Intro
Today, developers want to develop, ship, and run applications faster. Docker enables them to build, test, and deploy their code quickly with the containers. In addition, it reduces the time from writing your code to running it in production. This article will describe how to containerize a Python Flask app. We’ll use the Flask framework and Docker for image creation and containerization for the demonstration. You’ll also learn a few commonly used Docker commands.
What is Flask?
Flask is a popular Python micro web framework to develop lightweight web applications and APIs quickly and easily. Moreover, it provides excellent flexibility and scalability for web applications. It is also highly compatible with cutting-edge technologies.
Docker container, image, and dockerfile
To containerize a Python Flask app means running the application in a container. A docker container is a collection of dependencies and code organized to enable applications to run quickly and efficiently in various computing environments.
On the other hand, containers are created using images. A docker image is a blueprint that specifies how to run an application as an isolated process. And, we use Dockerfiles to build images. A Dockerfile is a particular file that includes a set of instructions to build images automatically.
Demo
This demo will proceed over the file structure below to create a Python application first. Follow the steps correctly and have an active virtual environment with Flask installed.
A. How to create Python (Flask) virtual environment?
1. Create and activate Python virtual environment
- First, compose a new project directory such as
flask-dockerand navigate to the newly created directory, - Second, create your virtual environment with
python3 -m venv venv(LinuxOS), - Third, acitivate with
. venv/bin/activatecommand (LinuxOS).
2. Install flask
Install flask with pip install Flask(LinuxOS).
3. Create and intall requirements.txt file
Execute cat > requirements.txt command, paste the following script:
click==8.0.3
Flask==2.0.3
itsdangerous==2.0.1
Jinja2==3.0.3
MarkupSafe==2.0.1
Werkzeug==2.0.3Ctrl+C to return to prompt.
4. Create and modify ‘app.py’
- With
vim app.pycommand, create anapp.pyfile and paste the code below into our app.py, save and close it.
from flask import Flask
app = Flask(__name__)
@app.route('/')
def hello_guys():
return '<h1>Hello from Flask-Docker!</h1>'
if __name__ == "__main__":
app.run(debug=True)5. Test the application
Now, it is time to run python app.py command to test our Flask app. More or less, you will see the below:
Using the address which our app is broadcasting, for this demo as is curl http://127.0.0.1:5000/, you can see that the flask app say ‘hello’ us:
B. How to containerize a Python Flask app?
Now that we have set up the virtual environment and run our application, we can containerize it.
1. Create and modify a Dockerfile
Execute the command cat > Dockerfile and paste the following script:
# syntax=docker/dockerfile:1
FROM python:3.8-slim-buster
WORKDIR /flask-docker
COPY requirements.txt requirements.txt
RUN pip3 install -r requirements.txt
COPY . /flask-docker
CMD ["python3", "-m" , "flask", "run", "--host=0.0.0.0"]We reach the final file structure to start to build our image.
2. Build your image
docker build -tag flask-docker . command will build your Docker image for flask application. But, remember executing this command in the same folder which your Dockerfile exist.
3. Run your contianer
After building the image, finally, let’s create our flask-docker container as a last step to containerize a Python Flask app.
docker run -d -p 5000:5000 flask-docker** On the above command, -d option is for running container detached mode, and -p option is to map container 5000 port to 5000 port of the Docker host machine.
4. Test the flask-docker app container
Let’s check our app if it broadcasts on http://127.0.0.1:5000 with curl , or use your web browser.
As a result, our containerized Python Flask app is streaming successfully on port 5000 of Docker host machine.
You can stop your container by:
docker stop <containerID>If you want, you can delete it by:
docker container rm <containerID>Conclusion
This article introduced the Python Flask web framework and briefly mentioned Docker containers, images, and Dockerfiles. After that, I have also demonstrated how to create Python Flask virtual environment. Finally, we do practice on how to containerize a Python Flask app.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article. Please ask your question or just leave your comment.
