Minimal Flask Pandas

Minimal template project to create a web application based on Flask and using Pandas for data manipulation.
Based on https://github.com/bandaangosta/cookiecutter-flask-minimal

Quick Start

Run the application (for development only):

make run

And open it in the browser at http://127.0.0.1:5000/

Prerequisites

This is built to be used with Python 3. Update Makefile to switch to Python 2 if needed.

Some Flask dependencies are compiled during installation, so gcc and Python header files need to be present. For example, on Ubuntu:

apt install build-essential python3-dev

Development environment and release process

• create virtualenv with Flask and Minimal Flask Pandas installed into it (latter is installed in develop mode which allows modifying source code directly without a need to re-install the app): make venv

• run development server in debug mode: make run; Flask will restart if source code is modified

• run tests: make test (see also: Testing Flask Applications)

• create source distribution: make sdist (will run tests first)

• to remove virtualenv and built distributions: make clean

• to add more python dependencies: add to install_requires in setup.py

• to modify configuration in development environment: edit file settings.cfg; this is a local configuration file and it is ignored by Git - make sure to put a proper configuration file to a production environment when deploying

Deployment

If you are interested in an out-of-the-box deployment automation, check out accompanying cookiecutter-flask-ansible.

Or, check out Deploying with Fabric on one of the possible ways to automate the deployment.

In either case, generally the idea is to build a package (make sdist), deliver it to a server (scp ...), install it (pip install minimalflaskpandas.tar.gz), ensure that configuration file exists and MINIMALFLASKPANDAS_SETTINGS environment variable points to it, ensure that user has access to the working directory to create and write log files in it, and finally run a WSGI container with the application. And, most likely, it will also run behind a reverse proxy.

Deployment with Docker

Two Docker-based deployments are available in this project: one based on Apache + mod_wsgi and the other on nginx + uwsgi. See each Dockerfile for details.

While in project folder, where Dockerfiles reside, run:

docker build -t minimalflaskpandas -f Dockerfile.xxx .
docker run -it --rm -p 80:80 --name my_minimalflaskpandas minimalflaskpandas

If tested OK, you can run the app in background (will restart on reboot):

docker run --detach -p 80:80 --restart unless-stopped --name my_minimalflaskpandas minimalflaskpandas