Cookiecutter skeleton for Minimal Flask application

Requirements

• python (Tested on 3.6.6 . For 2.x.x, requirements and some 'import' could be changed)
• cookiecutter (Install it using pip install cookiecutter)

Usage

Method 1 using remote url

> cookiecutter https://github.com/rohitchormale/cookiecutter-flask-minimal.git
project_slug [myproject]: /opt/fooproject (Enter new project name with proper path. If empty, 'myproject' will be created in current directory)
author[]: John Smith( Enter author name. If empty, empty string will be used)
> cd <project-path>
> flask run

Method 2 from source

> git clone https://github.com/rohitchormale/cookiecutter-flask-minimal.git
> cookiecutter <absolute-path-to-cloned-repo>
project_slug [myproject]: /opt/fooproject (Enter new project name with proper path. If empty 'myproject' will be used with current directory)
author[]: John Smith( Enter author name. If empty, empty string will be used)
> cd <project-path>
> flask run

Skeleton structure

myproject
│
├── myproject
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── extensions.py
│   ├── routes.py
│   ├── controllers.py
│   ├── models.py
│   ├── forms.py
│   ├── commands.py
│   │
│   └── ui
│       ├── static
│       │   ├── css
│       │   │   └── styles.css
│       │   └── js
│       │       └── custom.js
│       └── templates
│           └── index.html
│
├── tests
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── conftest.py
│   └── test_controllers.py
│
├── config.py
├── instance
│   └── config.py
├── wsgi.py
│
├── requirements.txt
└── README.md

• myproject/myproject/init.py - Your project starts here. Blueprints, extensions, commands and all other fancy stuff will be defined in their own modules. But all those components will be hooked up together here. See application-factories.

• myproject/myproject/extensions.py - Instantiate flask extensions here so those can be easily accessed in other modules. Extensions can be initialized in myproject/myproject/__init__.py also. Keeping them separate, will look clean. Important point is, after you INSTANTIATE extension here, you need to INITIATE it again in myproject/myproject/__init__.py/create_app. You can see example format in comments once app is created.

• myproject/myproject/routes.py - These are your URLs grouped together using blueprints. They are pointed to controllers.

• myproject/myproject/controllers.py - Define your controllers here to manipulate views and database. Similar to views.py in django. So flow will be url-> controller -> template/database.

• myproject/myproject/forms.py - Create your http forms here. See wtforms

• myproject/myproject/models.py - Create your database models here. See flask-sqlalchemy. Make sure to enable related extension for this. Database url will be configured in configuration files. See below.

• myproject/myproject/commands.py - Custom terminal commands to ease your workflow. See flask-cli

• myproject/myproject/ui/static - keep your static files like css, js, media here.

• myproject/myproject/ui/templates - keep your http templates here.

• tests/conftest.py - Test support is added using pytest. Common config/fixtures and plugin-loadings can be done in this module.

• tests/test_controllers.py - Add unit testcases in this module.

• myproject/config.py - Project permanent configuration. This should be committed in version control tool. Similar to settings.py in django.

• myproject/instance/config.py - Project temporary config like secrets etc. It MUST NOT be committed in version control tool.

• myproject/wsgi.py - wsgi module to integrate app with web servers like apache, gunicorn. See mod_wsgi.

• myproject/requirements.txt - Python modules used in project.

• myproject/README.md - Information about project.

Bootstrapping

By default, development environment is not enabled. To enable it, set environmental variable 'FLASK_ENV=development'. Development server can be started using flask run command. While to integrate your app with web servers like apache, use wsgi.py module, mentioned above.

Testing

Testing using pytest

By default this skeleton supports pytest using its flask-extension pytest-flask. Run pytest-flask using command pip install pytest-flask. Run test cases using below commands. See pytest docs for more info.

# To run all testcases
pytest tests

# To disable warnings
pytest --disable-warnings tests

# To replace sys.stdout/stderr with in-mem files 
pytest --disable-warnings --capture=sys

# RUn test cases from specific module
pytest --disable-warnings tests/test_controllers.py --capture=sys

# Run specific testsuit from given module
pytest --disable-warnings tests/test_controllers.py  -k 'TestUser' --capture=sys

# Run specific testcase from given module
pytest --disable-warnings tests/test_controllers.py  -k 'test_add_user' --capture=sys`

References

• Flask
• Cookiecutter
• Flask WTF
• FLask SQLAlchemy