This is the fourth and last part of a series about the Flask framework, a common tool used to create web applications with Python.
Objectives
The part 4 will focus on connecting the web API with a remote database.
The full example is available here: Python-Flask.
Topics
Remote Database
Let’s connect with a remote MySQL database now.
Follow the instructions in this article or in this repository to create a database and get the connection string.
If you followed them correctly, you must have a user table in your remote database. Change it by adding a column named age.
Here is an easy script to do it:
ALTER TABLE user ADD age INT NOT NULL;
Now, return to VSCode, add PyMySQL into the requirements.txt and install it by running:
pip install -r requirements.txt
Inside the _dbapi.py, import the PyMySQL package:
import pymysql.cursors
Comment the _startdb function because it won’t be needed anymore:
Modify the execute function to receive the MySQL connection by adding the connection string:
Change the _postusers function to receive the inserted id:
Now, run the API again:
python .\api\db_api.py
Make a GET request to the _getusers function. The result will be something like this:
Make a POST request to create another user:
Another GET request and the result will be:
Modify the age from your new user with a PUT request:
Check it out:
Delete another user:
And… it is gone!
Conclusion
In this series, you have seen how a web API behaves in a Python environment with Flask framework.
During our tests, runtime and persistent data were used.
The local and remote database had similar functions, equal results and were easy to manipulate.