flask-nginx 0.8.18

install flask websites into nginx

footprint 👣

I use this to generate config files for my flask apps. Currently systemd and nginx. It only depends on Flask.

It is intended to be installed into the same virtual environment that the flask app inhabits so it can introspect the app. It has no dependencies other than Flask.

export FLASK_APP=your_package.wsgi
footprint config nginx www.example.com > example.conf
footprint config nginx-install example.conf

# install in ~/.config/systemd/user
export FLASK_APP=your_package.wsgi
footprint config systemd --user  > example.service
footprint config systemd-install --user example.service

will install nginx and systemd files that will statically serve you 'static' assets and run the Flask app with gunicorn.

Mostly I've found that confectioning these files by hand are highly error prone. These commands will at least get the absolute pathnames correct :)

footprint will install a Quart (ASGI) service using the --asgi to flag. In this case you need both the quart and uvicorn-worker packages installed also.

Install with:

python -m pip install flask-nginx
python -m pip install -U git+https://github.com/arabidopsis/footprint.git
# or
# git clone https://github.com/arabidopsis/footprint.git
# cd footprint
# python -m pip install [--editable] .

or add to your pyproject.toml file

footprint = { git = "https://github.com/arabidopsis/footprint.git", branch="main" }

Once installed you can upgrade with:

footprint update
# or
uv pip install -U $(footprint repo)

If footprint finds a pyproject.toml file in the current directory if will try to load [tool.footprint] values into its global configuration object.

nginx, systemd and all that

Note that these configuration generating functions are not infallible. Please examine the generated configure files carefully! They are mainly useful for getting the directory names correct etc. So if you move your repo then you will have to regenerate and reinstall the files.

• Nginx Docs. Also and Proxy

Test an nginx config with e.g.:

website=~/Sites/websites/ppr
export FLASK_APP=ppr.wsgi
footprint config nginx --app-dir=$website example.org | footprint config nginx-run --app-dir=$website -

This will run nginx at the terminal listening on port 2048 and run the backend website.

To install a website:

footprint config nginx --app-dir=$website example.org -o website.conf
footprint config systemd [--user] --app-dir=$website -o website.service
# nginx requires sudo (default) or su
footprint config nginx-install website.conf
# if you can install into ~/.config/systemd/user
footprint config systemd-install [--user] website.service

You can test this locally by editing /etc/hosts and adding a line:

127.0.0.1 example.org

to the file.

REMEMBER: Unix file permissions mean that you should edit /etc/nginx/nginx.conf and change user www-data; to user {you}; Or (recursively) change the owner on all the repo directories to www-data.

If you install as "user" (i.e. footprint config systemd --user ...) then to ensure that the user systemd starts at boot time use: sudo loginctl enable-linger <user>

See here:

But what’s the real reason for having user services? To answer that, we have to realize when the enabled service starts and stops. If we enable a user service, it starts on user login, and runs as long as there is a session open for that user. Once the last session dies, the service stops.

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See digitalocean.com here for a tutorial about serving flask from nginx.

Uninstall with footprint config nginx-uninstall website.conf and footprint config systemd-uninstall [--user] website.service

.flaskenv

If a .flaskenv is found in the repo directory then nginx and systemd will read paramters from that file. The keywords should be uppercase version of the known parameters. Unknown parameters will be ignored.