Tag archive for: software development

How to enable authenticated MongoDB access for Flask-MongoEngine applications

After having a first look at MongoDB more than 5 years back, I told myself that I will use MongoDB to realise the next functionality of Techcoil.

With exposure to Python 3, Flask and MongoEngine in 2017, I had acquired the skills to build a microsite to recommend gift ideas. This microsite uses MongoDB to store the gift recommendation data.

With Flask and MongoEngine, development of this microsite did not take too much leisure time. With MongoDB not enforcing authentication, there were not much hindrance in setting up the development environment for this microsite.

However, this free-for-all mode of accessing MongoDB is not recommended for production environments. Without authentication, it is easier for ill-intentioned people to mess up the backend database.

To ensure that I have a go-to post for implementing authenticated access to MongoDB backed projects in the future, I document the steps needed for Flask-MongoEngine applications to access MongoDB instances with access control turned on.

How I setup Codiad web IDE on my Raspberry Pi 3 with Ubuntu Server 15.10.3, Nginx and PHP

There are times when I get the urge to work on project source codes that reside on my Raspberry Pi 3 LEMP server while I am on the move. Setting up a web based IDE on my Raspberry Pi 3 is one way to enable me to code while I am on the move, so long as I have a device with a web browser that is connected to the internet. Since I had already setup a LEMP server to run WordPress on my Raspberry Pi 3 and that Codiad is written in PHP, Codiad is an ideal web based IDE that I can set up on my Raspberry Pi 3.

This post documents how I setup Codiad web IDE on my Raspberry Pi 3. To make this post complete, I had taken some of the steps mentioned in my other posts on Raspberry Pi and replicated it in this post.

A platform independent way to set your Python Path for your Python applications

In a software development house where desktop computers run Microsoft Windows while servers run Linux, software developers will have to ensure that the Python code that they wrote on their Windows machine can run on the deployment servers which are running Linux.

One unavoidable task for Python application developers is the importing of functionalities that are contained in other Python scripts. In order for the Python interpreter to find the Python scripts that are referenced by Python import statements, the Python Path will need to contain the URLs of the directories that contain the Python scripts to be imported.

Supervisor configurations to ensure that my Python Flask application releases binded port(s) during a supervisor restart

We use Supervisor to help keep our Python based applications running. One of our applications was built on the Python Flask framework to provide a RESTful api to connecting clients.

With continuous integration in place, we need to restart all our Supervisor managed applications whenever there is a change being merged to the master branch in our Git repository.

This post documents the Supervisor configurations to ensure that my Python Flask application releases any port that it had binded to when Jenkins send the command to restart the Supervisor and the processes that it manages.