Instant Flask Web Development

Impatient for results? This is a fast, concise guide to the essentials of Flask with a totally practical approach that means you’ll be up and running on your first Flask app before you know it.

• Learn something new in an Instant! A short, fast, focused guide delivering immediate results
• Build a small but complete web application with Python and Flask
• Explore the basics of web page layout using Twitter Bootstrap and jQuery
• Get to know how to validate data entry using HTML forms and WTForms
• Understand SQLAlchemy and relational databases

In Detail

Flask is a web framework for Python, which lets you start simply and grow carefully without facing any issues with the framework as your project gets large. Flask integrates Werkzeug (a web programming toolkit) and Jinja (a templating engine) and adds a layer that lets you build web applications and services in a compact way, while letting you choose your own tools.

Instant Flask Web Development takes you beyond the quick start in the Flask documentation and shows you a bottom-up approach to organizing your Flask application. It shows you how to build a small deployable scheduling application with pointers to the various design decisions you can make when developing with Flask.

Instant Flask Web Development lets you set up your development environment and learn how Flask handles web requests, then shows you how to build a functional data-driven web application that is ready to publish, by adding one layer at a time. When working with Flask, you can work with Python and utilize its best tools for the job. The book will help you build the layers of a simple application: URL routes with Flask, a database with SQLAlchemy, form validation with WTForms, user authentication and sessions, page layout with Twitter Bootstrap, and browser code with jQuery.

This book promises to get you up and running on your first Flask app, so that you can use Flask and Python on your next web project.

What you will learn from this book

• Manage your project dependencies using virtualenv
• Understand how Flask provides URL routing and web request handling
• Recognize how Flask serves static files on disk
• Learn about modeling, storing, and querying data with SQLAlchemy
• Present HTML forms and validate input with WTForms
• Build a page layout with Twitter Bootstrap using a base Jinja template
• Create, recall, update, delete, and list database records
• Build custom template filters in Jinja to format data
• Authenticate users and maintain sessions

Approach

Filled with practical, step-by-step instructions and clear explanations for the most important and useful tasks. The book uses a bottom-up approach to help you build applications, and is full of step-by-step instructions and practical examples to help you improve your knowledge.

Who this book is written for

Instant Flask Web Development is for developers who are new to web programming, or are familiar with web programming but new to Flask. This book gives you a head start if you have some beginner experience with Python and HTML, or are willing to learn.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Instant Flask Web Development