flask-starter

A boilerplate Flask project, features and included extensions include:

• SQLAlchemy database and automatic migrations using Flask-Alembic
• CoffeeScript and LESS compilation and bundling using Flask-Assets
• User management and logins using Flask-Security
• Email using Flask-Mail
• Better development mode using Flask-Failsafe
• Deployment helpers for nginx/uWSGI and upstart
• Admin interface using Flask-Admin with automatically generated CRUD
• Basic management scripts using Flask-Scripts

Installing dependencies

PIP Requirements:

$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Web assets:

There is a bug in flask-assets that doesn't recompile LESS files, you have to install the dev version until these are packaged properly for PyPI:

$ easy_install http://github.com/miracle2k/flask-assets/tarball/master
$ easy_install http://github.com/miracle2k/webassets/tarball/master

Compilers for LESS and CoffeeScript require the Node.js packages. Install npm from http://nodejs.org/ or using apt-get install npm.

$ npm install -g coffee-script
$ npm install -g less

Getting started

Naming your project

To get started, just clone the project and run the init script to rename your project:

$ python manage.py init <project_name>

You will need to configure your database settings and then perform the required database initialization.

Creating your database

Database migrations are handled by Flask-Alembic

You will need to perform all three of these steps to create your database before the first run.

First, have Flask-Alembic generate an alembic.ini

$ python manage.py migrate init

To automatically generate a new revision:

$  python manage.py migrate revision --autogenerate -m "message describing migration"

You should generate a migration every time you change the models so that the database will be in sync with the models. To apply migrations you would want to run:

$ python manage.py migrate upgrade head

Adding an admin user

Once you have initialized the database you should add yourself as an admin:

$ python manage.py add_admin test@example.com password

This will allow you to view the admin interface at /admin once you have logged in

Deployment:

Deployment is done using uWSGI and nginx.

Install uWSGI and use the uwsgi.conf upstart script to start uWSGI with the Emperor enabled. Link starter.ini into /etc/uwsgi/apps-enabled

The starter.conf is the simplest nginx script to serve the site, link this into /etc/nginx/sites-enabled