
Flask is an micro framework used to build web apps with just a few lines of code, and we are going to look at the steps invoved in setting up your python environment to work with flask in the following steps below>
Update and upgrade your system packages using the commands below as a super user
sudo apt update
sudo apt -y upgrade
Check the version of your python3 using: python3 -V
Then install pip the package manager tool for python responsible for installing and managing programming packages you might want to install for your projects:
sudo apt install -y python3-pip
Then install a few more packages and development tools to ensure that you have a robust set-up for our programming environment:
sudo apt install build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev python3-dev
Virtual environments enable you to have an isolated space on your server for Python projects, ensuring that each of your projects can have its own set of dependencies that won’t disrupt any of your other projects. While there are a few ways to achieve a programming environment in Python, we’ll be using the venv module here, which is part of the standard Python 3 library. Let’s install venv by typing:
sudo apt install -y python3-venv
With this installed, we are ready to create our flask project. Create a new directory with mkdir, giving your project folder the name you prefer:
mkdir rentals
cd rentals
Once in the rentals folder, create your virtual environment using: python3.7 -m venv myvenv
Now activate your myvenv environment to start working
. myvenv/bin/activate
Your can install flask using: pip install flask
Go ahead to create a python file that will house your application
touch myapp.py
Use your favorite text editor to add the code below to your myapp.py file
from flask import Flask app = Flask(__name__) @app.route(“/”) def hello(): return “hello world”
Once done, safe changes and export there two environment variables:
export FLASK_APP=myapp.py
export FLASK_ENV=development
Now you can your app using: flask run
By Default your app will be running on: http://127.0.0.1:5000/
Happy Coding
Credits: Digital Ocean, Flask Website, python3 tutorial