Flask session object - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Using Flask session object to track user visits

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple Flask web app that counts how many times a user has visited the homepage during their session.

🎯 Goal: Create a Flask app that uses the session object to store and update a visit count for each user session. Display the visit count on the homepage.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a Flask app with a homepage route

Use the Flask session object to store a visit count

Initialize the visit count if it does not exist

Increment the visit count on each visit

Display the current visit count on the homepage

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Tracking user visits or preferences during a browsing session is common in web apps to personalize experience.

💼 Career

Understanding Flask sessions is essential for backend web development roles using Python and Flask framework.

1

Set up Flask app and secret key

Write code to import Flask and session from flask. Create a Flask app called app and set app.secret_key to the string 'mysecret'.

Flask

from flask import Flask, session

app = Flask(__name__)
# Your code here

Need a hint?

The secret_key is needed to use sessions in Flask.

2

Create homepage route and initialize visit count

Add a route for '/' using @app.route. Define a function called index. Inside it, check if 'visits' is not in session. If not, set session['visits'] = 0.

Flask

from flask import Flask, session

app = Flask(__name__)
app.secret_key = 'mysecret'

# Add route and initialize session['visits']
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use @app.route('/') to create the homepage route.

3

Increment visit count on each visit

Inside the index function, after initializing session['visits'], add 1 to session['visits'] to count the current visit.

Flask

from flask import Flask, session

app = Flask(__name__)
app.secret_key = 'mysecret'

@app.route('/')
def index():
    if 'visits' not in session:
        session['visits'] = 0
    # Increment visit count
    # Your code here

Need a hint?

Use session['visits'] += 1 to add one to the count.

4

Return visit count in response

At the end of the index function, return a string that says "You have visited this page X times." where X is the current value of session['visits']. Use an f-string to insert the number.

Flask

from flask import Flask, session

app = Flask(__name__)
app.secret_key = 'mysecret'

@app.route('/')
def index():
    if 'visits' not in session:
        session['visits'] = 0
    session['visits'] += 1
    # Return visit count message
    # Your code here

Need a hint?

Use return f"You have visited this page {session['visits']} times." to show the count.