quickstart-setup.md

Flask Setup Steps:

The flask docs are great!

Here are the steps to spin up a flask server:

• First create a virtual environment for your project from the steps outlined here
• install the needed packages for your flask app:
  • pip install flask pip install python-dotenv
• touch the main entrypoint for your flask app, such as app.py
• touch .flaskenv and populate it with the needed environmental variables to config flask
  • .flaskenv doesn't need to be in the .gitignore, it is for flask configuration only. But if you have any API keys or other secrets, you can touch a .env file and put them in there.

# example .flaskenv
# this will enable debug mode in flask
FLASK_ENV=development
# this is main entry point for the flask app
FLASK_APP=app.py
# this is the port to listen on (default is 5000 if you don't specify)
FLASK_RUN_PORT=3000

• populate your flask app's entry point file:

# in app.py

# import flask
from flask import Flask

# config app
app = Flask(__name__)

# make route!
@app.route('/')
def hello_world():
  return 'Hello from Flask 👋'

• use flask run to run your app!
• If you have secret API keys in a .env file, you can access them like this:

# import dotenv
from dotenv import load_dotenv
# import the operating system
import os

# this is how you get environmental variables
print(os.environ['MY_BIG_SECRET'])

• the corresponding .env file would look like this:

# in .env
MY_BIG_SECRET='pls dont tell anyone my secrets 🙏🏻😳' 

If you add environmental variables while your flask app is running, you need to stop the server with control + c and restart it with flask run to read them