Localhost AWS

Requirements and dependencies

• Python3 - We recommend using virtual environments. They will help on the creation of isolated environments so different python versions can run on the same machine. Check more about virtual environments here. (Needs to be installed manually)
• Pip - The python package manager. (Needs to be installed manually; will be automatically installed on Mac if your Python version is >=2.7.9 or >3.4)
• Flask - A simple and flexible Python Web Framework that provides with tools, libraries and technologies to build a web application. (Installed by pip)

Clone the project

Use the command below:

git clone https://github.com/MLH/mlh-localhost-build-and-deploy-aws.git

Set Up Environment variables

To quickly set up environment variables, make a copy of the .env.example and rename it to .env. Then make sure to modify it following the instructions below.

EventBrite API Key

We need to setup an Eventbrite Auth token to be able to fetch data from Eventbrite's API. Follow this guide to get your key. The Personal Tokens section is the relevant bit.

After going through the tutorial, you should have the following information:

EVENTBRITE_AUTH_TOKEN=

Database URL

This allows you to use a custom database url and will be useful for local tests (The app is currently configured to support a custom Postgres or Mysql database). This won't be necessary to deploy the app to AWS, as we will use an RDS instance that Elastic Beanstalk configures for us. See the "Adding a database to Your Elastic Beanstalk Environment" section below for more details.

CUSTOM_DATABASE_URL=

The format should be something like:

CUSTOM_DATABASE_URL=mysql://USER:PASSWORD@ENDPOINT/DATABASE_NAME

Install dependencies

The next step is to install the dependencies used by the project. Run the following command:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Troubleshooting mysqlclient Install (Mac)

If you're running on a Mac, you may run into issues installing the MySQL client. There are a few things that need to be checked for:

• Do you have mysql installed? You can check this by seeing if mysql
• Do you have python3 installed? You can install Python3 with brew install python3

You may need to install the mysql-connector-c and add flags to allow Homebrew to work with Open SSL; follow the answers in the links below.

Helpful Links

Mac OS X - EnvironmentError: mysql_config not found

ld: library not found for -lssl

Repo for mysqlclient

MySQL Configuration error

Blog Post on pipenv mysql fix

Executing the application

After having all the dependencies installed, you only need to execute the main application file. In this case it will be the file "main.py"

FLASK_APP=application.py FLASK_DEBUG=1 flask run

Then open http://localhost:5000/ to see the application.

Deploying to AWS Elastic Beanstalk

We will use awswebcli to deploy our app to AWS.

Install awswebcli

pip install awsebcli

Initialize your APP

After installing awswebcli, the first thing we need to do is to initialize our app within AWS.

eb init

This will prompt you with a number of questions to help you configure your environment.

Do you wish to continue with CodeCommit?

Select No (N)

Default region

As this is an example application, we can choose keep the default option selected.

Credentials

Next, it’s going to ask for your AWS credentials.

If needed, you can follow this guide to set up your IAM account

Application name

This will default to the directory name. Just go with that.

Python version

Choose any Python 3+ version

SSH

Say yes to setting up SSH for your instances.

RSA Keypair

Next, you need to generate an RSA keypair, which will be added to your ~/.ssh folder. This keypair will also be uploaded to the EC2 public key for the region you specified in step one. This will allow you to SSH into your EC2 instance later in this tutorial.

Adding a database to Your Elastic Beanstalk Environment

Open your console management by running

eb console

Then follow this guide to set up your Amazon RDS within your app. The app expects an RDS MySQL database.

Create an environment

eb create

Just like eb init, this command will prompt you with a series of questions.

Environment Name

Name your environment. localhost-aws-test for instance.

DNS CNAME prefix

This will be your subdomain. You can keep the default value, or use your environment name.

Configuring Eventbrite Auth Token

Open your console management by running

eb setenv EVENTBRITE_AUTH_TOKEN={{EVENTBRITE_AUTH_TOKEN_VALUE}}

(Optional) Set up a different DB engine

eb setenv RDS_ENGINE=postgresql
eb setenv RDS_ENGINE=mysql

Deploy the app

eb deploy

Open your app

To see your deployed app in the browser:

eb open