Flask Docker Setup

Tutorial: Dockerizing Flask with Postgres, Gunicorn, and Nginx

Objectives

• Configure Flask to run on Docker with Postgres;
• Add Nginx and Gunicorn for production environment;
• Serve static and user-uploaded media files via Nginx;

How to use this setup?

Development

1. Build the images and run the containers:

$ docker-compose up -d --build

$ docker-compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d --build

$ docker-compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml exec web python manage.py create_db

2. Bring down containers

docker-compose down -v

3. Ensure App is running http://localhost:1337

4. Upload Asset http://localhost:1337/upload.

5. View Asset http://localhost:1337/media/IMAGE_FILE_NAME.

Production

1. Set up a fully managed database service -- like RDS or Cloud SQL -- rather than managing your own Postgres instance within a container.
2. Use a non-root user for the db and nginx services for security reasons