+++
title = "Git – how to setup your own server pt 2"
author = "Danilo M."
type = "tech"
date = "2018-12-17T07:39:08+00:00"
excerpt = "followup on my previous article regarding GIT and how to automatically deploy python flask scripts to serve a web app with apache."
draft = true
image = "/uppies/2018/12/gitout.jpg"
categories = [ "DIY", "Code"]
tags = [ "git", "linux", "python", "howto", "automation", "ssh", "flask", "do it yourself"]
+++

This is a followup on [my previous article about how to setup your server][1] to handle a GIT repository and deploy to a web server like apache.

Since I started experimenting with python and web publishing with it I wanted a way to push all the changes to my codebase directly to a web server, in a similar way as to what I already do with php and apache.<figure class="wp-block-pullquote" style="border-color:#abb8c3">

<blockquote class="has-text-color has-very-dark-gray-color">
  <p>
    I want to do it myself, the way I like it..
  </p>
  
  <cite>danix</cite>
</blockquote></figure> 

Serving python scripts is slightly different than serving html or php, here&#8217;s a scheme that shows what happens when using python (flask in this example) to serve some web content.  


<div class="wp-block-image">
  <figure class="aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" width="1024" height="393" src="https://danix.xyz/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/flask-scheme-1024x393.png" alt="" class="wp-image-3852" srcset="https://danix.xyz/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/flask-scheme-1024x393.png 1024w, https://danix.xyz/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/flask-scheme-300x115.png 300w, https://danix.xyz/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/flask-scheme-768x294.png 768w, https://danix.xyz/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/flask-scheme.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>a simple scheme of how python scripts are served on the web.</figcaption></figure>
</div>

As you can see the web server is acting as a reverse proxy to the [WSGI][2] server Gunicorn, Apache receives a request from a client, forwards the request to Gunicorn which in turn asks the python web service, in our case our flask web app. Other than as a reverse proxy, apache is used also to serve static content which is not originated in python, like images, css or js scripts.

In order to deploy a python web app I had to install the mod_wsgi extension for apache, then I decided to use a folder in my system to install the virtual environment for python to run my web app and point to that directory in my vhost configuration file inside apache. After that I created a directory where to store all files for my web app and instructed apache to serve them using the virtualenv I created earlier. This is more or less what I did:

<pre class="wp-block-preformatted"># create the virtual environment for python inside<br /># the folder /usr/local/virtualenvs/my-app:<br />virtualenv /usr/local/virtualenvs/my-app<br /><br /># now create the directory inside the apache root<br /># to store our web app<br />mkdir /var/www/htdocs/my-app<br /></pre>

Now if we put all the py files for our flask web app we can run it inside apache, this is the configuration for the vhost I used:

<pre class="wp-block-preformatted">&lt;VirtualHost *:80><br /><code>    ServerName my-app.mysite.ext</code><br /><code>    ErrorLog "/var/log/httpd/my-app.error_log"</code><br /><code>    CustomLog "/var/log/httpd/my-app.access_log" common</code><br /><code>    WSGIDaemonProcess my-app user=apache group=apache threads=5 python-home=/usr/local/virtualenvs/my-app</code><br /><code>    WSGIScriptAlias / /var/www/htdocs/my-app/my-app.wsgi</code><br /><code>    WSGIProcessGroup my-app</code><br /><code>    Alias "/static/" "/var/www/htdocs/my-app/static/"</code><br /><code>    &lt;Directory "/var/www/htdocs/my-app/static/"></code><br /><code>            Order allow,deny</code><br /><code>            Allow from all</code><br /><code>    &lt;/Directory></code><br /><code>    &lt;Directory "/var/www/htdocs/my-app/"></code><br /><code>            Require all granted</code><br /><code>    &lt;/Directory></code><br />&lt;/VirtualHost><br /><br /></pre>

With this setting I can now reach my web app and test it after restarting the web server.

 [1]: https://danix.xyz/2018/07/git-setup-own-server/
 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Server_Gateway_Interface