Deploy a Python (Flask) web app with PostgreSQL in Azure

This is a Python web app using the Flask framework and the Azure Database for PostgreSQL relational database service. The Flask app is hosted in a fully managed Azure App Service. This app is designed to be be run locally and then deployed to Azure.

This webapp implements a simple WebEngine in python.

Requirements

The requirements.txt has the following packages.

Package	Description
Flask	Web application framework.
SQLAlchemy	Provides a database abstraction layer to communicate with PostgreSQL.
Flask-SQLAlchemy	Adds SQLAlchemy support to Flask application by simplifying using SQLAlchemy. Requires SQLAlchemy.
Flask-Migrate	SQLAlchemy database migrations for Flask applications using Alembic. Allows functionality parity with Django version of this sample app.
pyscopg2	PostgreSQL database adapter for Python.
python-dotenv	Read key-value pairs from .env file and set them as environment variables. In this sample app, those variables describe how to connect to the database locally. Flask's dotenv support sets environment variables automatically from an .env file.
flask_wtf	Form rendering, validation, and CSRF protection for Flask with WTForms. Uses CSRFProtect extension.
nltk	language processing library
lxml	html tree parsing library
beautifulsoup4	interface for html parsing

Run the sample

This project has a dev container configuration, which makes it easier to develop apps locally, deploy them to Azure, and monitor them. The easiest way to run this sample application is inside a GitHub codespace. Follow these steps:

1. Fork this repository to your account. For instructions, see Fork a repo.

2. From the repository root of your fork, select Code > Codespaces > +.

3. In the codespace terminal, run the following commands:

   # Install requirements
   python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt
   # Create .env with environment variables
   cp .env.sample.devcontainer .env
   # Run database migrations
   python3 -m flask db upgrade
   # Run the spider to index the files
   flask --app app init-spider url
   # Start the development server
   flask --app app run

4. When you see the message Your application running on port 8000 is available., click Open in Browser.