flask-blog-template

This is a basic blogging app template developed with Python Flask on the backend. I made it simply to learn how to use the Python Flask framework, but after finishing, I figured someone might find it useful as a starting point/template for their app. Primary features of the template: user authentication, basic user profile including profile picture uploads, creating/editing/deleting posts, and loading posts to a central newsfeed.

Technologies used:

• Python Flask
• HTML templating with Jinja2
• CSS3 styling
• Bootstrap
• Minimal javascript used for post feed loading
• MongoDB database

Usage

1. Fork the repository, clone it, and cd into the directory

2. Resolve the dependencies:

   • pip install flask flask_login bson flask_bcrypt pymongo flask_wtf wtforms pillow

3. Set up a mongo database instance. My provider of choice is mLab

4. Set expected environmental variables:

   • SECRET_KEY: some random text will suffice
   • FLASK_ENV: "development"
   • FLASK_APP: the name of the file which initializes the flask app (in this case it is server.py but you can change that)
   • MONGODB_URI: the database uri for the mongo instance
   • Note: for your convenience, you should consider creating a bash script file (such as env.sh) and set all of the environmental variables there. Then each time to start development. You simply need to source the file with the command source env.sh and the enviormental variables will be set for you.

5. Start up the server: flask run

6. Navigate to localhost:5000