raises
HTTPMethodNotAllowed, rather than modifying the Request object directly. This improves visibility
for custom error handlers and for middleware methods.
• Error class docstrings have been updated to reflect the latest RFCs.
• When an error is raised by a resource method or a hook, the error will now always be processed (including
setting the appropriate properties of the Response object) before middleware methods are called.
• A case was fixed in which middleware processing did not continue when an instance of HTTPError or
HTTPStatus was raised.
• The encode() method will now attempt to detect whether the specified string has already been encoded, and
return it unchanged if that is the case.
• The default OPTIONS responder now explicitly sets Content-Length to zero in the response.
• falcon.testing.Result now assumes that the response body is encoded as UTF-8 when the character
set is not specified, rather than raising an error when attempting to decode the response body.
• When simulating requests, Falcon’s testing framework now properly tunnels Unicode characters through the
WSGI interface.
• import falcon.uri now works, in addition to from falcon import uri.
• URI template fields are now validated up front, when the route is added, to ensure they are valid Python identi-
fiers. This prevents cryptic errors from being raised later on when requests are routed.
• When running under Python 3, inspect.signature() is used instead of inspect.getargspec() to
provide compatibility with annotated functions.

6.4.2 Changelog for Falcon 1.0.0

Breaking Changes

• The deprecated global hooks feature has been removed. API no longer accepts before and after kwargs. Appli-
cations can work around this by migrating any logic contained in global hooks to reside in middleware compo-
nents instead.
• The middleware method process_resource() must now accept an additional params argument. This
gives the middleware method an opportunity to interact with the values for any fields defined in a route’s URI
template.
• The middleware method process_resource() is now skipped when no route is found for the incoming
request. This avoids having to include an if resource is not None check when implementing this
method. A sink may be used instead to execute logic in the case that no route is found.
• An option was added to toggle automatic parsing of form params. Falcon will no longer automatically parse,
by default, requests that have the content type “application/x-www-form-urlencoded”. This was done to avoid
unintended side-effects that may arise from consuming the request stream. It also makes it more straightforward
for applications to customize and extend the handling of form submissions. Applications that require this func-
tionality must re-enable it explicitly, by setting a new request option that was added for that purpose, per the
example below:

app = falcon.API()
app.req_options.auto_parse_form_urlencoded = True

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• The HTTPUnauthorized initializer now requires an additional argument, challenges. Per RFC 7235, a server
returning a 401 must include a WWW-Authenticate header field containing at least one challenge.
• The performance of composing the response body was improved. As part of this work, the
Response.body_encoded attribute was removed. This property was only intended to be used by the frame-
work itself, but any dependent code can be migrated per the example below:

# Before
body = resp.body_encoded

# After
if resp.body:
body = resp.body.encode('utf-8')
else:
body = b''

New & Improved

• A code of conduct was added to solidify our community’s commitment to sustaining a welcoming, respectful
culture.
• CPython 3.5 is now fully supported.
• The constants HTTP_422, HTTP_428, HTTP_429, HTTP_431, HTTP_451, and HTTP_511 were added.
• The HTTPUnprocessableEntity, HTTPTooManyRequests, and
HTTPUnavailableForLegalReasons error classes were added.
• The HTTPStatus class is now available directly under the falcon module, and has been properly documented.
• Support for HTTP redirections was added via a set of HTTPStatus subclasses. This should avoid the problem
of hooks and responder methods possibly overriding the redirect. Raising an instance of one of these new
redirection classes will short-circuit request processing, similar to raising an instance of HTTPError.
• The default 404 responder now raises an instance of HTTPError instead of manipulating the response object
directly. This makes it possible to customize the response body using a custom error handler or serializer.
• A new method, get_header(), was added to Response. Previously there was no way to check if a header
had been set. The new get_header() method facilitates this and other use cases.
• falcon.Request.client_accepts_msgpack() now recognizes “application/msgpack”, in addition
to “application/x-msgpack”.
• New access_route and remote_addr properties were added to Request for getting upstream IP ad-
dresses.
• Request and Response now support range units other than bytes.
• The API and StartResponseMock class types can now be customized by inheriting from TestBase and
overriding the api_class and srmock_class class attributes.
• Path segments with multiple field expressions may now be defined at the same level as path segments having
only a single field expression. For example:

api.add_route('/files/{file_id}', resource_1)
api.add_route('/files/{file_id}.{ext}', resource_2)

• Support was added to API.add_route() for passing through additional args and kwargs to custom routers.
• Digits and the underscore character are now allowed in the falcon.routing.compile_uri_template()
helper, for use in custom router implementations.

