Steuerlotse Flask backend

Getting started 🛠

For developing, we suggest running the Flask app locally. Assuming that you are on a UNIX-like OS, the following commands should get you up and running:

cd webapp/

# Install Python dependencies
pipenv install

# Install client-side dependencies
cd client/ && yarn install && yarn prepare && npm install && cd ..

# Ensure required environment variables are set
cp .flaskenv.example .flaskenv

# Initialize local database
pipenv run flask db upgrade
pipenv run flask populate-database

# Generate translation files
./scripts/babel_run.sh

Development 👩‍💻 👨‍💻

To develop the app, you need to run two process: 1) the Flask app and 2) a dev server for client-side components.

Starting the Flask app

cd webapp/
pipenv run flask run

Starting the client-side dev server

cd webapp/client/
yarn start

You can now interact with the website on http://localhost:3000.

See here for more detailed information about developing client-side components.

Updating translation files

After every translation change (new strings, updated .po file) and also during first-time setup, run:

cd webapp/
./scripts/babel_run.sh

Using the Erica Mock service

A large amount of functionality in the app also requires a local erica service to be running.

If you do not want to run erica at the same time, you can set USE_MOCK_API = True in the DevelopmentConfig in the webapp's config.py.

Testing 📃

You can run tests as follows:

cd webapp/
pipenv run invoke test

Making changes to the database schema ⛓

For database migration and upgrades, we use Flask-Migrate. Make sure that you are in the pipenv shell and then do:

cd webapp/
# After model has been changed
flask db migrate  # Creates a new migration script in migrate/versions
flask db upgrade  # Updates the database using the migration script

⚠️ Flask-Migrate uses Alembic. Alembic does not detect all changes to the model (especially renaming tables or columns). Therefore re-check the migration script. You can find a list of Alembic's limitations here.