Deploying Flask

Deploying Flask

Goal

Deploy a hardened, production-ready Flask application served by a WSGI server (Gunicorn) behind a reverse proxy (Nginx), preferably containerized with Docker.

When to Use

• When the application is ready for staging or production release.
• When setting up the CI/CD pipeline for deployment.
• When moving off the development server (flask run).

Instructions

1. Production Configuration

Ensure the application loads configuration from environment variables, not hardcoded files.

# config.py
import os

class Config:
    SECRET_KEY = os.environ.get('SECRET_KEY')
    SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI = os.environ.get('DATABASE_URL')
    DEBUG = False
    TESTING = False

2. WSGI Server (Gunicorn)

Never use the built-in Flask development server in production. Use Gunicorn.

Create a gunicorn_config.py:

workers = 4 # 2 * CPU cores + 1
bind = "0.0.0.0:8000"
accesslog = "-"
errorlog = "-"
timeout = 120
keepalive = 5

3. Dockerization

Create a Dockerfile optimized for size and security.

FROM python:3.11-slim-buster

WORKDIR /app

ENV PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE=1
ENV PYTHONUNBUFFERED=1

COPY requirements.txt .
RUN pip install --no-cache-dir -r requirements.txt

COPY . .

# Run as non-root user
RUN useradd -m myuser
USER myuser

CMD ["gunicorn", "--config", "gunicorn_config.py", "app:create_app()"]

4. Reverse Proxy (Nginx)

Use Nginx to handle SSL termination, static files, and request buffering.

# nginx.conf snippet
server {
    listen 80;
    server_name example.com;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://flask_app:8000;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    }
}

Constraints

✅ Do

• Always use a WSGI server like Gunicorn or uWSGI.
• Run the application as a non-root user inside the container.
• Pin dependencies in requirements.txt with exact versions.
• Set FLASK_ENV (or FLASK_DEBUG) to production (or 0).
• Use environment variables for all secrets (API keys, DB passwords).
• Health check endpoints (/health) should verify DB connectivity.

❌ Don't

• DO NOT use flask run in production. It is single-threaded and not secure.
• DO NOT commit .env files to the repository.
• DO NOT expose the Gunicorn port directly to the public internet; always use a reverse proxy.
• DO NOT use the default latest tag for base images; pin to a specific version (e.g., python:3.11-slim).

Output Format

• Dockerfile
• gunicorn_config.py
• docker-compose.yml (optional, for orchestration)
• Updated requirements.txt with gunicorn

Dependencies

• ../scaffolding-flask/SKILL.md
• ../../shared/environment-config/SKILL.md