flask-restful-wsgi

Sample flask_restful app with Apache mod_wsgi configs

Purpose

This repo illustrates a simplified approach for deploying a flask_restful (Python Flask) app on Apache 2.4 using mod_wsgi. In general, this is a more specific elaboration to this guidance. Say you have a front-end that can be deployed as a static site (think React app) with the flask_restful application serving as the API layer for that front-end, this repo will help you with a basic Apache config for that: static site is at '/' and the api is at '/api'.

Pre-reqs

I started with a Red Hat 7 instance (on AWS EC2) and did the following setup:

• sudo easy install pip
• sudo pip install flask flask_restful
• sudo yum install httpd
• sudo yum install mod_wsgi

Then, I setup standard app directories for apache conf and the app itself:

• /var/www/apps
• /etc/httpd/conf/apps

[Pre-reqs] if you don't have python system privileges

Create a virtualenv where you can install python directories, put that in your deployment folder:

• cd /var/www/apps/spam
• virtualenv spam-venv
• source spam-venv/bin/activate
• pip install flask flask_restful
• In your apache conf, point to the spam-api-venv.wsgi file

Configure

• Adjust httpd.conf
  • Set your listen port [optional]
  • Add this line to include your app configurations: Include /etc/httpd/conf/apps/*.conf
• Take the spam.conf from this project and place in /etc/httpd/conf/apps/
• Edit spam.conf to match your port and servername (lines 1 and 3)
• Edit spam.conf to use a virtualenv if necessary (comment line 14, uncomment line 17)
• Export this repo into a spam directory in /var/www/apps, so now you'll have the app ready like:
  • /var/www/apps/spam
    • /spam-fe/*.html
    • /spam-api/spam-api.wsgi
    • /spam-api/controllers/*.py
    • /spam-api/resources/*.py

Deploy

When you restart apache, you'll have anything in /var/www/apps/spam/spam-fe served as simple static files (html, js, css, etc) at the root, '/', for your servername. You'll have your flask_restful app, rooted in /var/www/apps/spam/spam-api deployed at '/api' for your servername.