Hacktoberfest 2026: the issues maintainers tagged for October, open and beginner-friendly. Browse Hacktoberfest issues

[BUG] Plotly Cloud devtool route crashes with FastAPI and Quart backends

Open
#4,008 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
65/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
fastapi, flask, python
Domain
backend, devtools

Research direction

The issue is in plotly_cloud/_devtool_hooks.py line 36 where flask.request.get_json() is called. First, understand how Dash registers routes for different backends (FastAPI, Quart, Flask). Look at the Dash server initialization and route registration logic. Check if the devtool route should be conditionally registered based on the backend. The fix likely involves checking the request context or using backend-agnostic request data access. Run the provided reproduction script to confirm the crash.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Describe your context
  • OS: Linux on WSL2
  • Python: 3.13.11
  • Browser: N/A (server-side issue reproduced with backend test clients)
Dash 4.5.0rc0 / FastAPI environment:
dash          4.5.0rc0
plotly-cloud  0.5.0
fastapi       0.141.1

Dash 4.5.0rc0 / Quart environment (isolated):
dash          4.5.0rc0
plotly-cloud  0.5.0
quart         0.23.1
Describe the bug

With the FastAPI or Quart backend, the Plotly Cloud devtool registers POST /_plotly_cloud_publish, but its handler calls flask.request.get_json(). Neither backend provides a Flask request context, so this route returns HTTP 500:

File "plotly_cloud/_devtool_hooks.py", line 36, in plotly_cloud_publish_rpc
    data = flask.request.get_json()
RuntimeError: Working outside of request context.

This is exposed by default in Dash 4.5.0rc0 because #3947 made plotly-cloud a default dependency. To distinguish the dependency change from the underlying compatibility issue, I tested isolated environments:

Environment Cloud route registered? POST result
Dash 4.4.1, without Plotly Cloud No N/A
Dash 4.4.1 + Plotly Cloud 0.5.0 Yes 500 (FastAPI and Quart)
Dash 4.5.0rc0, without explicitly installing Plotly Cloud Yes 500 (FastAPI and Quart)
Steps to reproduce

Install dash[fastapi,quart]==4.5.0rc0 and httpx, then run the following script in separate processes with fastapi and quart as the argument:

import asyncio
import sys

from dash import Dash, html
from fastapi.testclient import TestClient

backend = sys.argv[1]
app = Dash(__name__, backend=backend)
app.layout = html.Div("Hello")
app.enable_dev_tools(debug=True, dev_tools_ui=True)

if backend == "fastapi":
    response = TestClient(
        app.server, raise_server_exceptions=False
    ).post("/_plotly_cloud_publish", json={})
else:
    response = asyncio.run(
        app.server.test_client().post("/_plotly_cloud_publish", json={})
    )

print(response.status_code)  # 500 for both backends
Expected behavior

Enabling Dash Dev Tools with FastAPI or Quart should not register a Plotly Cloud route that crashes. The integration should support these backends or omit its devtool and route when they are unsupported.

Screenshots

Not applicable; this is a server-side error.

Dominant language
Python
Stars
24.4k
Forks
2.3k
Avg merge
2d 2h
Merged PRs (30d)
20

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from plotly/dash

All issues in plotly/dash

Similar issues

More Python issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.