Responses

Every handler must return a Response object or one of its subclasses. Five response types ship with BeaverWeb.

Response — plain text

The default response type. The body is a string and Content-Type is set to text/plain; charset=utf-8.

from beaver import Response

@app.get("/hello")
def hello(req):
    return Response("Hi there")

Custom status and headers:

@app.post("/create")
def create(req):
    return Response("created", status=201, headers={"X-Item-Id": "42"})

JSONResponse — for APIs

Serializes any JSON-compatible value using json.dumps and sets Content-Type: application/json.

from beaver import JSONResponse

@app.get("/users/{id}")
def user_detail(req):
    return JSONResponse({"id": req.path_params["id"]})

Lists are also supported:

@app.get("/items")
def list_items(req):
    return JSONResponse([1, 2, 3])

HTMLResponse — direct HTML

Identical to Response, but with Content-Type set to text/html; charset=utf-8.

from beaver import HTMLResponse

@app.get("/page")
def page(req):
    return HTMLResponse("<h1>Hello</h1>")

For non-trivial markup, use templates rather than inline HTML.

Redirect — 302 by default

Sets the Location header and returns an empty body.

from beaver import Redirect

@app.get("/old-home")
def old_home(req):
    return Redirect("/")

Custom status:

return Redirect("/new-page", status=307)   # temporary redirect, preserves method

PermanentRedirect — 301

A convenience subclass for permanent redirects:

from beaver import PermanentRedirect

@app.get("/legacy")
def legacy(req):
    return PermanentRedirect("/new")

Binary content

Response also accepts raw bytes, which is required for images, PDFs, or any non-text content:

@app.get("/logo.png")
def logo(req):
    with open("static/logo.png", "rb") as f:
        return Response(f.read(), headers={"Content-Type": "image/png"})

Content-Length is always computed from the actual byte count; it does not need to be set manually.

Header behavior

Header	Behavior
Content-Type	Overrides the subclass default when set explicitly.
Content-Length	Always overwritten with the actual body byte count.
Any other header	Passes through unchanged.