webapp-flask-couchdb-template

A template for a web app based on Flask and CouchDB with user account handling.

Uses Python3, Flask, CouchDB server, CouchDB2 (Python module), jsonschema, Bootstrap, jQuery, DataTables.

Usage

This is a GitHub template: You need to create your own repo out of this one, and then start developing your app.

In order to add new functionality, you should add modules for your own entities, defining their URL's and logic. Look at the webapp.user module to see how this can be done.

This template provides the basic framweork including user account handling, but you need to code your own entities and the display and edit logic for those.

The code in this repo can run as an app without changes, even though it is a template, but it won't do anything useful.

Installation

1. Create your own GitHub repo out of this repo.

2. Clone your repo to your own work computer, as usual.

3. Set up your Python3 environment, e.g. using virtualenv.

4. Install the required Python3 third-party packages (Flask, etc) using `pip install -r requirements.txt'.

5. Create your JSON file settings.json in either the directory {your-repo-dir}/site or {your-repo-dir}/webapp by making a copy of {your-repo-dir}/webapp/example_settings.json Edit it to fit your site. If your email server is not the simple localhost with no password, then you need to set those variables. See the file {your-repo-dir}/webapp/__init__.py for all email-related settings variables.

6. Set up the CouchDB database that your app will use, and add the name of it, any required username and password for it, in your settings.json file.

7. Include the directory {your-repo-dir} in the Python path. This can be done in different ways. The simplest is to set it in the shell (e.g. in your .bashrc file):

   $ cd {your-repo-dir}
   $ export PYTHONPATH=$PWD:$PYTHONPATH
   

8. Use the command-line interface to create an admin user account. This will also automatically load the index definitions to the CouchDB server.

   $ python cli.py -A
   

9. Run the Flask app in development mode as usual python app.py.

10. If you wish to run the Flask app in production mode, see the Flask manual or the Apache, nginx, or whichever outward-facing web server you are using for information.