lpwm/flaskwebgui

Create desktop applications with Flask/Django/FastAPI!

Create desktop applications with Flask/FastAPI/Django!

Install

pip install flaskwebgui

Usage with Flask

Let's say we have the following flask application:

#main.py

from flask import Flask  
from flask import render_template
from flaskwebgui import FlaskUI # import FlaskUI

app = Flask(__name__)
ui = FlaskUI(app, width=500, height=500) # add app and parameters


@app.route("/")
def hello():  
    return render_template('index.html')

@app.route("/home", methods=['GET'])
def home(): 
    return render_template('some_page.html')


if __name__ == "__main__":
    # app.run() for debug
    ui.run()
   

Alternatively, next to main.py create a file called gui.py and add the following contents:

#gui.py

from flaskwebgui import FlaskUI
from main import app

FlaskUI(app, width=600, height=500).run()

Next start the application with:

python main.py 
#or
python gui.py #in case you created gui.py 

Application will start chrome in app mode, flask will be served by waitress.

Usage with Flask-SocketIO

Let's say we have the following SocketIO application:

#main.py

from flask import Flask
from flask_socketio import SocketIO
from flaskwebgui import FlaskUI

app = Flask(__name__)
app.config['SECRET_KEY'] = 'secret!'
socketio = SocketIO(app)


@app.route("/")
def index():  
    return {"message": "flask_socketio"}


if __name__ == '__main__':
    # socketio.run(app) for development
    FlaskUI(app, socketio=socketio).run()   

Alternatively, next to main.py create a file called gui.py and add the following contents:

#gui.py

from flaskwebgui import FlaskUI
from main import app, socketio

FlaskUI(app, socketio=socketio).run()

Next start the application with:

python main.py 
#or
python gui.py #in case you created gui.py 

Application will start chrome in app mode, flask will be served by socketio.

Usage with FastAPI

Pretty much the same, bellow you have the main.py file:

#main.py

from fastapi import FastAPI
from flaskwebgui import FlaskUI # import FlaskUI

app = FastAPI()
ui = FlaskUI(app) # feed app and parameters

@app.get("/")
def read_root():
    return {"message": "Works with FastAPI also!"}

if __name__ == "__main__":
    ui.run()

Alternatively, next to main.py create a file called gui.py and add the following contents:

#gui.py

from flaskwebgui import FlaskUI
from main import app

FlaskUI(app, width=600, height=500).run()

Next start the application with:

python main.py 
#or
python gui.py #in case you created gui.py 

Fastapi will be served by uvicorn.

Usage with Django

Next to manage.py file create a gui.py file where you need to import application from project's wsgi.py file.

├── project_name
│   ├── asgi.py
│   ├── settings.py
│   ├── urls.py
│   └── wsgi.py
├── gui.py # this 
├── manage.py

#gui.py

from flaskwebgui import FlaskUI
from project_name.wsgi import application

FlaskUI(application).run()

Next start the application with:

python gui.py  

Django will be served by waitress.

Configurations

Default FlaskUI class parameters:

• app, ==> app instance

• width=800 ==> window width default 800

• height=600 ==> default height 600

• fullscreen=False ==> start app in fullscreen (equvalent to pressing F11 on chrome)

• maximized=False ==> start app in maximized window

• app_mode=True ==> by default it will start chrome in app(desktop) mode without address bar

• browser_path=None ==> path to browser.exe (absolute path to chrome C:/browser_folder/chrome.exe)

• start_server=None ==> You can add a function which starts the desired server for your choosed framework (bottle, web2py pyramid etc) or specify one of the supported frameworks: flask-socketio, flask, django, fastapi

• port=5000 ==> specify other if needed

• socketio=SocketIO Instance ==> Flask SocketIO instance (if specified, uses socketio.run() instead of app.run() for Flask application)

Should work on windows/linux/mac with no isssues.

Develop your app as you would normally do, add flaskwebgui at the end or for tests. flaskwebgui doesn't interfere with your way of doing a flask application it just helps converting it into a desktop app more easily with pyinstaller or pyvan.

Distribution

You can distribute it as a standalone desktop app with pyinstaller or pyvan.

Credits

It's a combination of https://github.com/Widdershin/flask-desktop and https://github.com/ChrisKnott/Eel

flaskwebgui just uses threading to start a flask server and the browser in app mode (for chrome). It has some advantages over flask-desktop because it doesn't use PyQt5, so you won't have any issues regarding licensing and over Eel because you don't need to learn any logic other than Flask/Django.

Submit any questions/issues you have! Fell free to fork it and improve it!