old web2py blog

Controller functions can return:

• a string: return "Hello" and this would be the body of the returned page
• a dictionary return dict(message="Hello") and this would be passed to a view
• streaming data return response.stream(open('filename','rb')) to return a large file
• a set of xmlrpc exposed methods `return response.xmlrpc(request,methods)``

Often you just return a dictionary containing a definition of those variables you want to pass to the view. By default a function() in controller.py will be rendered by a view called controller/function.html. If this view is not found the generic.html view renders the variables in the dictionary. A controller function can also return a string. In this case the view is not executed and the string is returned instead.