python - Can't retrieve variable from url with Flask app after submitting search form

Question

I would like to present a new view after the user submits a search form. I made it as the same way as I do with my other views, but unfortunately this time doesn't happens anything, I can't retrieve the content from the app route. (So this question is not a duplicate of this question, the issue occurs only after submitting the form, it works perfectly in every other situation.) I write something into the form, submit it, then the url changes in the browser, but the view doesn't change anyway. I'm almost sure that it's because the ? and = in the search slug, but don't know how should I deal with them in the Python code.

Actually when I submit the form my browser redirects me to an url like this:

http://domain/.com/?search=content+from+textfield

And this is how I tried to catch the content from the search field and present a new view on the Flask's side:

@app.route('/?search=<url_content>', methods=['POST'])
def hello_url(url_content): 
return render_template("search-results.html", searchString = url_content])

I would really appreciate if somebody could show me the right way, basically I just wanna retrieve the value of <url_content> inside the hello_url function after the search button tapped.

Here's my html:

<form>
 <div class="form-group">
    <input type="search" class="form-control text-center input-lg" id="inputSearch" name="search" placeholder="search">
    </div>
     <br>
<div class="text-center"><button type="submit" class="btn btn-primary btn-lg">Search!</button></div>
</form>

Answer 1

You're confusing url parameters, which are captured with <variable>, with query parameters, which are accessed in request.args. Remove the query parameter from your route definition and access it in the view.

from flask import request

@app.route('/')
def index():
    return render_template('index.html')

@app.route('/search')
def search():
    search = request.args.get('search')  # will be None if form wasn't submitted
    # do something with search
    return render_template('search.html', search=search)

index.html:

<form action="{{ url_for('search') }}">
    <input name="search"/>
    <input type="submit" value="Search"/>
</form>