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• A new testing framework was added that should be more intuitive to use than the old one. Several of Falcon’s
own tests were ported to use the new framework (the remainder to be ported in a subsequent release.) The new
testing framework performs wsgiref validation on all requests.
• The performance of setting Response.content_range was improved by ~50%.
• A new param, obs_date, was added to falcon.Request.get_header_as_datetime(), and defaults
to False. This improves the method’s performance when obsolete date formats do not need to be supported.

Fixed

• Field expressions at a given level in the routing tree no longer mask alternative branches. When a single seg-
ment in a requested path can match more than one node at that branch in the routing tree, and the first branch
taken happens to be the wrong one (i.e., the subsequent nodes do not match, but they would have under a dif-
ferent branch), the other branches that could result in a successful resolution of the requested path will now be
subsequently tried, whereas previously the framework would behave as if no route could be found.
• The user agent is now instructed to expire the cookie when it is cleared via unset_cookie().
• Support was added for hooks that have been defined via functools.partial().
• Tunneled UTF-8 characters in the request path are now properly decoded, and a placeholder character is substi-
tuted for any invalid code points.
• The instantiation of Request.context_type is now delayed until after all other properties of the Request
class have been initialized, in case the context type’s own initialization depends on any of Request‘s proper-
ties.
• A case was fixed in which reading from Request.stream could hang when using wsgiref to host the app.
• The default error serializer now sets the Vary header in responses. Implementing this required passing the
Response object to the serializer, which would normally be a breaking change. However, the framework was
modified to detect old-style error serializers and wrap them with a shim to make them compatible with the new
interface.
• A query string containing malformed percent-encoding no longer causes the framework to raise an error.
• Additional tests were added for a few lines of code that were previously not covered, due to deficiencies in code
coverage reporting that have since been corrected.
• The Cython note is no longer displayed when installing under Jython.
• Several errors and ambiguities in the documentation were corrected.

6.4.3 Changelog for Falcon 0.3.0

Breaking Changes

• Date headers are now returned as datetime.datetime objects instead of strings.

New & Improved

• This release includes a new router architecture for improved performance and flexibility.
• A custom router can now be specified when instantiating the API class.
• URI templates can now include multiple parameterized fields within a single path segment.
• Falcon now supports reading and writing cookies.

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• Falcon now supports Jython 2.7.

• A method for getting a query param as a date was added to the Request class.
• Date headers are now returned as datetime.datetime objects.
• A default value can now be specified when calling Request.get_param(). This provides an alternative to
using the pattern:

value = req.get_param(name) or default_value

• Friendly constants for status codes were added (e.g., falcon.HTTP_NO_CONTENT vs.
falcon.HTTP_204.)
• Several minor performance optimizations were made to the code base.

Fixed

• The query string parser was modified to improve handling of percent-encoded data.
• Several errors in the documentation were corrected.
• The six package was pinned to 1.4.0 or better. six.PY2 is required by Falcon, but that wasn’t added to six
until version 1.4.0.

6.4.4 Changelog for Falcon 0.2.0

Breaking Changes

• The deprecated util.misc.percent_escape and util.misc.percent_unescape functions were removed. Please use
the functions in the util.uri module instead.
• The deprecated function, API.set_default_route, was removed. Please use sinks instead.
• HTTPRangeNotSatisfiable no longer accepts a media_type parameter.
• When using the comma-delimited list convention, req.get_param_as_list(...) will no longer insert placeholders,
using the None type, for empty elements. For example, where previously the query string “foo=1„3” would
result in [‘1’, None, ‘3’], it will now result in [‘1’, ‘3’].

New & Improved

• Since 0.1 we’ve added proper RTD docs to make it easier for everyone to get started with the framework. Over
time we will continue adding content, and we would love your help!
• Falcon now supports “wsgi.filewrapper”. You can assign any file-like object to resp.stream and Falcon will use
“wsgi.filewrapper” to more efficiently pipe the data to the WSGI server.
• Support was added for automatically parsing requests containing “application/x-www-form-urlencoded” con-
tent. Form fields are now folded into req.params.
• Custom Request and Response classes are now supported. You can specify custom types when instantiating
falcon.API.
• A new middleware feature was added to the framework. Middleware deprecates global hooks, and we encourage
everyone to migrate as soon as possible.
• A general-purpose dict attribute was added to Request. Middleware, hooks, and responders can now use
req.context to share contextual information about the current request.

