Flask By Example - Softcover

Dwyer, Gareth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1785286935 ISBN 13: 9781785286933

Publisher: Packt Publishing, 2016

Synopsis

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 three web applications from the ground up using the powerful Python micro framework, Flask.
• 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 applications
• Create a good user experience by combining HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
• Harness the convenience of freely available APIs, including OpenWeatherMap, Open Exchange Rates, and bitly
• Extend your applications to build advanced functionality, such as a user account control system using Flask-Login
• Learn about web application security and defend against common attacks, such as SQL injection and XSS

In Detail

This book will take you on a journey from learning about web development using Flask to building fully functional web applications. In the first major project, we develop a dynamic Headlines application that displays the latest news headlines along with up-to-date currency and weather information. In project two, we build a Crime Map application that is backed by a MySQL database, allowing users to submit information on and the location of crimes in order to plot danger zones and other crime trends within an area. In the final project, we combine Flask with more modern technologies, such as Twitter's Bootstrap and the NoSQL database MongoDB, to create a Waiter Caller application that allows restaurant patrons to easily call a waiter to their table. This pragmatic tutorial will keep you engaged as you learn the crux of Flask by working on challenging real-world applications.

Style and approach

This book will provide you with rich, practical experience of Flask. Every technology, that is employed along with Flask is comprehensively introduced, while the book focusses on developing web applications. Pointers to educational material are always given if you want to gain in-depth knowledge of the various technologies used.

About this title

About the Author

Gareth Dwyer

Gareth Dwyer first heard the phrase, "behind every no-entry sign there is a door," a couple of decades ago, and he has been looking for a counterexample ever since. He hasn't found one yet. Gareth grew up with his three siblings in Grahamstown, South Africa. There wasn't much there except some highly respected schools and a small university. Gareth had heard that school was an unpleasant and largely pointless experience, so he opted to skip it and go to the university instead. The university door had a no-entry sign on the door because it only accepted people who had gone to school. Gareth ignored the sign. He studied piano for a while but soon, he wondered if there was more to life than sitting in front of a keyboard all day. So he switched from piano to computer science, and it took him a while to realize the irony. He studied philosophy too because it was here that people never told him to stop being so argumentative. Gareth noticed the disparagement that his philosophy and computer science departments felt towards each other, and he found it strange. He soon discovered that he wasn't the first person to see that there was room for some common ground, and he went to Europe to study computational linguistics, where he found other people who liked debating the finer points of language while talking about the three hardest problems of computer science (naming things, and off-by-one errors). In between doodling on blank paper while listening to very knowledgeable people lecture on content that was occasionally fascinating but often soporific, Gareth has gained so-called "industry" experience with companies such as Amazon Web Services in Cape Town and MWR InfoSecurity in Johannesburg. He has several years' experience in writing, and his favorite languages are English and Python. He discovered that writing and writing a book are not fully overlapping experiences, and the former is hardly preparation for the latter. The pages that follow would not have come into existence without the combined efforts of many people.

Edition details

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1785286935
• ISBN 13: 9781785286933
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 276