Render
Render is a cloud platform as a service supporting several programming languages. Render is one of the few multi-language platforms which can host application servers for free without a credit card!
We shall set up render to auto deploy our application using git. First you need to fork the template repository into your github account. Start by following the link below.
Make sure you're logged into github then click the "Use this template" button.
Provide repository name then click on the "Create repository from template" button
Next sign into render with your desired auth provider.
Now create a new web service.
Search for your newly created repository. Then scroll down to the advanced options.
Add the following environment variables so the flask application can be configured accordingly.
Ensure the start command is set to "gunicorn wsgi:app"
Finally create your web service.
After the web service is created, render would attempt to clone the code then run the build and launch commands specified in the previous step.
After it has completed you can then open your application at the url given.
Because we cannot access the command line to run flask init on render, we unfortunately have to place this through a /init route. Do not do this on a real application.
The application currently uses an sqlite database however the files of the application are destroyed when it goes to sleep so the data will not persist between sessions.
You can create a postgres database on render.
Give it a name then create the database.
After it is created you can copy your database url.
Then navigate to your web service from the dashboard.
Then to the environment settings of your web service and update your database url environment variable to the previously copied url.
This should trigger a new build.
Then try running the init command to reinitialize your database.
Now that your repository is deployed you may try adding to the codebase and deploying new features.
First open a gitpod workspace from your repository. This can be done by clicking new workspace from you gitpod dashboard.
Creating a Branch
In VSCode editor environments you can create a branch by clicking the branch icon on the bottom left.
Then clicking create new branch and entering a branch name.
You should see that you are now working on the newly created local branch.
When making a change to the code you can navigate to the source control view as shown below, stage your changes and create a commit with a commit message.
Then click on publish branch to push your changes to the repo.
Making a pull Request
Now navigate to your repo on github.com. You can then switch to your newly created branch.
Then open a pull request.
Give a meaningful name to your pull request.
Then finalize the creation. At this point another team member would review the changes of your pull request and decide to merge your branch with the main branch.
After the merge is completed render would auto deploy the new changes which you will be able to test in production.
And that's how you can deploy a flask application on render and manage new contributions using source control.