Flask API Boilerplate

This is a boilerplate repo for a Flask API. I'm creating it to help me get started with new projects faster.

Features

• Automatically connect to mysql database, given user-provided credentials
• A base model for serializing, deserializing, and shared methods
• A client model for application clients
• A user model for identifying individual users
• Automatically create tables in the database for client models
• Flask-Migrate for database version control
• CRUD routes for clients and users
• Pytests for clients
• Pytests for users
• Pytests for shared methods
• Make pytests scalable with TestBase

Requirements

• Python 3.10
• MySQL 8.0
• Flask 2.0
• Flask-Migrate 3.0
• Flask-SQLAlchemy 3.0
• PyMySQL 1.0
• Inotify-tools

Installation

Clone the repo, install requirements, and create a .env file

1. git clone https://github.com/Rmolimock/flask_api_boilerplate.git
2. cd flask_api_boilerplate
3. pip install -r requirements.txt
4. Create a .env file with the following contents (to be added to mysql db once installed in step 9):

• DB_NAME=
• DB_USER=
• DB_PASSWORD=
• DB_HOST=
• DB_PORT=
• FLASK_APP=main.py
• PYTHONPATH='.'

Optionally setup a test error alert window

5. sudo apt-get install inotify-tools # for running run_pytest_on_save.sh
6. sudo apt install zenity # for running run_pytest_on_save.sh
7. chmod +x run_pytest_on_save.sh
8. ./run_pytest_on_save.sh # in a separate terminal

Install MySQL

9. sudo apt-get install mysql-server # if you don't have MySQL installed
10. mysql -u root -p
11. sudo mysql # to enter into the mysql shell, then within the shell:
12. ALTER USER '[user from .env file - probably root]'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED by '[password from .env_file]'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; CREATE DATABASE 'database name from .env file'; EXIT;

Setup database version control

13. flask db init # if you don't have migrations folder, alembic.ini, or env.py yet
14. flask db migrate
15. flask db upgrade

Run the app

16. FLASK_DEBUG=True flask run

temp to do list

• delete authorization, before_request, and test files
• create tests for authorization (which includes before_request functionality) prior to recreating it
• allow tests to inform the structure of the flow of authorization
• then parameterize the tests for different scenarios