The New and Improved Flask Mega-Tutorial

Preface

• Who This Book Is For
• Requirements
• About The Example Application
• How To Work With The Example Code
• Conventions Used In This Book
• Acknowledgements

Hello, World!

• Installing Python
• Installing Flask
• A “Hello, World” Flask Application

Templates

• What Are Templates?
• Conditional Statements
• Loops
• Template Inheritance

Web Forms

• Introduction to Flask-WTF
• User Login Form
• Form Templates
• Form Views
• Receiving Form Data
• Improving Field Validation
• Generating Links

Database excerpt

• Databases in Flask
• Database Migrations
• Flask-SQLAlchemy Configuration
• Database Models
• Creating The Migration Repository
• The First Database Migration
• Database Upgrade and Downgrade Workflow
• Database Relationships
• Playing with the Database
• Shell Context

User Logins

• Password Hashing
• Introduction to Flask-Login
• Preparing The User Model for Flask-Login
• User Loader Function
• Logging Users In
• Logging Users Out
• Requiring Users To Login
• Showing The Logged-In User in Templates
• User Registration

Profile Page and Avatars

• User Profile Page
• Avatars
• Using Jinja Sub-Templates
• More Interesting Profiles
• Recording The Last Visit Time For a User
• Profile Editor

Error Handling

• Error Handling in Flask
• Debug Mode
• Custom Error Pages
• Sending Errors by Email
• Logging to a File
• Fixing the Duplicate Username Bug
• Enabling Debug Mode Permanently

Followers

• Database Relationships Revisited
• Representing Followers
• Database Model Representation
• Adding and Removing “follows”
• Obtaining the Posts from Followed Users
• Combining Own and Followed Posts
• Unit Testing the User Model
• Integrating Followers with the Application

Pagination

• Submission of Blog Posts
• Displaying Blog Posts
• Making It Easier to Find Users to Follow
• Pagination of Blog Posts
• Page Navigation
• Pagination in the User Profile Page

Email Support

• Introduction to Flask-Mail
• Flask-Mail Usage
• A Simple Email Framework
• Requesting a Password Reset
• Password Reset Tokens
• Sending a Password Reset Email
• Resetting a User Password
• Asynchronous Emails

Facelift

• CSS Frameworks
• Introducing Bootstrap
• Using Bootstrap
• Rendering Bootstrap Forms
• Rendering of Blog Posts
• Rendering Pagination Links
• Before And After

Dates and Times

• Timezone Hell
• Timezone Conversions
• Introducing Moment.js and Flask-Moment
• Using Moment.js

I18n and L10n

• Introduction to Flask-Babel
• Marking Texts to Translate In Python Source Code
• Marking Texts to Translate In Templates
• Extracting Text to Translate
• Generating a Language Catalog
• Updating the Translations
• Translating Dates and Times
• Command-Line Enhancements

Ajax

• Server-side vs. Client-side
• Live Translation Workflow
• Language Identification
• Displaying a “Translate” Link
• Using a Third-Party Translation Service
• Ajax From The Server
• Ajax From The Client

A Better Application Structure

• Current Limitations
• Blueprints
• The Application Factory Pattern
• Unit Testing Improvements
• Environment Variables
• Requirements File

Full-Text Search

• Introduction to Full-Text Search Engines
• Installing Elasticsearch
• Elasticsearch Tutorial
• Elasticsearch Configuration
• A Full-Text Search Abstraction
• Integrating Searches with SQLAlchemy
• Search Form
• Search View Function

Deployment on Linux

• Traditional Hosting
• Creating an Ubuntu Server
• Using an SSH Client
• Password-less Logins
• Securing Your Server
• Installing Base Dependencies
• Installing the Application
• Setting Up MySQL
• Setting Up Gunicorn and Supervisor
• Setting Up Nginx
• Deploying Application Updates
• Raspberry Pi Hosting

Deployment on Heroku

• Hosting on Heroku 226
• Creating a Heroku account
• Installing the Heroku CLI
• Setting Up Git
• Creating a Heroku Application
• The Ephemeral File System
• Working with a Heroku Postgres Database
• Logging to stdout
• Compiled Translations
• Elasticsearch Hosting
• Updates to Requirements
• The Procfile
• Deploying the Application
• Deploying Application Updates

Deployment on Docker Containers

• Installing Docker
• Building a Container Image
• Starting a Container
• Using Third-Party “Containerized” Services
• The Docker Container Registry
• Deployment of Containerized Applications

Some JavaScript Magic

• Server-side Support
• Introduction to the Bootstrap Popover Component
• Executing a Function On Page Load
• Finding DOM Elements with Selectors
• Popovers and the DOM
• Creating the Popover Components
• Ajax Requests
• Popover Update

User Notifications

• Private Messages
• Static Message Notification Badge
• Dynamic Message Notification Badge
• Delivering Notifications to Clients

Background Jobs

• Introduction to Task Queues
• Using RQ
• Database Representation of Tasks
• Integrating RQ with the Flask Application
• Sending Emails from the RQ Task
• Task Helpers
• Implementing the Export Task
• Export Functionality in the Application
• Progress Notifications
• Deployment Considerations

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)

• REST as a Foundation of API Design
• Implementing an API Blueprint
• Representing Users as JSON Objects
• Representing Collections of Users
• Error Handling
• User Resource Endpoints
• API Authentication
• API Friendly Error Messages
• A Last Word