The project uses a virtual environment to isolate package dependencies. To create the virtual environment and install required packages, run the following from a bash shell terminal:
$ source setup.sh
$ .\setup.ps1
$ source setup.sh --windows
Once the setup script has completed and all packages have been installed, start the Flask app by running:
$ flask run
You should see output similar to the following:
* Serving Flask app "app" (lazy loading)
* Environment: development
* Debug mode: on
* Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/ (Press CTRL+C to quit)
* Restarting with fsevents reloader
* Debugger is active!
* Debugger PIN: 226-556-590
Now visit http://localhost:5000/
in your web browser to view the app.
The .env
file is used by flask to set environment variables when running flask run
. This enables things like developement mode (which also enables features like hot reloading when you make a file change).
- There's also a SECRET_KEY variable which is used to encrypt the flask session cookie.
When running setup.sh
, the .env.template
file will be copied to .env
if the latter does not exist.