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• A new method, append_header, was added to falcon.API to allow setting multiple values for the same header
using comma separation. Note that this will not work for setting cookies, but we plan to address this in the next
release (0.3).
• A new “resource” attribute was added to hooks. Old hooks that do not accept this new attribute are shimmed
so that they will continue to function. While we have worked hard to minimize the performance impact, we
recommend migrating to the new function signature to avoid any overhead.
• Error response bodies now support XML in addition to JSON. In addition, the HTTPError serialization code
was refactored to make it easier to implement a custom error serializer.
• A new method, “set_error_serializer” was added to falcon.API. You can use this method to override Falcon’s
default HTTPError serializer if you need to support custom media types.
• Falcon’s testing base class, testing.TestBase was improved to facilitate Py3k testing. Notably, Test-
Base.simulate_request now takes an additional “decode” kwarg that can be used to automatically decode byte-
string PEP-3333 response bodies.
• An “add_link” method was added to the Response class. Apps can use this method to add one or more Link
header values to a response.
• Added two new properties, req.host and req.subdomain, to make it easier to get at the hostname info in the
request.
• Allow a wider variety of characters to be used in query string params.
• Internal APIs have been refactored to allow overriding the default routing mechanism. Further modularization
is planned for the next release (0.3).
• Changed req.get_param so that it behaves the same whether a list was specified in the query string using the
HTML form style (in which each element is listed in a separate ‘key=val’ field) or in the more compact API style
(in which each element is comma-separated and assigned to a single param instance, as in ‘key=val1,val2,val3’)
• Added a convenience method, set_stream(...), to the Response class for setting the stream and its length at the
same time, which should help people not forget to set both (and save a few keystrokes along the way).
• Added several new error classes, including HTTPRequestEntityTooLarge, HTTPInvalidParam, HTTPMissing-
Param, HTTPInvalidHeader and HTTPMissingHeader.
• Python 3.4 is now fully supported.
• Various minor performance improvements

Fixed

• Ensure 100% test coverage and fix any bugs identified in the process.
• Fix not recognizing the “bytes=” prefix in Range headers.
• Make HTTPNotFound and HTTPMethodNotAllowed fully compliant, according to RFC 7231.
• Fixed the default on_options responder causing a Cython type error.
• URI template strings can now be of type unicode under Python 2.
• When SCRIPT_NAME is not present in the WSGI environ, return an empty string for the req.app property.
• Global “after” hooks will now be executed even when a responder raises an error.
• Fixed several minor issues regarding testing.create_environ(...)
• Work around a wsgiref quirk, where if no content-length header is submitted by the client, wsgiref will set the
value of that header to an empty string in the WSGI environ.

102 Chapter 6. Documentation

 Falcon Documentation, Release 1.1.0

• Resolved an issue causing several source files to not be Cythonized.

• Docstrings have been edited for clarity and correctness.

