Building a Simple Web App With Bottle, SQLAlchemy, and the Twitter API

https://realpython.com/building-a-simple-web-app-with-bottle-sqlalchemy-twitter-api/

Project Setup

First, Namespaces are one honking great idea so let’s do our work in a virtual environment. Using Anaconda I create it like so:


$ virtualenv -p <path-to-python-to-use> ~/virtualenvs/pytip

Create a production and a test database in Postgres:


$ psql
psql (9.6.5, server 9.6.2)
Type "help" for help.

# create database pytip;
CREATE DATABASE
# create database pytip_test;
CREATE DATABASE

We’ll need credentials to connect to the the database and the Twitter API (create a new app first). As per best practice configuration should be stored in the environment, not the code. Put the following env variables at the end of ~/virtualenvs/pytip/bin/activate, the script that handles activation / deactivation of your virtual environment, making sure to update the variables for your environment:


export DATABASE_URL='postgres://postgres:password@localhost:5432/pytip'
# twitter
export CONSUMER_KEY='xyz'
export CONSUMER_SECRET='xyz'
export ACCESS_TOKEN='xyz'
export ACCESS_SECRET='xyz'
# if deploying it set this to 'heroku'
export APP_LOCATION=local

In the deactivate function of the same script, I unset them so we keep things out of the shell scope when deactivating (leaving) the virtual environment:


unset DATABASE_URL
unset CONSUMER_KEY
unset CONSUMER_SECRET
unset ACCESS_TOKEN
unset ACCESS_SECRET
unset APP_LOCATION

Now is a good time to activate the virtual environment:


$ source ~/virtualenvs/pytip/bin/activate

Clone the repo and, with the virtual environment enabled, install the requirements:


$ git clone https://github.com/pybites/pytip && cd pytip
$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Next, we import the collection of tweets with:


$ python tasks/import_tweets.py

Then, verify that the tables were created and the tweets were added:


$ psql

\c pytip

pytip=# \dt
          List of relations
 Schema |   Name   | Type  |  Owner
--------+----------+-------+----------
 public | hashtags | table | postgres
 public | tips     | table | postgres
(2 rows)

pytip=# select count(*) from tips;
 count
-------
   222
(1 row)

pytip=# select count(*) from hashtags;
 count
-------
    27
(1 row)

pytip=# \q

Now let’s run the tests:


$ pytest
========================== test session starts ==========================
platform darwin -- Python 3.6.2, pytest-3.2.3, py-1.4.34, pluggy-0.4.0
rootdir: realpython/pytip, inifile:
collected 5 items

tests/test_tasks.py .
tests/test_tips.py ....

========================== 5 passed in 0.61 seconds ==========================

And lastly run the Bottle app with:


$ python app.py

Browse to http://localhost:8080 and voilà: you should see the tips sorted descending on popularity. Clicking on a hashtag link at the left, or using the search box, you can easily filter them. Here we see the pandas tips for example:

The design I made with MUI - a lightweight CSS framework that follows Google’s Material Design guidelines.

Building a Simple Web App With Bottle, SQLAlchemy, and the Twitter API – Real Python

Project Setup