Deploying a Flask API

Server Deployment, Containerization, and Testing.

IP address of the running application: aa5938abd5bae11eabad60a1f54c0e64-1526288372.us-west-2.elb.amazonaws.com Click here

In this project you will containerize and deploy a Flask API to a Kubernetes cluster using Docker, AWS EKS, CodePipeline, and CodeBuild.

The Flask app that will be used for this project consists of a simple API with three endpoints:

• GET '/': This is a simple health check, which returns the response 'Healthy'.
• POST '/auth': This takes a email and password as json arguments and returns a JWT based on a custom secret.
• GET '/contents': This requires a valid JWT, and returns the un-encrpyted contents of that token.

The app relies on a secret set as the environment variable JWT_SECRET to produce a JWT. The built-in Flask server is adequate for local development, but not production, so you will be using the production-ready Gunicorn server when deploying the app.

Testing endpoints after deployment:

export TOKEN=`curl -d '{"email":"janujaishree94@gmail.com","password":"123123"}' -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST aa5938abd5bae11eabad60a1f54c0e64-1526288372.us-west-2.elb.amazonaws.com/auth  | jq -r '.token'`

curl --request GET 'aa5938abd5bae11eabad60a1f54c0e64-1526288372.us-west-2.elb.amazonaws.com/contents' -H "Authorization: Bearer ${TOKEN}" | jq

Return output as expected:

% Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100    71  100    71    0     0    159      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--   158
{
  "email": "janujaishree94@gmail.com",
  "exp": 1584273241,
  "nbf": 1583063641
}

Initial setup

1. Fork this project to your Github account.
2. Locally clone your forked version to begin working on the project.

Dependencies

• Docker Engine
  • Installation instructions for all OSes can be found here.
  • For Mac users, if you have no previous Docker Toolbox installation, you can install Docker Desktop for Mac. If you already have a Docker Toolbox installation, please read this before installing.
• AWS Account
  • You can create an AWS account by signing up here.

Project Steps

Completing the project involves several steps:

1. Write a Dockerfile for a simple Flask API
2. Build and test the container locally
3. Create an EKS cluster
4. Store a secret using AWS Parameter Store
5. Create a CodePipeline pipeline triggered by github checkins
6. Create a CodeBuild stage which will build, test, and deploy

For more detail about each of these steps, see the project lesson here.