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Python Microservices Development
Python Microservices Development

Python Microservices Development: Build, test, deploy, and scale microservices in Python

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Python Microservices Development

Discovering Flask

Flask was started around 2010, leveraging the Werkzeug WSGI toolkit (http://werkzeug.pocoo.org/), which provides the foundations for interacting with HTTP requests via the WSGI protocol, and various tools such as a routing system.

Werkzeug is equivalent to Paste, which provided similar features. The Pylons project (http://pylonsproject.org), which is the umbrella organization for projects like Pyramid --another web framework-- integrated Paste and its various components at some point.

Together with Bottle (http://bottlepy.org/) and a handful of other projects, they composed the Python microframeworks ecosystem.

All those projects have a similar goal--they want to offer to the Python community simple tools to build web applications faster.

However, the term microframework can be a bit misleading. It does not mean you can only create micro applications. Using those...

Which Python?

Before we start digging into Flask, there's one question we should answer. What Python version should be used at this point with Flask, since it supports both?

We're now in 2017, and as we've seen in the previous chapter, Python 3 has made some incredible progress. Packages that don't support Python 3 are now less common. Unless you're building something very specific, you should not have any problem with Python 3.

And building microservices means each app will run in isolation, so it would be entirely imaginable to run some in Python 2 and some in Python 3 depending on your constraints. You can even using PyPy.

Despite the initial pushbacks the Flask creator had on some of the Python 3 language decisions, the documentation explicitly says at this point that new projects should start using Python 3; refer to http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/latest...

How Flask handles requests

The framework entry point is the Flask class in the flask.app module. Running a Flask application means running one single instance of this class, which will take care of handling incoming Web Server Gateway Interface (WSGI) requests, dispatch them to the right code, and then return a response.

WSGI is a specification that defines the interface between web servers and Python applications. The incoming request is described in a single mapping, and frameworks such as Flask take care of routing the call to the right callable.

The class offers a route method, which can decorate your functions. When you decorate a function with it, it becomes a view, and it's registered into Werkzeug's routing system. That system uses a small rule engine to match views with incoming requests, and will be described later in this chapter.

Here's a very basic...

Flask built-in features

The previous section gave us a good understanding of how Flask processes a request, and that's good enough to get you started.

But Flask comes with more helpers, which are quite useful. We'll discover the following main ones in this section:

  • The session object: Cookie-based data
  • Globals: Storing data in the request context
  • Signals: Sending and intercepting events
  • Extensions and middlewares: Adding features
  • Templates: Building text-based content
  • Configuring: Grouping your running options in a config file
  • Blueprints: Organizing your code in namespaces
  • Error handling and debugging: Dealing with errors in your app

The session object

Like the request object, Flask creates a session object, which...

A microservice skeleton

So far in this chapter, we've looked at how Flask works, and at most of the built-in features it provides--and we will be using them throughout this book.

One topic we have not covered yet is how to organize the code in your projects, and how to instantiate your Flask app. Every example so far used a single Python module and the app.run() call to run the service.

Having everything in a module is, of course, a terrible idea unless your code is just a few lines. And since we will want to release and deploy the code, it's better to have it inside a Python package so that we can use standard packaging tools like Pip and Setuptools.

It's also a good idea to organize views into blueprints, and have one module per blueprint.

Lastly, the run() call can be removed from the code, since Flask provides a generic runner that looks for an app variable...

Summary

This chapter gave us a pretty detailed overview of the Flask framework, and how it can be used to build microservices.

The main takeaways are as follows:

  • Flask wraps a simple request-response mechanism around the WSGI protocol, which lets you write your applications in almost vanilla Python.
  • Flask is easy to extend, and it works with Python 3.
  • Flask comes with nice built-in features: blueprints, globals, signals, a template engine, error handlers, and a debugger.
  • The microservice project is a Flask skeleton, which will be used to write microservices throughout this book. It's a simple app that uses an INI file for its configuration, and makes sure everything produced by the app is JSON.

The next chapter will focus on development methodology: how to continuously code, test, and, document your microservices.

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Key benefits

  • A very useful guide for Python developers who are shifting to the new microservices-based development
  • A concise, up-to-date guide to building efficient and lightweight microservices in Python using Flask, Tox, and other tools
  • Learn to use Docker containers, CoreOS, and Amazon Web Services to deploy your services

Description

We often deploy our web applications into the cloud, and our code needs to interact with many third-party services. An efficient way to build applications to do this is through microservices architecture. But, in practice, it's hard to get this right due to the complexity of all the pieces interacting with each other. This book will teach you how to overcome these issues and craft applications that are built as small standard units, using all the proven best practices and avoiding the usual traps. It's a practical book: you’ll build everything using Python 3 and its amazing tooling ecosystem. You will understand the principles of TDD and apply them. You will use Flask, Tox, and other tools to build your services using best practices. You will learn how to secure connections between services, and how to script Nginx using Lua to build web application firewall features such as rate limiting. You will also familiarize yourself with Docker’s role in microservices, and use Docker containers, CoreOS, and Amazon Web Services to deploy your services. This book will take you on a journey, ending with the creation of a complete Python application based on microservices. By the end of the book, you will be well versed with the fundamentals of building, designing, testing, and deploying your Python microservices.

Who is this book for?

This book is for developers who have basic knowledge of Python, the command line, and HTTP-based application principles, and those who want to learn how to build, test, scale, and manage Python 3 microservices. No prior experience of writing microservices in Python is assumed.

What you will learn

  • Explore what microservices are and how to design them
  • Use Python 3, Flask, Tox, and other tools to build your services using best practices
  • Learn how to use a TDD approach
  • Discover how to document your microservices
  • Configure and package your code in the best way
  • Interact with other services
  • Secure, monitor, and scale your services
  • Deploy your services in Docker containers, CoreOS, and Amazon Web Services

Product Details

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Publication date : Jul 25, 2017
Length: 340 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781785881114
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Product Details

Publication date : Jul 25, 2017
Length: 340 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781785881114
Languages :
Concepts :
Tools :

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Table of Contents

12 Chapters
Understanding Microservices Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Discovering Flask Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Coding, Testing, and Documenting - the Virtuous Cycle Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Designing Runnerly Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Interacting with Other Services Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Monitoring Your Services Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Securing Your Services Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Bringing It All Together Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Packaging and Running Runnerly Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Containerized Services Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Deploying on AWS Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
What Next? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
(5 Ratings)
5 star 40%
4 star 40%
3 star 0%
2 star 20%
1 star 0%
Hugo Marquez Mar 08, 2021
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Excelente producto y tiempo de entrega
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Tomer Ram Jan 25, 2019
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
Good book if you have some knowledge in the field
Amazon Verified review Amazon
vy nguyen Jun 02, 2018
Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 2
Not sure about the paper pack, but the kindle version is terrible.1. Writing and format is terrible, just like a very first draft that you complete on the last minute.2. Content: Involve too many things that are irrelevant, but wasting time to invest. For example, the monolithic with STRAVA. No, please use some simple example, capture the key things, instead of asking me registering for a website just to run the example.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Gert Feb 01, 2018
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Great book. Exactly what I was looking for. The examples are awesome. Must have if you want to implement Python Microservices.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Michael K. Fox Jan 08, 2018
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
I find the online flask docs to be very terse. They’d be perfect if I already knew what I needed to do and just needed a reminder of the proper syntax. The docs show examples of how things might be done without much explanation of why one should do them that way or what’s going on under the hood. After floundering a bit, I found this book, “Python Microservices Development”, which is very helpful. It goes into just enough detail about how Flask works and also includes a lot of information about available extension packages for flask and what they are used for.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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