notes-pico 0.8

A note-taking example web application for Picoweb web pico-framework. (Ported from Flask original)

Notes Pico is a simple note-taking web application. It was originally written by Charles Leifer as a demo of how to write a simple, but slick web application using the Flask web micro-framework. The application is described in the blog post http://charlesleifer.com/blog/saturday-morning-hack-a-little-note-taking-app-with-flask/ . Notes Pico is a port of this application to Picoweb web pico-framework for MicroPython. It was ported by Paul Sokolovsky.

To install and run the application, you should install MicroPython “Unix” port as described at https://github.com/micropython/micropython . Once you have micropython executable in your PATH (recommended, but not strictly necessary), change directory to where you want to install the app (~/tmp/ should be good for a quick test) and install notes-pico package:

micropython -m upip install -p app notes-pico

app (argument of -p option) is a subdirectory into which to install the application. To run the app, execute:

MICROPYPATH=app micropython -m notes_pico

This will initialize note storage and output a URL to open in a browser:

* Running on http://127.0.0.1:8081/

Open the link and start adding notes (after typing text press “Add note” button or press Ctrl+Enter). Note that Picoweb port is intended to be simple and low-resource, so supports only plain-text notes, unlike the original Flask application.

Storage backends

Notes Pico supports 3 storage backends:

• BTree

• Filesystem

• SQLite3

As a first step towards portability to MicroPython microcontroller versions, the default backend for the package installed from PyPI via the commands in the previous section is BTree database. The notes are stored in notes.db database file of the current directory, in BerkeleyDB 1.x format.

If you would like to try filesystem/SQLite3 backend, you’ll need to checkout https://github.com/pfalcon/notes-pico and edit file notes_pico/config.py. The repository has a convenience Makefile to install dependencies and run the application, similar to the effect achieved by the commands above.

Known issues and limitations

As mentioned above, Picoweb port of the application supports only plain-text notes, no formatting, images or videos.

Currently, Notes Pico tested only with “Unix” MicroPython port, though there’s intention to make it work on microcontroller ports with networking support and suitable resources.