How to reference a html template from a different directory in python flask

Question

@app.route('/view', methods=['GET', 'POST']) def view_notifications():     posts = get_notifications()     return render_template("frontend/src/view_notifications.html", posts=posts) 

So in my project/backend/src/app.py there's this code. How would I reference the template that's in project/frontend/src/view_notifications.html I've tried using .. but it keeps saying the path isn't found. Is there another way I should be doing this?

[Tue Jun 23 12:56:02.597207 2015] [wsgi:error] [pid 2736:tid 140166294406912] [remote 10.0.2.2:248] TemplateNotFound: frontend/src/view_notifications.html [Tue Jun 23 12:56:05.508462 2015] [mpm_event:notice] [pid 2734:tid 140166614526016] AH00491: caught SIGTERM, shutting down 

Answer 1

Flask is looking in templates/frontend/src/view_notifications.html for your template file. You either need to move your templates file to that location or change the default template folder.

According to the Flask docs you can specify a different folder for your templates. It defaults to templates/ in the root of your app:

import os from flask import Flask  template_dir = os.path.abspath('../../frontend/src') app = Flask(__name__, template_folder=template_dir) 

UPDATE:

After testing it myself on a Windows machine the templates folder does need to be named templates. This is the code I used:

import os from flask import Flask, render_template  template_dir = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__)))) template_dir = os.path.join(template_dir, 'frontend') template_dir = os.path.join(template_dir, 'templates') # hard coded absolute path for testing purposes working = 'C:\Python34\pro\\frontend\\templates' print(working == template_dir) app = Flask(__name__, template_folder=template_dir)   @app.route("/") def hello():     return render_template('index.html')  if __name__ == "__main__":     app.run(debug=True) 

With this structure:

|-pro   |- backend     |- app.py   |- frontend     |- templates       |- index.html 

Changing any instance of 'templates' to 'src' and renaming the templates folder to 'src' resulted in the same error OP received.

Answer 2

a batter solution is to just go directly without os.path.abspath like this:

from flask import Flask  app = Flask(__name__, template_folder='../../frontend/src')