In the last few years, many large and complex applications started shifting from a monolithic architecture to a microservices architecture. Instead of working with large and extremely complex web services, the microservices architecture proposes developing a collection of smaller, loosely-coupled services to implement all the features required by complex applications in a way that enables and simplifies continuous delivery.
RESTful APIs are essential pieces of the microservices architecture, and Python is extremely popular when shifting to this architecture. Each microservice can encapsulate a RESTful API that fulfills a specific and limited purpose. The microservice is self-contained, it is easy to maintain, and it helps to support continuous delivery.
As happens with any architecture, there are several ways to implement the microservices architecture. We will learn to encapsulate a RESTful API developed with Flask and Python into a microservice. This way, we will be able to leverage our skills by developing RESTful APIs and using them as the essential pieces to build self-contained and easy-to-maintain microservices.