6.4. Changelogs 103

Falcon Documentation, Release 1.1.0

104 Chapter 6. Documentation

 Python Module Index

f
falcon, 83
falcon.routing, 80
falcon.testing, 85
falcon.uri, 81

105
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106 Python Module Index

 Index

A captured_resp (falcon.testing.SimpleTestResource at-

accept (Request attribute), 40 tribute), 94
accept_ranges (falcon.Response attribute), 47 client_accepts() (falcon.Request method), 42
access_route (Request attribute), 38 client_accepts_json (Request attribute), 40
add_error_handler() (falcon.API method), 34 client_accepts_msgpack (Request attribute), 40
add_link() (falcon.Response method), 47 client_accepts_xml (Request attribute), 40
add_route() (falcon.API method), 35 client_prefers() (falcon.Request method), 42
add_route() (falcon.routing.CompiledRouter method), 81 code (HTTPError attribute), 57
add_sink() (falcon.API method), 36 compile_uri_template() (in module falcon.routing), 80
after() (in module falcon), 79 CompiledRouter (class in falcon.routing), 81
API (class in falcon), 33 content (falcon.testing.Result attribute), 87
api (falcon.testing.TestBase attribute), 95 content_length (Request attribute), 40
api (falcon.testing.TestCase attribute), 93 content_location (falcon.Response attribute), 48
api_class (falcon.testing.TestBase attribute), 95 content_range (falcon.Response attribute), 48
api_class (falcon.testing.TestCase attribute), 93 content_type (falcon.Response attribute), 49
app (falcon.testing.TestCase attribute), 93 content_type (Request attribute), 40
app (Request attribute), 38 context (Request attribute), 39
append_header() (falcon.Response method), 48 context (Response attribute), 47
auth (Request attribute), 40 context_type (Request attribute), 39
auto_parse_form_urlencoded (RequestOptions attribute), context_type (Response attribute), 47
37 Cookie (class in falcon.testing), 87
auto_parse_qs_csv (RequestOptions attribute), 37 cookies (falcon.testing.Result attribute), 87
cookies (Request attribute), 42
B create_environ() (in module falcon.testing), 94
create_http_method_map() (in module falcon.routing), 80
before() (in module falcon), 79
body (HTTPStatus attribute), 54
body (Response attribute), 46
D
bounded_stream (Request attribute), 41 data (Response attribute), 46
date (Request attribute), 41
C decode() (in module falcon.uri), 82
deprecated() (in module falcon), 83
cache_control (falcon.Response attribute), 48
description (HTTPError attribute), 57
call_count (falcon.testing.StartResponseMock attribute),
domain (falcon.testing.Cookie attribute), 87
94
dst() (falcon.TimezoneGMT method), 85
called (falcon.testing.TestResource attribute), 96
dt_to_http() (in module falcon), 84
capture_responder_args() (in module falcon.testing), 94
captured_kwargs (falcon.testing.SimpleTestResource at-
tribute), 94
E
captured_req (falcon.testing.SimpleTestResource at- encode() (in module falcon.uri), 81
tribute), 94 encode_value() (in module falcon.uri), 82
encoding (falcon.testing.Result attribute), 87

107
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env (Request attribute), 38 HTTPNotFound, 63

etag (falcon.Response attribute), 49 HTTPPermanentRedirect, 76
expect (Request attribute), 41 HTTPPreconditionFailed, 67
expires (falcon.testing.Cookie attribute), 87 HTTPRangeNotSatisfiable, 70
HTTPRequestEntityTooLarge, 68
F HTTPSeeOther, 75
falcon (module), 58, 75, 79, 83 HTTPServiceUnavailable, 74
falcon.routing (module), 80 HTTPStatus (class in falcon), 54
falcon.testing (module), 85 HTTPTemporaryRedirect, 76
falcon.uri (module), 81 HTTPTooManyRequests, 71
find() (falcon.routing.CompiledRouter method), 81 HTTPUnauthorized, 61
HTTPUnavailableForLegalReasons, 72
G HTTPUnprocessableEntity, 70
get_bound_method() (in module falcon), 85 HTTPUnsupportedMediaType, 69
get_header() (falcon.Request method), 42 HTTPUriTooLong, 69
get_header() (falcon.Response method), 49
get_header_as_datetime() (falcon.Request method), 42 I
get_http_status() (in module falcon), 84 if_match (Request attribute), 41
get_param() (falcon.Request method), 43 if_modified_since (Request attribute), 41
get_param_as_bool() (falcon.Request method), 43 if_none_match (Request attribute), 41
get_param_as_date() (falcon.Request method), 44 if_range (Request attribute), 41
get_param_as_dict() (falcon.Request method), 44 if_unmodified_since (Request attribute), 41
get_param_as_int() (falcon.Request method), 44
get_param_as_list() (falcon.Request method), 45 J
json (falcon.testing.Result attribute), 87
H
has_representation (HTTPError attribute), 57 K
headers (falcon.testing.Result attribute), 86 keep_blank_qs_values (RequestOptions attribute), 37
headers (falcon.testing.StartResponseMock attribute), 94 kwargs (falcon.testing.TestResource attribute), 96
headers (HTTPError attribute), 57
headers (HTTPStatus attribute), 54 L
headers (Request attribute), 41 last_modified (falcon.Response attribute), 49
headers_dict (falcon.testing.StartResponseMock at- link (HTTPError attribute), 57
tribute), 94 location (falcon.Response attribute), 49
host (Request attribute), 38 log_error() (falcon.Request method), 46
http_date_to_dt() (in module falcon), 84
http_now() (in module falcon), 84 M
http_only (falcon.testing.Cookie attribute), 87
max_age (falcon.testing.Cookie attribute), 87
HTTPBadGateway, 73
method (Request attribute), 38
HTTPBadRequest, 58
HTTPConflict, 65 N
HTTPError (class in falcon), 57
HTTPForbidden, 62 name (falcon.testing.Cookie attribute), 87
HTTPFound, 75 NoRepresentation (class in falcon.http_error), 58
HTTPGone, 66
HTTPInternalServerError, 73 O
HTTPInvalidHeader, 59 on_get() (falcon.testing.TestResource method), 96
HTTPInvalidParam, 60 options (Request attribute), 42
HTTPLengthRequired, 67
HTTPMethodNotAllowed, 64 P
HTTPMissingHeader, 60 params (Request attribute), 41
HTTPMissingParam, 61 parse_host() (in module falcon.uri), 82
HTTPMovedPermanently, 75 parse_query_string() (in module falcon.uri), 83
HTTPNotAcceptable, 64 path (falcon.testing.Cookie attribute), 87

