What is the cause of the Bad Request Error when submitting form in Flask application?

Question

After reading many similar sounding problems and the relevant Flask docs, I cannot seem to figure out what is generating the following error upon submitting a form:

400 Bad Request

The browser (or proxy) sent a request that this server could not understand.

While the form always displays properly, the bad request happens when I submit an HTML form that ties to either of these functions:

@app.route('/app/business', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def apply_business():
    if request.method == 'POST':    
        new_account = Business(name=request.form['name_field'], email=request.form['email_field'], account_type="business", 
            q1=request.form['q1_field'], q2=request.form['q2_field'], q3=request.form['q3_field'], q4=request.form['q4_field'], 
            q5=request.form['q5_field'], q6=request.form['q6_field'], q7=request.form['q7_field'],
            account_status="pending", time=datetime.datetime.utcnow())
        db.session.add(new_account)
        db.session.commit()
        session['name'] = request.form['name_field']    
        return redirect(url_for('success'))
    return render_template('application.html', accounttype="business")          

@app.route('/app/student', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def apply_student():    
    if request.method == 'POST':    
        new_account = Student(name=request.form['name_field'], email=request.form['email_field'], account_type="student", 
            q1=request.form['q1_field'], q2=request.form['q2_field'], q3=request.form['q3_field'], q4=request.form['q4_field'], 
            q5=request.form['q5_field'], q6=request.form['q6_field'], q7=request.form['q7_field'], q8=request.form['q8_field'], 
            q9=request.form['q9_field'], q10=request.form['q10_field'],
            account_status="pending", time=datetime.datetime.utcnow())
        db.session.add(new_account)
        db.session.commit()
        session['name'] = request.form['name_field']    
        return redirect(url_for('success')) 
    return render_template('application.html', accounttype="student")

The relevant part of HTML is

<html>
<head>
    <title>apply</title>
</head>
<body>
    {% if accounttype=="business" %}
    <form action="{{ url_for('apply_business') }}" method=post class="application_form">
    {% elif accounttype=="student" %}
    <form action="{{ url_for('apply_student') }}" method=post class="application_form">     
    {% endif %} 
    <p>Full Name:</p>
    <input name="name_field" placeholder="First and Last">
    <p>Email Address:</p>
    <input name="email_field" placeholder="[email protected]">
    ...

The problem for most people was not calling GET or POST, but I am doing just that in both functions, and I double checked to make sure I imported everything necessary, such as from flask import request. I also queried the database and confirmed that the additions from the form weren’t added.

In the Flask app, I was requesting form fields that were labeled slightly different in the HTML form. Keeping the names consistent is a must. More can be read at this question Form sending error, Flask

Asked By: zch

||

Source

Answer 1

The solution was simple and uncovered in the comments. As addressed in this question, Form sending error, Flask, and pointed out by Sean Vieira,

…the issue is that Flask raises an HTTP error when it fails to find a
key in the args and form dictionaries. What Flask assumes by default
is that if you are asking for a particular key and it’s not there then
something got left out of the request and the entire request is
invalid.

In other words, if only one form element that you request in Python cannot be found in HTML, then the POST request is not valid and the error appears, in my case without any irregularities in the traceback. For me, it was a lack of consistency with spelling: in the HTML, I labeled various form inputs

<input name="question1_field" placeholder="question one">

while in Python, when there was a POST called, I grab a nonexistent form with

request.form['question1']

whereas, to be consistent with my HTML form names, it needed to be

request.form['question1_field']

Answered By: zch

What is the cause of the Bad Request Error when submitting form in Flask application?

Question:

Answers: