Deploying Flask on lighttpd
Deploying Flask seems a lonely taks, becuase of dearth of articles or blogs that explain in. This is even worse when deploying on a shared server.
Most people seems to treat a python deployment as a django deployment. Since, there are cheap and available Flask hsting site, i went with Django host, but confirmed that we can host any other framework.
The good thing is that, there too many similarities, and most packages are already installed on the host.
1. Open putty and log into the hosts server (s17.wservices.ch)
2. Check that the following following packages are installed
python and python-devel: the Python interpreter and its development package
lighttpd: The Lighty web server and its development package
install postgresql postgresql-contrib: The PostgreSQL database server and its development package
git: source code version control system (we will use it to download and update the application)
gcc: the C/C++ compiler (needed to compile Python extensions)
sudo: a tool that helps users run commands as other users.
If not, install them.
sudo apt-get python python-devel lighttpd httpd-devel mysql-server mysql-devel git gcc
3. Configure passwordless login (if needed)
4. Create a directory for the application, and install the application from BitBucket
mkdir app
cd app
git clone git://bitbucket.org/peppe/peppe-ng.git
5. Check User permissions
chmod -R 777 *
6. Setup the database
Go to https://panel.djangoeurope.com/databases/
Login with a username and password, and then create a database and dump the content of the dev db
pg_dump peppedb > ppdbdump.sql
Transfer the file to live host
sftp outfile.sql peppe@s17.wservices.ch
Load the Db on the live host
psql peppedb < ppdbdump.sql
7. Setup the webserver
Paste at the end of this file ~/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf
#Peppe.com
$HTTP[“host”] =~ “(^|.)peppe.com.ng$” {
fastcgi.server = (
“/flask.fcgi” => (
“main” => (
“socket” => env.HOME + “/mysite_project/mysite.sock”,
“check-local” => “disable”,
)
),
)
alias.url = (
“/media” => env.HOME + “/mysite_project/media”,
)
url.rewrite-once = (
“^(/media.*)$” => “$1”,
“^/favicon.ico$” => “/media/favicon.ico”,
“^(/.*)$” => “/flask.fcgi$1”,
)
}
Replace mydomain.com with the name of your domain. Be sure to escape all dots of your website’s name (put a backslash before it: .). Replace your_django_project/media with the path of you media directory (relative to your home directory). Replace mysite_project/mysite.sock with the path to your fastcgi socket file
Now you can launch your lighttpd:
~/init/lighttpd start
Whenever you make changes to the configuration, you can reload the configuration or restart lighttpd:
~/init/lighttpd reload
~/init/lighttpd restart
9. Configure the db and start
10. Install application updates