How to stop flask application without using ctrl-c

Question

If you are just running the server on your desktop, you can expose an endpoint to kill the server (read more at Shutdown The Simple Server):

from flask import request
def shutdown_server():
    func = request.environ.get('werkzeug.server.shutdown')
    if func is None:
        raise RuntimeError('Not running with the Werkzeug Server')
    func()
    
@app.get('/shutdown')
def shutdown():
    shutdown_server()
    return 'Server shutting down...'
    

Here is another approach that is more contained:

from multiprocessing import Process

server = Process(target=app.run)
server.start()
# ...
server.terminate()
server.join()

Let me know if this helps.

I did it slightly different using threads

from werkzeug.serving import make_server

class ServerThread(threading.Thread):

    def __init__(self, app):
        threading.Thread.__init__(self)
        self.server = make_server('127.0.0.1', 5000, app)
        self.ctx = app.app_context()
        self.ctx.push()

    def run(self):
        log.info('starting server')
        self.server.serve_forever()

    def shutdown(self):
        self.server.shutdown()

def start_server():
    global server
    app = flask.Flask('myapp')
    ...
    server = ServerThread(app)
    server.start()
    log.info('server started')

def stop_server():
    global server
    server.shutdown()

I use it to do end to end tests for restful api, where I can send requests using the python requests library.

This is a bit old thread, but if someone experimenting, learning, or testing basic flask app, started from a script that runs in the background, the quickest way to stop it is to kill the process running on the port you are running your app on. Note: I am aware the author is looking for a way not to kill or stop the app. But this may help someone who is learning.

sudo netstat -tulnp | grep :5001

You'll get something like this.

tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:5001 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 28834/python

To stop the app, kill the process

sudo kill 28834

My method can be proceeded via bash terminal/console

1) run and get the process number

$ ps aux | grep yourAppKeywords

2a) kill the process

$ kill processNum

2b) kill the process if above not working

$ kill -9 processNum

As others have pointed out, you can only use werkzeug.server.shutdown from a request handler. The only way I've found to shut down the server at another time is to send a request to yourself. For example, the /kill handler in this snippet will kill the dev server unless another request comes in during the next second:

import requests
from threading import Timer
from flask import request
import time

LAST_REQUEST_MS = 0
@app.before_request
def update_last_request_ms():
    global LAST_REQUEST_MS
    LAST_REQUEST_MS = time.time() * 1000


@app.post('/seriouslykill')
def seriouslykill():
    func = request.environ.get('werkzeug.server.shutdown')
    if func is None:
        raise RuntimeError('Not running with the Werkzeug Server')
    func()
    return "Shutting down..."


@app.post('/kill')
def kill():
    last_ms = LAST_REQUEST_MS
    def shutdown():
        if LAST_REQUEST_MS <= last_ms:  # subsequent requests abort shutdown
            requests.post('http://localhost:5000/seriouslykill')
        else:
            pass

    Timer(1.0, shutdown).start()  # wait 1 second
    return "Shutting down..."

This is an old question, but googling didn't give me any insight in how to accomplish this.

Because I didn't read the code here properly! (Doh!) What it does is to raise a RuntimeError when there is no werkzeug.server.shutdown in the request.environ...

So what we can do when there is no request is to raise a RuntimeError

def shutdown():
    raise RuntimeError("Server going down")

and catch that when app.run() returns:

...
try:
    app.run(host="0.0.0.0")
except RuntimeError, msg:
    if str(msg) == "Server going down":
        pass # or whatever you want to do when the server goes down
    else:
        # appropriate handling/logging of other runtime errors
# and so on
...

No need to send yourself a request.