Getting Started With Flask and Docker: Containerize your first flask application
Tags: python, devops, docker, machinelearning
Published: 2021-09-18 21:48:40

![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/i4galx5vlrrehwrxnow8.png)

### **Docker** 
Docker is an open source tool which is used to deliver software in packages called containers and in the recent days it has changed we think, ship and deploy our applications to the server.

The main advantage of docker is that it enables easy deployment to the cloud, since containers have the added benefit of running anywhere without facing dependencies conflicts. 

### **Flask**
**Flask** is a web micro-framework, it’s a Python module that lets you develop web applications easily without providing rules and specific methodology to follow.

### **Flask application structure:**

The **server.py** file - This is our main and entry point file that contains all flask logic to run our application.

The **templates** folder - By default, flask will look for any markup files in the templates folder, but you can configure to have your html files in a different folder.

The **static** folder - In our flask applications we uses static folder to keep our static files, these include images, JavaScript and CSS code  

**NB:** 
When creating python application it is advisable to keep virtual environment so that you don't interfere with the global local environment, also since we will creating a minimalistic flask application we won't be using static files hence we don't need the static folder.  
 
**server.py**

```python
from flask import Flask, render_template, request

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route('/register', methods = ["GET", "POST"])
def register():
   if request.method == "POST":
       username = request.form["username"]
       email = request.form["email"]
       password = request.form["password"]
   return render_template('register.html')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(debug=True)
```
 
**Templates/register.html** 

```html 
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Welcome to our registration page</title>
  </head>
  <body>
  <form>
    Username <input type = "text" name= "username" /> 
    Email <input type = "text" name = "email" />
    Password <input type = "text" name = "password" />
  </form>
  </body>
</html>
``` 

**Dockerfile**
 
```Dockerfile
FROM python:3.6-alpine

COPY . app

COPY ./requirements.txt /app/requirements.txt

WORKDIR app

EXPOSE 5000:5000

RUN pip install -r requirements.txt

CMD [ "python", "server.py" ]
``` 

**Build your docker image** 

```bash 
>>> docker build -t myimage .  
``` 

**Run your docker image** 

Now that we have successfully built our image let run it using `docker run` command, the following command will run our **myimage** image.

```bash 
>>>docker run -t -i myimage    
``` 

Bravo!🥳🥳 you have containarized your first flask application, alternatively you can use docker compose which is used to run multiple docker containers to simplify the process where we use just one command `docker-compose up` to build and run our docker container and `docker-compose down` to stop the container. 

Thank you for reading, please feel free to leave additional insights in the comment section below. 

**Let Connect** 

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