8. Application Globals¶

To share data that is valid for one request only from one function to another, a global variable is not good enough because it would break in threaded environments. Flask provides you with a special object that ensures it is only valid for the active request and that will return different values for each request. In a nutshell: it does the right thing, like it does for request and session.

flask.g¶

Just store on this whatever you want. For example a database connection or the user that is currently logged in.

Starting with Flask 0.10 this is stored on the application context and no longer on the request context which means it becomes available if only the application context is bound and not yet a request. This is especially useful when combined with the 1.7   Faking Resources and Context pattern for testing.

Additionally as of 0.10 you can use the get() method to get an attribute or None (or the second argument) if it’s not set. These two usages are now equivalent:

user = getattr(flask.g, 'user', None)
user = flask.g.get('user', None)

It’s now also possible to use the in operator on it to see if an attribute is defined and it yields all keys on iteration.

As of 0.11 you can use pop() and setdefault() in the same way you would use them on a dictionary.

This is a proxy. See Notes On Proxies for more information.