webapp2 will instantiate a new handler per each request it received, so there is no guarantee that if you set self.something
in a request you will be able to retrieve the same value with another request, just because self
will be a different object.
This is what happens in your case: the handlers that process your get and post requests are not the same instance, so post
will not be able to read self.msg
simply because it was never set first.
You can review the docs to have a better understanding on what is the lifecycle of a handler.