README.rst

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Quickstart

Run the following commands to bootstrap your environment

git clone https://github.com/{{cookiecutter.github_username}}/{{cookiecutter.app_name}}
cd {{cookiecutter.app_name}}
{%- if cookiecutter.use_pipenv == "yes" %}
pipenv install --dev
{%- else %}
pip install -r requirements/dev.txt
{%- endif %}
cp .env.example .env
npm install
npm start  # run the webpack dev server and flask server using concurrently

You will see a pretty welcome screen.

Once you have installed your DBMS, run the following to create your app's database tables and perform the initial migration

flask db init
flask db migrate
flask db upgrade
npm start

Deployment

To deploy:

export FLASK_ENV=production
export FLASK_DEBUG=0
export DATABASE_URL="<YOUR DATABASE URL>"
npm run build   # build assets with webpack
flask run       # start the flask server

In your production environment, make sure the FLASK_DEBUG environment variable is unset or is set to 0.

Shell

To open the interactive shell, run

flask shell

By default, you will have access to the flask app.

Running Tests/Linter

To run all tests, run

flask test

To run the linter, run

flask lint

The lint command will attempt to fix any linting/style errors in the code. If you only want to know if the code will pass CI and do not wish for the linter to make changes, add the --check argument.

Migrations

Whenever a database migration needs to be made. Run the following commands

flask db migrate

This will generate a new migration script. Then run

flask db upgrade

To apply the migration.

For a full migration command reference, run flask db --help.

If you will deploy your application remotely (e.g on Heroku) you should add the migrations folder to version control. You can do this after flask db migrate by running the following commands

git add migrations/*
git commit -m "Add migrations"

Make sure folder migrations/versions is not empty.

Docker

This app can be run completely using Docker and docker-compose. Before starting, make sure to create a new copy of .env.example called .env. You will need to start the development version of the app at least once before running other Docker commands, as starting the dev app bootstraps a necessary file, webpack/manifest.json.

There are three main services:

To run the development version of the app

docker-compose up flask-dev

To run the production version of the app

docker-compose up flask-prod

The list of environment: variables in the docker-compose.yml file takes precedence over any variables specified in .env.

To run any commands using the Flask CLI

docker-compose run --rm manage <<COMMAND>>

Therefore, to initialize a database you would run

docker-compose run --rm manage db init

A docker volume node-modules is created to store NPM packages and is reused across the dev and prod versions of the application. For the purposes of DB testing with sqlite, the file dev.db is mounted to all containers. This volume mount should be removed from docker-compose.yml if a production DB server is used.

Asset Management

Files placed inside the assets directory and its subdirectories (excluding js and css) will be copied by webpack's file-loader into the static/build directory, with hashes of their contents appended to their names. For instance, if you have the file assets/img/favicon.ico, this will get copied into something like static/build/img/favicon.fec40b1d14528bf9179da3b6b78079ad.ico. You can then put this line into your header:

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="{{ "{{" }}asset_url_for('img/favicon.ico') {{ "}}" }}">

to refer to it inside your HTML page. If all of your static files are managed this way, then their filenames will change whenever their contents do, and you can ask Flask to tell web browsers that they should cache all your assets forever by including the following line in your settings.py:

SEND_FILE_MAX_AGE_DEFAULT = 31556926  # one year

{%- if cookiecutter.use_heroku == "yes" %}

Heroku

Before deploying to Heroku you should be familiar with the basic concepts of Git and Heroku.

Remember to add migrations to your repository. Please check Migrations section.

Since the filesystem on Heroku is ephemeral, non-version controlled files (like a SQLite database) will be lost at least once every 24 hours. Therefore, a persistent, standalone database like PostgreSQL is recommended. This application will work with any database backend that is compatible with SQLAlchemy, but we provide specific instructions for Postgres, (including the required library psycopg2-binary).

Note: psycopg2-binary package is a practical choice for development and testing but in production it is advised to use the package built from sources. Read more in the psycopg2 documentation

Deployment by using Heroku CLI:

• Create Heroku App. You can leave your app name, change it, or leave it blank (random name will be generated):

  heroku create {{cookiecutter.app_name}}

• Add buildpacks:

  heroku buildpacks:add --index=1 heroku/nodejs
  heroku buildpacks:add --index=1 heroku/python

• Add database addon which creates a persistent PostgresSQL database. These instructions assume you're using the free hobby-dev plan. This command also sets a DATABASE_URL environmental variable that your app will use to communicate with the DB.:

  heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql:hobby-dev --version=11

• Set environmental variables (change SECRET_KEY value):

  heroku config:set SECRET_KEY=not-so-secret
  heroku config:set FLASK_APP=autoapp.py

• Please check .env.example to see which environmental variables are used in the project and also need to be set. The exception is DATABASE_URL, which Heroku sets automatically.

• Deploy on Heroku by pushing to the heroku branch:

  git push heroku master

If you keep your project on GitHub you can use 'Deploy to Heroku' button thanks to which the deployment can be done in web browser with minimal configuration required. The configuration used by the button is stored in app.json file.

{%- endif %}