Getting up and running with Flask and VENV

Get started creating Flask apps with Python3 and venv.

This article assumes that you have python3 installed on your computer. If you don’t already, please visit https://www.python.org/downloads/.

Installing Flask

To begin, let’s get our work enviorment set up.

We will be working inside a folder, so start by creating one and moving inside it:

$ mkdir my_project
$ cd my_project

Now, inside this folder, we want to create a ‘virtual enviornment’. A virtual enviornment or ‘venv’ is a way to install packages and run programs without effecting the computer’s files outside of a single folder. This way, we can also keep closer track of our dependencies (or libraries) and their versions.

There are two steps needed to start working in a virtual enviornment in python.

Step #1: Create the enviornment folders

$ python3 -m venv venv

Step #2: Activate the enviornment

$ . venv/bin/activate

After you have activated the enviornment, notice how your shell looks a bit different. It has, prefixed to the prompt, this string: “(venv)”. This tells you that you are operating in the virtual enviornment. The packages we install will now be ‘recorded’ in the virtual enviornment and only be accessible in that enviornment as well.

Now, we can install Flask.

$ pip install Flask