Deploying your flask application on an apache server might seem daunting at first but it’s not that bad – if you follow these 4-5 easy steps.

Assumptions/Tips

I’m assuming your server is linux-based (Ubuntu 16.04/14.04 e.t.c) If you are ssh-ing into your server from your machine make sure to use a vpn to test if your site is up or consider closing the ssh session if you want to test out your website from your host. I recommend using Opera for this as you could simply open an incognito window with the vpn option enabled and test your website without having to close your ssh session.

Setup

MyApp
   /app
      /static
      /template
      /venv
      __init__.py
      views.py
      models.py
myapp.wsgi
__init__.py

Install apache2 and mod_wsgi is you don’t already have those installed. sudo apt-get install apache2 sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-wsgi

Using python3? sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-wsgi-py

Step 0

Make sure that your localhost is set up correctly. Make sure that 127.0.0.0.1 localhost mydomain.com http://www.mydomain.com Or something like that.

Step 1

After Installing apache2 and mod_wsgi go to /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ and make sure that 000-default.conf is enabled and that apache2 is running. To check if apache2 is up, run the following command, sudo service apache2 status If apache2 is running you will see a green dot at the start of the status message.

If apache2 is not running run sudo service apache2 start and enable 000-default.conf if it is not enabled. In /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ run the following command; sudo a2ensite 000-default.conf then, restart apache2 server; sudo service apache2 restart.

Step 2

Go to your private opera window and navigate to your domain. You should see apache’s default html page saying it works.

Step 3: Enable secure http on your site

Lets make that page secure. Go to certbot and select Apache and your OS for example Xenial

Install the apache package for letsencrypt; $ sudo apt-get install python-letsencrypt-apache

$ letsencrypt --apache

Now navigate to your /etc/apache2/sites-available/ folder and check to see if default-ssl.conf exists, if it does enable it and reload apache;

sudo service a2ensite default-ssl.conf sudo service apache2 restart

And go to your private Opera window and navigate to your website. If it doesn’t exist go back to the previous step or make sure that you have appropriate rights.

Last Step

Edit myapp.wsgi to look like this;

activate_this = '/home/your_user_name/myapp/app/venv/bin/activate_this.py'
execfile(activate_this,dict(__file__=activate_this))

import sys
import logging
logging.basicConfig(stream=sys.stderr)
sys.path.insert(0,'/home/your_user_name/myapp')
from app import app as application

Edit your 000-default.conf and your default-ssl.conf thus; Comment out the DocumentRoot line. Your 000-default.conf should look like sometihng like this;

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName mydomain.com
ServerAlias mydomain.com
ServerAdmin myemail@gmail.com
Redirect permanent / https://www.mydomain.com

ErrorLog /var/www/logs/error.log
CustomLog /var/www/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

And your default-ssl.conf file should look thus;

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
 <VirtualHost _default_:443>
 ServerAdmin myemail@gmail.com
 ServerName mydomain.com
 ServerAlias www.mydomain.com

 WSGIDaemonProcess myapp user=your_user_name group=www-data threads=5
 WSGIScriptAlias / /home/your_user_name/MyApp/myapp.wsgi

<Directory /home/your_user_name/myapp/>
 WSGIProcessGroup myapp
 WSGIApplicationGroup %{GLOBAL}
 Order allow,deny
 Allow from all
 Require all granted
</Directory>

Alias /static /home/your_user_name/myapp/app/static
<Directory /home/your_user_name/myapp/app/static>
 Order allow,deny
 Allow from all
 Require all granted
</Directory>

 ErrorLog /var/www/logs/error.log
 Customlog /var/www/logs/access.log combined

 SSLEngine on
 SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/mydomain.com/fullchain.pem
 SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/mydomain.com/privkey.pem

 <FilesMatch "\.(cgi|shtml|phtml|php)$">
 SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
 </FilesMatch>
 <Directory /usr/lib/cgi-bin>
 SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
 </Directory>
 BrowserMatch "MSIE [2-6]"\
 nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \
 downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0
 BrowserMatch "MSIE [17-9]" ssl-unclean-shutdown

 </VirtualHost>
</IfModule>

Conclusion

In this example, we run our app from a script located in MyApp. The reasons for this will be made clear later on. The script is named __init__.py for a reason that will become clear in the next post. This is how it looks like;

#!app/venv/bin/python
from app import app
if __name__=='__main__':
 app.run(host='127.0.0.1',debug=True)

Before I forget, make sure that everything your MyApp folder has the right user and groups see default-ssl.conf in the previous step. If it doesn’t navigate to the folder MyApp folder and do;

chown -R your_user_name:www-data MyApp

That’s it for now! Happy coding!