108 Index
 Falcon Documentation, Release 1.1.0

path (Request attribute), 39 status (falcon.testing.Result attribute), 86

protocol (Request attribute), 38 status (falcon.testing.StartResponseMock attribute), 94
status (HTTPError attribute), 57
Q status (HTTPStatus attribute), 54
query_string (Request attribute), 39 status (Response attribute), 46
status_code (falcon.testing.Result attribute), 86
R stream (Request attribute), 40
rand_string() (in module falcon.testing), 94 stream (Response attribute), 46
range (Request attribute), 41 stream_len (Response attribute), 46
range_unit (Request attribute), 41 subdomain (Request attribute), 38
relative_uri (Request attribute), 39
remote_addr (Request attribute), 39
T
req (falcon.testing.TestResource attribute), 96 tearDown() (falcon.testing.TestBase method), 96
req_options (API attribute), 34 test_route (falcon.testing.TestBase attribute), 95
Request (class in falcon), 38 TestBase (class in falcon.testing), 95
RequestOptions (class in falcon), 37 TestCase (class in falcon.testing), 92
resp (falcon.testing.TestResource attribute), 96 TestClient (class in falcon.testing), 91
resp_headers (falcon.testing.TestResource attribute), 96 TestResource (class in falcon.testing), 96
Response (class in falcon), 46 text (falcon.testing.Result attribute), 87
Result (class in falcon.testing), 86 TimezoneGMT (class in falcon), 85
retry_after (falcon.Response attribute), 49 title (HTTPError attribute), 57
to_dict() (falcon.HTTPError method), 58
S to_json() (falcon.HTTPError method), 58
to_query_str() (in module falcon), 84
sample_body (falcon.testing.TestResource attribute), 96
to_xml() (falcon.HTTPError method), 58
sample_status (falcon.testing.TestResource attribute), 96
tzname() (falcon.TimezoneGMT method), 85
secure (falcon.testing.Cookie attribute), 87
set_cookie() (falcon.Response method), 49
set_error_serializer() (falcon.API method), 36
U
set_header() (falcon.Response method), 50 unquote_string() (in module falcon.uri), 83
set_headers() (falcon.Response method), 51 unset_cookie() (falcon.Response method), 51
set_stream() (falcon.Response method), 51 uri (Request attribute), 39
setUp() (falcon.testing.TestBase method), 95 uri_template (Request attribute), 40
SimpleTestResource (class in falcon.testing), 93 url (Request attribute), 39
simulate_delete() (falcon.testing.TestClient method), 92 user_agent (Request attribute), 40
simulate_delete() (in module falcon.testing), 91 utcoffset() (falcon.TimezoneGMT method), 85
simulate_get() (falcon.testing.TestClient method), 92
simulate_get() (in module falcon.testing), 88 V
simulate_head() (falcon.testing.TestClient method), 92 value (falcon.testing.Cookie attribute), 87
simulate_head() (in module falcon.testing), 89 vary (falcon.Response attribute), 51
simulate_options() (falcon.testing.TestClient method), 92
simulate_options() (in module falcon.testing), 90
simulate_patch() (falcon.testing.TestClient method), 92
simulate_patch() (in module falcon.testing), 91
simulate_post() (falcon.testing.TestClient method), 92
simulate_post() (in module falcon.testing), 89
simulate_put() (falcon.testing.TestClient method), 92
simulate_put() (in module falcon.testing), 90
simulate_request() (falcon.testing.TestBase method), 95
simulate_request() (falcon.testing.TestClient method), 92
simulate_request() (in module falcon.testing), 87
srmock (falcon.testing.TestBase attribute), 95
srmock_class (falcon.testing.TestBase attribute), 96
StartResponseMock (class in falcon.testing), 94

Index 109