python-flask-template

Environment

The environment is managed by Mamba which is a fast, cross-platform package manager for Python. So, Mamba needs to be installed first. If you are using WSL, this WSL Setup project can be used to help setup a Linux VM in Windows with all the prerequisites.

To create the environment with the necessary packages:

mamba env create -f environment.yml

Switch to the environment:

mamba activate python-flask-template

Package Management

Install a new package:

mamba install [package]

Update a package:

mamba update [package]

Export the new packages to the environment file:

mamba env export --from-history | grep -v '^prefix: ' > environment.yml

Update the environment based on an environment file updated by someone else:

mamba env update --prune -f environment.yml

Running the Server Locally

Flask is used as the api server.

Start the server locally with live code reload:

flask --debug run

The server should now be running and you can hit the "Hello World" endpoint: http://127.0.0.1:5000/api/hello

VSCode Intellisense

To get VSCode to pick up intellisense in python files, open the Command Palette (Ctrl + Shift + P), select "Python: Select Interpreter", and pick the "python-flask-template" mamba environment.

Docker

¹

A dockerfile has been added that can be used to run the project with Gunicorn in a container.

Build the docker image:

docker build -t python-flask-template:latest .

Run the docker image:

docker run -e PORT=5000 -p 5000:5000 --name python-flask-template -d python-flask-template

Stop and remove the container:

docker stop python-flask-template && docker rm python-flask-template

Infrastructure

A docker-compose.infra.yml file has been added that can be used to add any docker services (databases, caches, etc) that are needed during development.

Start the infrastructure:

docker compose -f ./devops/docker-compose.infra.yml -p python-flask-template up -d

Stop the infrastructure:

docker compose -f ./devops/docker-compose.infra.yml -p python-flask-template down

Document DB

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Mongo has been added as the document database, and pymongo has been added as the connector to Mongo. mongo-express has also been added that runs with the infrastructure (user: admin, password: pass).

The configuration for the database is done in the config.py file. The following environment variable configurations can be set (or these defaults can be used during development):

MONGO_USER      = mongo
MONGO_PASSWORD  = mongo
MONGO_HOST      = localhost
MONGO_PORT      = 27017
MONGO_DB        = db

To connect to the database and start using Mongo:

from app.infrastructure.document_db import document_db

_COLLECTION = "test"

// start using the connection
items = document_db[_COLLECTION].find()

Several example apis handling document listing, selection by id, creation, update, and deletion have been added in the document api file.

Footnotes

1. This functionality is removable with pinkyring ↩ ↩²