Python Flask returning a html page while simultaneously performing a function

Update: I've had to solve this problem a number of times in Flask, so I wrote a small Flask extension called Flask-Executor to do it for me. It's a wrapper for concurrent.futures that provides a few handy features, and is my preferred way of handling background tasks that don't require distribution in Flask.

For more complex background tasks, something like celery is your best bet. For simpler use cases however, what you want is the threading module.

Consider the following example:

from flask import Flask
from time import sleep

app = Flask(__name__)


def slow_function(some_object):
    sleep(5)
    print(some_object)

@app.route('/')
def index():
    some_object = 'This is a test'
    slow_function(some_object)
    return 'hello'

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run()

Here, we create a function, slow_function() that sleeps for five seconds before returning. When we call it in our route function it blocks the page load. Run the example and hit http://127.0.0.1:5000 in your browser, and you'll see the page wait five seconds before loading, after which the test message is printed in your terminal.

What we want to do is to put slow_function() on a different thread. With just a couple of additional lines of code, we can use the threading module to separate out the execution of this function onto a different thread:

from flask import Flask
from time import sleep
from threading import Thread

app = Flask(__name__)


def slow_function(some_object):
    sleep(5)
    print(some_object)

@app.route('/')
def index():
    some_object = 'This is a test'
    thr = Thread(target=slow_function, args=[some_object])
    thr.start()
    return 'hello'

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run()

What we're doing here is simple. We're creating a new instance of Thread and passing it two things: the target, which is the function we want to run, and args, the argument(s) to be passed to the target function. Notice that there are no parentheses on slow_function, because we're not running it - functions are objects, so we're passing the function itself to Thread. As for args, this always expects a list. Even if you only have one argument, wrap it in a list so args gets what it's expecting.

With our thread ready to go, thr.start() executes it. Run this example in your browser, and you'll notice that the index route now loads instantly. But wait another five seconds and sure enough, the test message will print in your terminal.

Now, we could stop here - but in my opinion at least, it's a bit messy to actually have this threading code inside the route itself. What if you need to call this function in another route, or a different context? Better to separate it out into its own function. You could make threading behaviour a part of slow function itself, or you could make a "wrapper" function - which approach you take depends a lot on what you're doing and what your needs are.

Let's create a wrapper function, and see what it looks like:

from flask import Flask
from time import sleep
from threading import Thread

app = Flask(__name__)


def slow_function(some_object):
    sleep(5)
    print(some_object)

def async_slow_function(some_object):
    thr = Thread(target=slow_function, args=[some_object])
    thr.start()
    return thr

@app.route('/')
def index():
    some_object = 'This is a test'
    async_slow_function(some_object)
    return 'hello'

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run()

The async_slow_function() function is doing pretty much exactly what we were doing before - it's just a bit neater now. You can call it in any route without having to rewrite your threading logic all over again. You'll notice that this function actually returns the thread - we don't need that for this example, but there are other things you might want to do with that thread later, so returning it makes the thread object available if you ever need it.