HTTP and Forms Prep

Overview

While you’ve already been using HTTP, you’ve only been using one method ‘GET’. To do some more advanced functionality, you also need to allow the user’s browser to send POST requests. Today, we’ll dive deeper into what is going on between the client and server when webpages are loaded and find out how to support forms and search bars.

Basic Learning Objectives

Before class, you should be able to:

• Explain what GET and POST requests are
• Identify how to add a form to a Flask template

Advanced Learning Objectives

After class, you should be able to:

• Explain the difference between HTTP GET and POST
• Be able to create an HTML form and use POST requests in your Flask app

Readings

To achieve the basic learning objectives, you should read the following:

• HTTP
• HTML Forms
• Use Forms in Flask
• Optional: Auto-complete search bar In the past, groups have wanted a searchbar with autocomplete. This example shows you how, but does require little Javascript to work.

Checks

While it works all right to have the user type in a specific URL to get the data they want, I think you’ll agree that it would be more usable for them to use some kind of form. What is a way that you could use a form on your team project? Write down your ideas and bring it to class.