Retrieve Text From Textarea in Flask

Last Updated : 04 Apr, 2023

In this article, we will see how we can retrieve the elements inside the textarea tag using Python. Textarea is one of the popular tags we used in HTML. To retrieve text from a textarea in Flask, you can use the request.form.get() method. This method allows you to retrieve the value of a specific form field, such as a textarea, from the request data sent by the client.

The request.form.get() method is a simple and effective way to retrieve text from a textarea in Flask. This method allows you to easily access the value of a specific form field from the request data, and it can be used to implement various types of forms and user input in your Flask applications. To get started, we need to install the Flask module using Python PIP.

File Structure

Make sure that your HTML file is in the templates folder.

index.html

Now let’s make an HTML file (name: home.html) with <textarea>. This file will be present in a folder called templates.

HTML

<!DOCTYPE html> 
<html lang="en"> 
<head> 
    <meta charset="UTF-8"> 
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge"> 
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"> 
    <title>Document</title> 
</head> 
<body> 
    <form method="POST"> 
        <textarea name="textarea"></textarea> 
        <input type="submit" value="Submit"> 
    </form> 
</body> 
</html>

app.py

In this code, the request.form.get() method is used to retrieve the value of the textarea form field from the request data sent by the client. This value is stored in the text variable, and it can be used for further processing in your Flask application. Here is an example of how you can use the request.form.get() method to retrieve text from a textarea in Flask.

Python3

from flask import Flask, request, render_template 
  
app = Flask(__name__) 
  
  
@app.route('/', methods=['GET', 'POST']) 
def index(): 
    if request.method == 'POST': 
        # Retrieve the text from the textarea 
        text = request.form.get('textarea') 
  
        # Print the text in terminal for verification 
        print(text) 
  
    return render_template('home.html') 
  
  
if __name__ == '__main__': 
    app.run() 