Flask Tutorial for beginners - Part 1

It's about time I wrote about Python Flask. One of the easiest, most accessible Python frameworks for building software.

Python was originally thought of as a great scripting tool, but there are many examples of great commercial tools built using Python.

Learning Flask opens up a brand new way to automate business processes by building a web interface to your Python business logic.

Huge companies may have significant budgets to buy and customize software for millions of dollars. However, small and medium size businesses can use programming tools to build custom software for almost no cost.

This is probably why Microsoft built VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) into their Microsoft Office suite. And many companies have taken advantage of VBA's excellent programming interface to automate calculations in Excel, or even large documents.

This is what we're going to do:

1. Talk about what Flask is and what it isn't.
2. Install Flask (we'll be using a Linux machine (actually a Raspberry Pi) and also a Mac, but Windows will work also.
3. Run a simple Flask program.
4. Create a database program using Flask. Here we learn about getting input, cleaning it and then storing it. We'll use a lightweight database (sqlite) for this - so we may branch off and discuss sqlite.
5. Introduce you to Bootstrap so that we can use some libraries to make the user interface beautiful (and responsive).

With this brief introduction, you should be able to build complex applications since you'll be able to create menu systems, text boxes to accept input, display data from databases and allow users to edit it.

Remember, a building of a hundred storeys begins with a single brick.

Let's get started on that brick.