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Developing a new Flask application in a Dev Container

In this lab we'll use Visual Studio Code remote development features to create a new hello world Flask application in a dockerized development environment.

Pre-requisites

  1. Install Docker Desktop
  2. Install Visual Studio Code Insiders
  3. Install the VS Code Remote Extensions

Create dev container

First we'll create a new dev container that we can start building our app in:

  1. Open this folder using Visual Studio Code: 
    cd 2a-vscode-flask-dev-container
code-insiders .
  2. Press F1 and select Remote-Containers: Create container configuration file...
  3. Select Python 3 from the list
  4. Select the Reopen in Container button in the notification that appears. If you miss the notification, press F1 and select the Remote-Containers: Re-open Folder in Container command

After the dev container builds and installs, you will now be working in a dev container and you can start building your app!

Create app

Now let's create a hello world flask app. We'll need to set up the container to install flask and expose port 8000.

  1. Take a look at the files in the workspace root:

    • requirements.txt defines the Python libraries to install in the dev container
    • app.py contains the minimal code to run a flask web server

  2. Open .devcontainer/.devcontainer.json and expose port 5000 by adding "appPort": 5000. The .json file should look as follows:

    {
    "name": "Python 3",
    "context": "..",
    "dockerFile": "Dockerfile",
    "workspaceFolder": "/workspace",
    "extensions": [
        "ms-python.python"
    ],
    "appPort": 5000
}

    NOTE: Don't forget to press Ctrl-S to save!

  3. Now let's rebuild the container so that it installs flask via the requirements.txt file and exposes port 5000. Press F1 and select Remote-Containers: Rebuild container.

  4. Add a debug configuration, Debug > Add Configuration. Select Flask.

  5. Edit the launch.json file generated to have the app bind to host 0.0.0.0 by adding host to args as follows:

    "args": [
    "run",
    "--host","0.0.0.0",
    "--no-debugger",
    "--no-reload"
],

  6. Press F5 to start debugging, browse to your app at http://localhost:5000.

  7. Optionally set a breakpoint on line 6 of the app and refresh the page