Primer
A getting-started kit for making your first interesting project with a Javascript frontend talking to a Python Flask backend.
Requirements
Python 3 with pip and a modern browser. The frontend will probably not render or work properly in IE or older browsers in general.
Tools
All these tools are cross-platform and works great on both Linux and Windows.
- IDE/editor - any modern one that can handle Python, HTML and Javascript will do. I recommend VSCode or, for true enlightenment, Emacs.
- Insomnia - Get it here. Makes sending POST, GET and any other request easy.
- In-browser dev-tools - If you have Firefox or Chrome then you have their excellent dev-tools already installed. Press F12 to show the panel that houses them.
Running the project
Install the module requirements for the Python backend by running pip install from the
backend folder. Pip is a module handler that comes bundled with Python unless you
make effort to exclude it and it will read the requirements.txt file to find modules to install.
Start the Flask server with python3 backend.py. Note that the Python 3 binary sometimes
installs itself as python so if python3 gives you errors indicating something is missing
try plain python instead. Stop the server by pressing control-c.
Start the frontend by opening index.html in the frontend folder in your browser. Make sure
to open the dev-tools by pressing F12 so you can see what's going on in the console.