History, project and app

Flask-Unity an extension of flask web framework that ease the complexity of structuring flask project blueprint, packages, connecting other flask extensions, database migrations, and other annoying stuffs.

The main reason behind the development of flask-unity is to combine (unite) flask and it extensions in one place to make it ease when developing an application without the headache (worrying) of knowing the tricks on how to connect those extensions with flask, or import something from somewhere to avoid some errors such as circular import and other unexpected errors. Also structuring flask application is a problem at some cases to some people, flask-unity take care of all these so that you only focus on writing your application views the way you want.

Flask-unity depends on (come with) the following flask popular and useful extensions, these include: flask-admin for building an admin interface on top of an existing data model (where you can manage your models in the admin page), flask-bcrypt it provides bcrypt hashing utilities for your application, flask-login it provides user session management for Flask. It handles the common tasks of logging in, logging out, and remembering your users’ sessions over extended periods of time, flask-sqlalchemy It simplifies using SQLAlchemy with Flask by setting up common objects and patterns for using those objects, such as a session tied to each web request, models, and engines, flask-wtf Simple integration of Flask and WTForms, including CSRF, file upload, and reCAPTCHA. And possibly some other extensions / libraries.

It also include alembic that handles SQLAlchemy database migrations. The database operations are made available through the flask-unity command-line interface or the alembic. It configures Alembic in the proper way to work with your Flask and Flask-SQLAlchemy application. In terms of the actual database migrations, everything is handled by Alembic so you get exactly the same functionality.

History

Initially this project (library) flask-unity was called (named) sakyum, it come into existance in November 20, 2022 and released it first version (v0.0.1) on December 30, 2022. The following are list of versions released when it was called sakyum:

  • v0.0.1 First version released on December 30, 2022

  • v0.0.2 Second version released on February 12, 2023

  • v0.0.3 Third version released on February 20, 2023

  • v0.0.4 Fourth version released on March 05, 2023

  • v0.0.5 Fifth version released on March 27, 2023

  • v0.0.6 Sixth version released on March 27, 2023

  • v0.0.7 Seventh version released on April 04, 2023

  • v0.0.8 Eight version released on June 09, 2023

  • v0.0.9 Nineth version released on June 22, 2023

  • v0.0.10 Tenth version released on June 23, 2023

  • v0.0.11 Eleventh version released on June 23, 2023

  • v0.0.12 Twelveth version released on June 23, 2023

In July, 2023 the maintainer of Flask-Unity Usman thinking of following the naming convention giving to flask extensions (flask_foo).

On August 05, 2023 the name Flask-Unity replaced Sakyum, by shipping (releasing) all the versions released when it was called sakyum, change repository, and archieved the previous one. The following are versions that shipped from sakyum to flask-unity with the respective date of released:

  • v0.0.1 released on August 05, 2023

  • v0.0.2 released on August 06, 2023

  • v0.0.3 released on August 06, 2023

  • v0.0.4 released on August 07, 2023

  • v0.0.5 released on August 07, 2023

  • v0.0.6 released on August 07, 2023

  • v0.0.7 released on August 07, 2023

  • v0.0.8 released on August 07, 2023

  • v0.0.9 released on August 07, 2023

  • v0.0.10 released on August 07, 2023

  • v0.0.11 released on August 07, 2023

  • v0.0.12 released on August 07, 2023

From that v0.0.12, Flask-Unity progress by releasing v0.0.13 which is not available when it was sakyum, and other versions follows! look @ PYPI releases

Project and app

When using flask-unity, don’t be confuse with the the concept of project and app.

Project is the entire folder that contain your flask application, when you create project with the command:

flaskunity -p schoolsite
.. or
flaskunity --project schoolsite

It will create a parent directory with the name schoolsite also inside the schoolsite directory there is a directory with thesame name of the parent directory schoolsite this directory is the one that most of configurations, registering and other thing that are going to be implemented inside it.

Within that parent directory schoolsite it also generate a file called run.py this is the file that you will be running along side with some positional arguments and flags. Also it will generate a directory called migrations this directory contains database migrations file and others. Lastly it will generate templates and static directory for your site pages and it styles respectively. At a glance, it will create schoolsite, run.py, alembic.ini, templates, static, migrations, media all in schoolsite (base dir of the project).

App (application) is like to say a blueprint which greatly simplify how large applications work and provide a central means for flask extensions to register operations on applications. Read flask blueprint.

Don’t worry if you didn’t get the concept of project and app, surely you will get it if you dive deep by the help of the schoolsite project.