Cookiecutter template for flask restful, including blueprints, application factory, and more

This cookie cutter is a very simple boilerplate for starting a REST api using Flask, flask-restful, marshmallow, SQLAlchemy and jwt. It comes with basic project structure and configuration, including blueprints, application factory and basics unit tests.

Features

• Simple flask application using application factory, blueprints
• Flask command line interface integration
• Simple cli implementation with basics commands (init, run, etc.)
• Flask Migrate included in entry point
• Authentication using Flask-JWT-Extended including access token and refresh token management
• Simple pagination utils
• Unit tests using pytest and factoryboy
• Configuration using environment variables
• OpenAPI json file and swagger UI

Used packages :

• Flask
• Flask-RESTful
• Flask-Migrate
• Flask-SQLAlchemy
• Flask-Marshmallow
• Flask-JWT-Extended
• marshmallow-sqlalchemy
• passlib
• tox
• pytest
• factoryboy
• dotenv
• apispec

• Installation
• Configuration
• Authentication
• Running tests
• WSGI Server
• Flask CLI
• Using Docker
• Makefile
• APISpec and swagger
• Changelog

Make sure you have cookiecutter installed in your local machine.

You can install it using this command : pip install cookiecutter

Starting a new project is as easy as running this command at the command line. No need to create a directory first, the cookiecutter will do it for you.

To create a project run the following command and follow the prompt

cookiecutter https://github.com/karec/cookiecutter-flask-restful

Let's say you named your app myapi and your project myproject

You can install it using pip :

cd myproject
pip install -r requirements.txt
pip install -e .

You have now access to cli commands and you can init your project

flask db upgrade
flask myapi init

To list all commands

flask --help
flask myapi --help

Configuration is handled by environment variables, for development purpose you just need to update / add entries in .flaskenv file.

It's filled by default with following content:

FLASK_ENV=development
FLASK_APP="myapp.app:create_app"
SECRET_KEY=changeme
DATABASE_URI="sqlite:////tmp/myapp.db"

Avaible configuration keys:

• FLASK_ENV: flask configuration key, enables DEBUG if set to development
• SECREY_KEY: your application secret key
• DATABASE_URI: SQLAlchemy connection string

To access protected resources, you will need an access token. You can generate an access and a refresh token using /auth/login endpoint, example using curl

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"username": "admin", "password": "admin"}' http://localhost:5000/auth/login

This will return something like this

{
  "access_token": "eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJ0eXBlIjoiYWNjZXNzIiwiaWRlbnRpdHkiOjEsImlhdCI6MTUxMDAwMDQ0MSwiZnJlc2giOmZhbHNlLCJqdGkiOiI2OTg0MjZiYi00ZjJjLTQ5MWItYjE5YS0zZTEzYjU3MzFhMTYiLCJuYmYiOjE1MTAwMDA0NDEsImV4cCI6MTUxMDAwMTM0MX0.P-USaEIs35CSVKyEow5UeXWzTQTrrPS_YjVsltqi7N4", 
  "refresh_token": "eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpZGVudGl0eSI6MSwiaWF0IjoxNTEwMDAwNDQxLCJ0eXBlIjoicmVmcmVzaCIsImp0aSI6IjRmMjgxOTQxLTlmMWYtNGNiNi05YmI1LWI1ZjZhMjRjMmU0ZSIsIm5iZiI6MTUxMDAwMDQ0MSwiZXhwIjoxNTEyNTkyNDQxfQ.SJPsFPgWpZqZpHTc4L5lG_4aEKXVVpLLSW1LO7g4iU0"
}

You can use access_token to access protected endpoints :

curl -X GET -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Authorization: Bearer eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJ0eXBlIjoiYWNjZXNzIiwiaWRlbnRpdHkiOjEsImlhdCI6MTUxMDAwMDQ0MSwiZnJlc2giOmZhbHNlLCJqdGkiOiI2OTg0MjZiYi00ZjJjLTQ5MWItYjE5YS0zZTEzYjU3MzFhMTYiLCJuYmYiOjE1MTAwMDA0NDEsImV4cCI6MTUxMDAwMTM0MX0.P-USaEIs35CSVKyEow5UeXWzTQTrrPS_YjVsltqi7N4" http://127.0.0.1:5000/api/v1/users

You can use refresh token to retreive a new access_token using the endpoint /auth/refresh

