Prerequisites

Install Docker for Windows or Docker for Mac - https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop

Run Backend Services for Front-End Development

To run the backend services, run the following command from a terminal window. The command must be executed from the same folder as the docker-compose.yml file.

docker-compose up -d

Run Database and Web Server only for Backend and Front-End Development

You will need to have Python 3 and Pipenv installed.

Download and Install Python 3: https://www.python.org/downloads/

Download and Install Pipenv: https://pipenv.pypa.io/en/latest/install/#installing-pipenv

After Python 3 and Pipenv are installed, to do development on both the backend REST API and the front-end UI application, the Docker Compose configuration file named docker-compose-dev.yml should be used instead of the default docker-compose.yml file. The docker-compose-dev.yml file only starts the web server and the database server. The backend application (coded in Python using Flask) can then be edited and executed from an IDE such as PyCharm. To run Docker Compose with the alternate configuration file, open a terminal window, change to the folder where you cloned this repository, and run the following command.

docker-compose -f ./docker-compose-dev.yml up -d

To run the backend, backend/config.ini configuration file will need to be modified.

Modify the following entry:

[database]
url=host.docker.internal:5432

To be this:

[database]
url=localhost:5432

Now run the backend, and you will have a full development environment. If you are unsure how to run the backend, watch the following video which explains how to run the backend with PyCharm.

What about the Front-End?

The Front-End UI application will be created in the course you are taking. The purpose of the backend is to provide a REST API and user authentication/authorization mechanism for the Front-End UI application.