Flash-MongoDB Example Web App

Project currently hosted at https://i6.cims.nyu.edu/~ab1258/flask-mongodb-example/flask.cgi

Database credentials

The credentials for logging into a MongoDB database must be stored in a file named .env, which is not included in this repository for security reasons.

1. make a copy of the file named env.example and save it as .env
2. edit the .env file and enter your own database credentials into each of the variables where indicated

Run locally

To run this app locally, first clone this repository to your local machine...

git clone url-to-this-repository

... and then do the following:

Set up a Python virtual environment

This command creates a new virtual environment with the name .venv:

python3 -m venv .venv

Activate the virtual environment

To activate the virtual environment named .venv...

On Mac:

source .venv/bin/activate

On Windows:

.venv\Scripts\activate.bat

Install the dependencies into the virtual environment

The file named, requirements.txt contains a list of dependencies - other Python modules that this app depends upon to run.

To install the dependencies into the currently-active virtual environment, use pip, the default Python "package manager" - software that takes care of installing the correct version of any module into your in the correct place for the current environment.

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Run the app

1. define two environment variables from the command line: export FLASK_APP=app and export FLASK_ENV=development
2. copy the file named env.example into a new file named .env, and enter your own MongoDB database connection credentials into that file where indicated.
3. start flask with flask run - this will output an address at which the app is running locally, e.g. https://127.0.0.1:5000. Visit that address in a web browser.

Host on a web server

The following steps outline how to host this application on NYU's i6.cims.nyu.edu web server. Other servers may vary.

1. Familiarize yourself with web hosting steps on a CIMS server from the link: https://cims.nyu.edu/webapps/content/systems/userservices/webhosting.
2. remotely log into the server using ssh.
3. navigate into your web server account's public_html directory using cd public_html.
4. clone this repository with git clone url-to-this-repository
5. once cloned, copy the file named env.example into a new file named .env (using cp env.example .env), and enter your own MongoDB database connection credentials into that file where indicated. Save it.
6. Make the files named flask.cgi and app.py executable by all with the command, chmod u+x flask.cgi and chmod u+x app.py.
7. Your app should now be live at https://i6.cims.nyu.edu/~$USER/$flask-app-directory/flask.cgi, where $USER is replaced with your own i6 username and $flask-app-directory is replaced with the name of the sub-directory within public_html where your flask app code resides.