Hosting Python Flask Webserver from
Heroku Cloud Application Platform

1. Fork Flask WebServer Repository

• Navigate to url to fork the Flask application

2. Create Heroku Account

• Navigate to signup.heroku.com to sign up for an account

3. Create Heroku Application

• From the Heroku Welcome page, click Create New Application

4. Connect Heroku Application to Github Account

• From the Application Deploy Tab of Heroku, connect Heroku application to Github.
• Ensure that automatic deployments for each push is enabled

5. Connect Heroku Application to Github Repository

• Upon connecting to github, search for the newly forked repository.

6. Clone The Forked Repository

• Navigate to your Github account to find the Forked Python Flask Webserver Repository
• Clone the repository onto your local machine
• Start the webserver by executing the command below from the root directory of the project
  • python web.py

7. View the Application Locally

• Verify that the application builds correctly on your local machine by navigating to localhost:8080 to view the static HTML that is served by the Python Flask Webserver

8. pip freeze and pipe dependencies to requirements.txt

• Execute pip freeze > requirements.txt from the root directory of your local project to pipe the dependencies of the project to a requirements.txt file.
  • This file will allow Heroku to fetch and configure the respective dependencies and run the application on the cloud
• Execute the command below to append the unicorn requirement
  • echo gunicorn==19.9.0 >> requirements.txt
• push these changes to your remote repository by executing the commands below from the root directory of your local project
  • git add .
  • git commit -m "created 'requirements.txt'"
  • git push

9. Configure Deployment from Heroku

• Execute the command below in a terminal from the root directory of the locally cloned project to create a Procfile
  • echo web: gunicorn ${name_of_main_python_module}:app > Procfile
    • replace ${name_of_main_python_module} with the name of the main python module to be ran on the server
• push these changes to your remote repository by executing the commands below from the root directory of your local project
  • git add .
  • git commit -m "created 'Procfile'"
  • git push
• view the live deployment from Heroku

10. View the Application Remotely

• From https://dashboard.heroku.com/apps navigate to the application’s most recent build.
• At the bottom of the build log, copy and paste the URL that the application is hosted on.