Creating a RESTful API: Flask

In this chapter, I will show you how to build a small project in Python. You will use all the knowledge about the software development process you have learned so far from the previous chapters. Part of every project is the decisions you need to make as to what technologies you are going to use. Lots of things can affect these decisions, such as your own skillset, your team's skillset, general best practices, and your project itself. You will stick to a conservative but realistic approach to solve your problem. You will build a small system that communicates with a database. This will be a complete project setup, including the GitLab repositories, changes to the Docker file, and installing the software you need for your project. One new aspect I will introduce is the software framework. When we create systems, we don't necessarily write all the code from scratch. We may opt to use a framework. A framework houses all the basic tools we need in order to bring our software up quickly. The tools may include routing of requests, where your external request is served up via specific “routes” into the system, or the basic code for database access models.