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Role flask_app

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Summary

Serves an arbitrary Flask app, which runs on localhost using uWSGI, using Nginx as a reverse proxy. The Flask app is installed either from a public git repository, or from PyPi. The role allows easily enabling authentication for your webapp, using SRAM and Single Sign-On.

The role allows installing the app in the different ways:

  1. From a public git repo
  2. From PyPi (specifying package name and version)
  3. From a requirements file on the target machine. The main advantages of this mode is that it allows you to specify specific dependencies, and that by committing a requirements file to your playbook's repo, you can use something like Dependabot to keep updating to the latest available version of your app.
    • Note: when using this mode, you must still set the flask_app_pip_pkg variable to the name of the package that contains your app, so the role knows which of the dependencies in the requirements file is the app you want to run!

Requires

  • Debian-like OS
  • Nginx web server (installed via the SRC-Nginx component)

Description

The user can define:

  1. Which Flask app to install, by either:
  • setting a URL to the appropriate git repo.
  • setting a PyPi package name
  1. Which version of Python to use.
  2. The location of dependency files, such as requirements.txt or pyproject.toml, relative to the root of the git repo. These will automatically be installed
  3. Whether authentication should be enabled for the webapp.
  4. A number of more advanced settings described below.

The role installs uv to ensure the appropriate Python version for the app is present, and to install the dependencies.

app.py vs wsgi.py

Serving Flask apps with uWSGI is usually done in one of two major ways:

  1. Set the uWSGI wsgi-file option to the location of app.py, which contains a callable app.
  2. Set the UWSGI module option to wsgi:app, indicating that the file wsgi.py in the project contains an app callable.

This role will assume the first method is to be used, except when flask_app_module_path is wsgi.py -- in that case, it will automatically set the module config option to wsgi:app.

The user can always modify the uWSGI config by setting the flask_app_uwsgi_config option (see below).

Variables

Many of the variables below are to configure the uWSGI settings. While individual settings have their own variable, note that you can always use either flask_app_uwsgi_config (pass in a dict) or flask_app_uwsgi_config_block (pass in a string) to configure arbitrary settings.

  • flask_app_name: String. Name of your application. This is descriptive: it determines, for instance, the directory under which files will be saved (e.g. /var/www/myappname). Default: FlaskApp.
  • flask_app_pip_pkg: String. Name of the PyPi package that contains the app. You must set either this variable, or flask_app_repo (but not both).
  • flask_app_repo: String. Url to a public git repository containing your app. You must set either this variable, or flask_app_pip_pkg (but not both).
  • flask_app_version: String. Git tag or version to use.
  • flask_app_module_path: String. Path to the main .py file for your Flask app (often app.py or wsgi.py), relative to the repository root.
  • flask_app_pip_requirements: String. Comma-separated list of paths to requirements file (.txt or .toml), the contents of which will be installed in the venv. When using flask_app_pip_pkg, this will be assumed to be a file on the target machine. When using flask_app_repo, it will be assumed to be a path inside the specified repository.
  • flask_app_uwsgi_env: String. Environment variables to be added to the environment in which the app is run, e.g. FOO=bar BAZ=qux. Default: ''.
  • flask_app_python_version: String. The version of Python to serve the app with. Default: 3.10.
  • flask_app_num_workers: Integer. Number of processes uWSGI should spawn to handle requests for the app. Default: 2.
  • flask_app_uwsgi_config: Dict. Settings to be added to the uWSGI .ini config file, according to key=value.
  • flask_app_uwsgi_config_block: String. Additional multiline .ini style configuration for uWSGI. See uWSGI docs for more info, and see the default .ini template in the uWSGI role.
  • flask_app_chdir: Boolean. If true, the app will be executed from the directory containing the app's code.
  • flask_app_proxy_auth: String. Set to sram to enable SRAM authorization / Single-Sign On authentication, basic for HTTP basic auth, or omit for no authentication. Default: sram.
  • flask_app_proxy_location: String. Nginx location definition determining which URL to serve the app at. Default: /, meaning the app is served at http://yourworkspacefqdn. Can also be set to e.g. /myapp to serve at http://yourworkspacefqdn/myapp.
  • flask_app_proxy_config: Dict. Settings passed on to the nginx_reverse_proxy location definition. By default it contains standard settings for authentication, based on the flask_app_proxy_auth variable. You can override these settings using the auth and htpasswd keys in this dict. You can also add other directives that will end up in the nginx location definition: see the variables for nginx_reverse_proxy).
  • flask_app_http_username: String. Optional, used if flask_app_proxy_auth_basic is enabled to set the username for authentication.
  • flask_app_http_password: String. Optional, used if flask_app_proxy_auth_basic is enabled to set the password for authentication.

See also

History

2024-2025 Written by Dawa Ometto (Utrecht University)

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