streamlit-server-state

A "server-wide" state shared across the sessions.

import streamlit as st

from streamlit_server_state import server_state, server_state_lock

st.title("Global Counter Example")

with server_state_lock["count"]:  # Lock the "count" state for thread-safety
    if "count" not in server_state:
        server_state.count = 0

increment = st.button("Increment")
if increment:
    with server_state_lock.count:
        server_state.count += 1

decrement = st.button("Decrement")
if decrement:
    with server_state_lock.count:
        server_state.count -= 1

st.write("Count = ", server_state.count)

As above, the API is similar to the built-in SessionState, except one major difference - a "lock" object. The lock object is introduced for thread-safety because the server-state is accessed from multiple sessions, i.e. threads.

Auto-rerun

When you assign a value to a server-state item, server-state[key], server-state automatically triggers re-running of all other sessions in which that server-state item is referred to so that all the references to the server-state return the latest value and all the sessions are kept up-to-date.

For example, with this mechanism, the sample chat app (app_chat.py) keeps showing the latest message list for all users.

Suppressing auto-rerun

When this auto-rerun mechanism is not good for your use case, you can suppress auto-reruns upon the value assignments by using no_rerun context as below.

from streamlit_server_state import server_state, no_rerun


with no_rerun:
    server_state["foo"] = 42  # This does not trigger re-running of other sessions

Manually trigger re-running

Upon each value assignment, server-state checks whether the value has been changed and skips re-running if it has not for efficiency. This works well in most cases, but it does not for example when the value is a complex mutable object and its field is mutated, while such usages are not recommended.

As exceptions, in such cases where the auto-rerun mechanism does not work well, you can manually trigger re-running by using force_rerun_bound_sessions(key).

if "foo" not in server_state:
    server_state["foo"] = SomeComplexObject()

server_state["foo"].field = 42  # If this assignment does not trigger re-running,

force_rerun_bound_sessions("foo")  # You can do this.

Background: https://discuss.streamlit.io/t/new-library-streamlit-server-state-a-new-way-to-share-states-across-sessions-on-the-server/14981/10

Examples

app_global_count: A sample app like the official counter example for SessionState which uses streamlit-server-state instead and the counter is shared among all the sessions on the server. This is a nice small example to see the usage and behavior of streamlit-server-state. Try to open the app in multiple browser tabs and see the counter is shared among them.
app_global_slider: A slider widget (st.slider) whose value is shared among all sessions.
app_chat.py: A simple chat app using streamlit-server-state.
app_chat_rooms.py: A simple chat app with room separation.

Resources