Kunal Relan

Building REST APIs with Flask

Create Python Web Services with MySQL

Kunal Relan
New Delhi, Delhi, India
ISBN 978-1-4842-5021-1e-ISBN 978-1-4842-5022-8
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-5022-8
© Kunal Relan 2019
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While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.
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Dedicated to caffeine and sugar, my companions through many long night of writing, and extra credits to my mom.

Introduction

Flask is a lightweight microframework for web applications built on top of Python, which provides an efficient framework for building web-based applications using the flexibility of Python and strong community support with the capability of scaling to serve millions of users.

Flask has excellent community support, documentation, and supporting libraries; it was developed to provide a barebone framework for developers, giving them the freedom to build their applications using their preferred set of libraries and tools.

This book takes you through different stages of a REST API–based application development process using flask which explains the basics of the Flask framework assuming the readers understand Python. We’ll cover database integration, understanding REST services, REST APIs performing CRUD operations, user authentication, third-party library integrations, testing, deployment, and application monitoring.

At the end of this book, you’ll have a fair understanding of Flask framework, REST, testing, deploying, and managing Flask applications, which will open doors to understanding REST API development.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Apress for providing me this platform, without which this would have been a lot harder. I would also like to thank Mr. Nikhil Karkal for his help and Miss Divya Modi for her perseverance, without whom this would have been a farsighted project.

I’d like to mention about the strong Python community which helped me understand the core concepts in my early years of programming, which inspired me to contribute back to the community with this book.

Last but certainly not the least, I would like to acknowledge all the people who constantly reminded me about the deadlines and helped me write this book, especially my family and Aparna Abhijit for helping me out with editing.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1:​ Beginning with Flask 1
Introduction to Flask 1
Starting Flask 2
Flask Components Covered in This Book 3
Introduction to RESTful Services 4
Uniform Interface 7
Representations 8
Messages 9
Links Between Resources 12
Caching 13
Stateless 13
Planning REST API 14
API Design 15
Setting Up Development Environment 16
Working with PIP 17
Choosing the IDE 18
Understanding Python Virtual Environments 19
Setting Up Flask 24
Installing Flask 25
Conclusion 26
Chapter 2:​ Database Modeling in Flask 27
Introduction 27
SQL Databases 28
NoSQL Databases 28
Key Differences:​ MySQL vs.​ MongoDB 29
Creating a Flask Application with SQLAlchemy 30
Creating an Author Database 33
Sample Flask MongoEngine Application 46
Conclusion 58
Chapter 3:​ CRUD Application with Flask (Part 1) 59
User Authentication 88
Conclusion 96
Chapter 4:​ CRUD Application with Flask (Part 2) 97
Introduction 97
Email Verification 98
File Upload 109
API Documentation 114
Building Blocks of API Documentation 115
OpenAPI Specification 116
Conclusion 134
Chapter 5:​ Testing in Flask 135
Introduction 135
Setting Up Unit Tests 136
Unit Testing User Endpoints 139
Test Coverage 155
Conclusion 157
Chapter 6:​ Deploying Flask Applications 159
Deploying Flask with uWSGI and Nginx on Alibaba Cloud ECS 160
Deploying Flask on Gunicorn with Apache on Alibaba Cloud ECS 167
Deploying Flask on AWS Elastic Beanstalk 172
Deploying Flask App on Heroku 176
Adding a Procfile 177
Deploying Flask App on Google App Engine 180
Conclusion 182
Chapter 7:​ Monitoring Flask Applications 183
Application Monitoring 183
Sentry 185
Flask Monitoring Dashboard 187
New Relic 189
Bonus Services 192
Conclusion 194
Index 195

About the Author and About the Technical Reviewer

About the Author

Kunal Relan
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is an iOS security researcher and a full stack developer with more than four years of experience in various fields of technology, including network security, DevOps, cloud infrastructure, and application development, working as a consultant with start-ups around the globe. He is an Alibaba Cloud MVP and author of iOS Penetration Testing (Apress) and a variety of white papers. Kunal is a technology enthusiast and an active speaker. He regularly contributes to open source communities and writes articles for Digital Ocean and Alibaba Techshare.
 

About the Technical Reviewer

Saurabh Badhwar
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is a software engineer with a passion to build scalable distributed systems. He is mostly working to solve challenges related to performance of software at a large scale and has been involved in building solutions that help other developers quickly analyze and compare performance of their systems when running at scale. He is also passionate about working with open source communities and has been actively participating as a contributor in various domains, which involve development, testing, and community engagement. Saurabh has also been an active speaker at various conferences where he has been talking about performance of large-scale systems.
 
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