Flask By Example

Unleash the full potential of the Flask web framework by creating simple yet powerful web applications

About This Book

• The most up-to-date book on Flask on the market
• Create your own world-class applications and master the art of Flask by unravelling its enigma through this journey
• This step-by-step tutorial is packed with examples on blending different technologies with Flask to get you up and running

Who This Book Is For

Have you looked at PHP and hated the clunky bloated syntax? Or looked at .Net and wished it was more open and flexible? Maybe you’ve tried your hand at GUI libraries in Python and found them hard to use? If your answer to any one of these questions is a yes, then this is just the book for you.

It is also intended for people who know the basics of Python and want to learn how to use it to build powerful solutions with a web front-end.

What You Will Learn

• Build a web application from the ground up
• Dynamically display data to your viewers based on their requests
• Store user and static data in SQL and NoSQL databases and use this data to power your web application
• Create a good user experience by combining CSS and JavaScript inside HTML templates
• Harness the convenience of freely available APIs, including Open Weather, Open Exchange Rates, and bit.ly
• Extend your application with plugins
• Combine different technologies and use the right tools to solve problems, such as Bootstrap and MongoDB

In Detail

Flask is a simple and minimalistic framework, which makes it easy to learn and beginner-friendly. It is also well-developed and exceptionally well-documented with an advanced plugin system, consisting of all the features of a top-end framework and is extremely powerful to use. It empowers you to harness the flexibility of the web through the elegance of Python without needing to worry about installations and compatibility.

This book will take you on a journey through learning about web development using Python to building fully-functional web applications. We start off with a simple web application that greets visitors with the time-honored tradition of “Hello, World!” In the first major project, we move on to developing a dynamic and useful “headlines” application that displays the latest news headlines along with up-to-date currency and weather information. In project two, we build a dynamic "crime map" that is backed by a SQL database, allowing users to submit information and the location of crimes in order to plot danger-zones and other crime trends within an area. In the final project, we look at how to use Flask with more modern technologies, including Twitter’s Bootstrap and the NoSQL database MongoDB. We combine these to create a "restaurant notification" application that allows restaurant patrons to easily call a waiter to their table.

This pragmatic tutorial will keep you engaged as you learn the nitty-gritty of Flask by working on challenging real-world applications.