dreamhost-flask-project-template

Dreamhost Shared Hosting Flask Project Template

Purpose

This is the base setup I use specifically to launch new apps on Dreamhost's shared hosting plan (there are probably some optimizations that could be made to this). While this should work with other configurations as well, I have not tested in other environments.

Installation

1. Setup your project domain in Dreamhost's web panel:

• PHP 5.6.x FastCGI
• Passenger Enabled (required!)
• Note: Dreamhost will default to using your domain as your app path, but you can change it to whatever you want. This value is referenced as <DOMAIN PATH> in these instructions as well as in your passenger_wsgi.py, and should be updated to the value you chose.

2. Install newer version Python (optional - I used 3.4.2, but this works with 2.x as well)

   cd ~
   mkdir python
   cd python
   wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.4.2/Python-3.4.2.tar.xz
   tar xf Python-3.4.2.tar.xz
   cd Python-3.4.2
   ./configure --prefix=$HOME/python
   make
   make install
   echo 'export PATH=$HOME/python/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.bash_profile
   

• log out and back in again - Python should default to the new installation
• Note: if you install python 3.x, use "python3" to start python

3. Install a virtual environment

   cd ~
   wget https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/v/virtualenv/virtualenv-12.0.2.tar.gz
   tar xf virtualenv-12.0.2.tar.gz
   cd virtualenv-12.0.2
   python setup.py install
   *(or "python3 setup.py install" if you installed python 3.x)*
   cd ~
   mkdir env
   virtualenv env/wsgi
   

4. Install python libraries

source ~/env/wsgi/bin/activate
pip install Flask

5. customize .bash_profile (Optional):

   # Restarts the Flask app
   alias restart='touch ~/<DOMAIN PATH>/tmp/restart.txt'
   alias main='cd ~/<DOMAIN PATH>/'
   
   # Activates virtualenv
   alias activate='source ~/env/wsgi/bin/activate'
   
   # Watch logs
   alias access='tail -500f ~/logs/<DOMAIN PATH>/http/access.log'
   alias error='tail -500f ~/logs/<DOMAIN PATH>/http/error.log'
   
   alias ls='ls --color=auto'
   
   # git
   alias gs='git status'
   alias gl='git log'
   
   # Shows what git branch i am currently on
   parse_git_branch() {
    git branch 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e 's/* \(.*\)/(\1)/'
   }
   export PS1="\[\033[00m\]\u@\h\[\033[01;34m\] \W \[\033[31m\]\$(parse_git_branch)
   \[\033[00m\]$\[\033[00m\] "
   

6. If the app doesn't start up automatically:

   touch ~/<DOMAIN PATH>/tmp/restart.txt
   

Author

Jonathan Prusik @jprusik classynemesis.com

License

Dreamhost Shared Hosting Flask Project Template is released under the MIT License.