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Authorization: Bearer eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpZGVudGl0eSI6MSwiaWF0IjoxNTEwMDAwNDQxLCJ0eXBlIjoicmVmcmVzaCIsImp0aSI6IjRmMjgxOTQxLTlmMWYtNGNiNi05YmI1LWI1ZjZhMjRjMmU0ZSIsIm5iZiI6MTUxMDAwMDQ0MSwiZXhwIjoxNTEyNTkyNDQxfQ.SJPsFPgWpZqZpHTc4L5lG_4aEKXVVpLLSW1LO7g4iU0" http://127.0.0.1:5000/auth/refresh

this will only return a new access token

{
  "access_token": "eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJ0eXBlIjoiYWNjZXNzIiwiaWRlbnRpdHkiOjEsImlhdCI6MTUxMDAwMDYxOCwiZnJlc2giOmZhbHNlLCJqdGkiOiIzODcxMzg4Ni0zNGJjLTRhOWQtYmFlYS04MmZiNmQwZjEyNjAiLCJuYmYiOjE1MTAwMDA2MTgsImV4cCI6MTUxMDAwMTUxOH0.cHuNf-GxVFJnUZ_k9ycoMMb-zvZ10Y4qbrW8WkXdlpw"
}

Simplest way to run tests is to use tox, it will create a virtualenv for tests, install all dependencies and run pytest

tox

If you just want to run pytest and avoid linters you can use

tox -e test

If you want to run pytest manually without using tox you'll need to install some dependencies before

pip install pytest pytest-runner pytest-flask pytest-factoryboy factory_boy

Then you can invoke pytest

pytest

Note that tox is setting environment variables for you when testing, but when using pytest directly that's not the case. To avoid setting up env variables each time you run pytest, this cookiecutter provide a .testenv file that contains default configuration for testing. Don't forget to update it if your local env doesn't match those defaults.

Testing with docker is another great option, since it take cares of everything and spawn required services for you. To run tests within docker containers, you can use the provided Makefile:

Build images:

make build

Running tox with flake8, black and pytest:

make tox

Running tox with pytest only:

make tests

This project provide a simple wsgi entry point to run gunicorn or uwsgi for example.

For gunicorn you only need to run the following commands

pip install gunicorn
gunicorn myapi.wsgi:app

And that's it ! Gunicorn is running on port 8000

If you chose gunicorn as your wsgi server, the proper commands should be in your docker-compose file.

Pretty much the same as gunicorn here

pip install uwsgi
uwsgi --http 127.0.0.1:5000 --module myapi.wsgi:app

And that's it ! Uwsgi is running on port 5000

If you chose uwsgi as your wsgi server, the proper commands should be in your docker-compose file.

This cookiecutter is fully compatible with default flask CLI and use a .flaskenv file to set correct env variables to bind the application factory. Note that we also set FLASK_ENV to development to enable debugger.

WARNING both Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml are NOT suited for production, use them for development only or as a starting point.

This template offer simple docker support to help you get started and it comes with both Dockerfile and a docker-compose.yml.

Dockerfile has intentionally no entrypoint to allow you to run any command from it (server, shell, init, ...)

Note that you still need to init your app on first start, even when using compose.

docker build -t myapp .
...
docker run --env-file=.flaskenv myapp myapi init
docker run --env-file=.flaskenv -p 5000:5000 myapp myapi run -h 0.0.0.0
 * Serving Flask app "myapi.app:create_app" (lazy loading)
 * Environment: development
 * Debug mode: on
 * Running on http://0.0.0.0:5000/ (Press CTRL+C to quit)
 * Restarting with stat
 * Debugger is active!
 * Debugger PIN: 214-619-010

With compose

docker-compose up
...
docker exec -it <container_id> flask myapi init

With docker-compose and the Makefile

make init

Initizalize the environment

make init

Build the containers

make build

Run the containers

make run

Create new database migration

make db-migrate

Apply database migrations

make db-upgrade

Run tests inside containers

make test

This boilerplate comes with pre-configured APISpec and swagger endpoints. Using default configuration you have two endpoints avaible:

• /swagger.json: return OpenAPI specification file in json format
• /swagger-ui: swagger UI configured to hit OpenAPI json file

This come with a very simple extension that allow you to override basic settings of APISpec using your config.py file:

• APISPEC_TITLE: title for your spec, default to {{cookiecutter.project_name}}
• APISPEC_VERSION: version of your API, default to 1.0.0
• OPENAPI_VERSION: OpenAPI version of your spec, default to 3.0.2
• SWAGGER_JSON_URL: Url for your JSON specifications, default to /swagger.json
• SWAGGER_UI_URL: Url for swagger-ui, default to /swagger-ui
• SWAGGER_URL_PREFIX: URL prefix to use for swagger blueprint, default to None

• Added a .testenv file to avoid needing to set env variables when running pytest manually

• Added python 3.8 support
• Upgraded to marshmallow 3
• Added lint and tests envs to tox
• Added black support
• Improved travis tests
• Added initial db migration instead of relying on db.create_all()
• Added new step to create database in README
• Various cleanup

• Added apispec dependencies
• Registered users endpoints into swagger
• New apispec extension
• Added two new routes /swagger.json and /swagger-ui (configurable urls)
• Added swagger html template
• Add travis file

• Added docker and docker-compose support

• Update configuration to only use env variables, .flaskenv has been updated too
• Configuration file cannot be overridden by MYAPP CONFIG env variable anymore
• various cleanups (unused imports, removed configtest.py file, flake8 errors)