Python Virtual Environment

The purpose of a virtual environment is so that you can ensure everyone's libraries are on the same versions and that there's no cross contamination with other libraries

In order to make a virtual environment in python, you'll have to type python -m venv name_of_venv. You can name it whatever you'd like. If this doesn't work, try typing python -m venv name_of_venv. Sometimes, if you don't have your aliases setup correctly, "python3" will work while "python" will not.

For WINDOWS:

If my venv is named venv, I'd type .\venv\Scripts\activate Once activated into the virtual environment, you'd type pip install -r requirements.txt. This installs all libraries that are "requirements" for this project.

For MAC:

If my venv is named venv, I'd type source venv/bin/activate Once activated into the virtual environment, you'd type pip install -r requirements.txt. This installs all libraries that are "requirements" for this project.

For Both:

Now that you have everything installed, you'll want to go into main.py and modify the variable name to be your name. Once you have completed this, you can go to your terminal and type python main.py or python3 main.py if the first command didn't work. After this, you'd open up your browser of choice (I use Google Chrome) and type in http://127.0.0.1:5000 into where the URL of the website would normally be. If you've done everything, you should see your name on the page.

Steps to think about:

1. Fork Repo on GitHub
   
2. Clone Repo onto your PC
   
3. Make your own branch by typing git checkout -b name_of_branch
4. Create the virtual environment, activate into it, and then install the libraries
   
5. Modify main.py to display your name (change the variable)
   
6. Run main.py by typing either python main.py or python3 main.py
   
7. Open your browser and in the URL section type in http://127.0.0.1:5000
   

Important topics to know:

Q: What is a gitignore?
Q: What is requirements.txt?
Q: Why use a virtual environment?
Q: What is server side rendering?