passing a website as a parameter in REST API python; error with "/"

Question

I am trying to pass a website as a parameter. It works if the website does not have a "/" in it. For example: http://192.168.1.156:2434/www.cookinglight.com scrapes cooking light for all the images on it's page; however, if I pass in http://192.168.1.156:2434/https://www.cookinglight.com/recipes/chicken-apple-butternut-squash-soup then an I get an invalid response. Here is my current code:

import json
from flask import Flask, render_template

from imagescraper import image_scraper

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route("/", methods = ['GET'])
def home():
    return render_template('index.html')

@app.route("/<site>", methods = ['GET'])
def get_image(site):
    return json.dumps(image_scraper(site))


if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(host='0.0.0.0', port=2434, debug=True)

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup


def image_scraper(site):
    """scrapes user inputed url for all images on a website and
    :param http url ex. https://www.cookinglight.com
    :return dictionary key:alt text; value: source link"""
    search = site.strip()
    search = search.replace(' ', '+')

    website = 'https://' + search
    response = requests.get(website)

    soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, 'html.parser')
    img_tags = soup.find_all('img')
    # create dictionary to add image alt tag and source link
    images = {}
    for img in img_tags:
        try:
            name = img['alt']
            link = img['src']
            images[name] = link
        except:
            pass
    return images

I tried urrllib but did not have any success. Any help would be greatly appreciated! I am a student so still learning!!

Answer 1

Flask uses / as separate between arguments - so you can create route("/<arg1>/<arg2>/<arg3>") and get value in variables arg1 , arg2 , arg3 - and when you try to use url with / then it try to find route like route("/<arg1>/<arg2>/<arg3>")

If you want to use / as part of single argument, not as separator between arguments then you need <path:site> .

from flask import Flask

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route("/")
def home():
    return "Hello World"

@app.route("/<path:site>")
def get_image(site):
    return f"OK: {site}"

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(host='0.0.0.0', port=2434)#, debug=True)