Building Python REST APIs With Flask & Structuring Pull Requests

The Real Python Podcast

How do you build a REST API using the Flask web framework? How can you quickly add endpoints while automatically generating documentation? This week on the show, Real Python author Philipp Acsany is here to discuss his tutorial series “Python REST APIs With Flask, Connexion, and SQLAlchemy.” Christopher Trudeau is also here with another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects.

Philipp talks about updating a set of tutorials to use current libraries and best practices. The series takes you through building the base Flask project, defining endpoints, creating documentation, adding a persistent database, and implementing models with SQLAlchemy.

Christopher shares an article about contributing to an existing internal or open-source project by properly preparing pull requests. The article is titled “Ten Tasty Ingredients for a Delicious Pull Request”.

We share several other articles and projects from the Python community, including more suspicious PyPI packages using new tactics, method chaining in pandas, tools to find syntax errors without stopping, a library for searching text in videos using optical character recognition (OCR), a project for visualizing CPython’s specializing adaptive interpreter, and a library for building CLI applications based on type hints.

Course Spotlight: The Pandas DataFrame: Working With Data Efficiently

In this course, you’ll get started with pandas DataFrames, which are powerful and widely used two-dimensional data structures. You’ll learn how to perform basic operations with data, handle missing values, work with time-series data, and visualize data from a pandas DataFrame.

Topics:

• 00:00:00 – Introduction
• 00:03:09 – Philipp’s background
• 00:05:37 – Python REST APIs With Flask, Connexion, and SQLAlchemy
• 00:14:35 – Ten Tasty Ingredients for a Delicious Pull Request
• 00:24:25 – Sponsor: InfluxDB
• 00:25:13 – Method Chaining in Pandas: Bad Form or a Recipe for Success?
• 00:31:35 – More Suspicious PyPI Packages
• 00:35:48 – Video Course Spotlight
• 00:37:01 – What Tools Find Syntax Errors Without Stopping?
• 00:47:29 – Perform OCR upon entire videos
• 00:49:49 – Visualize CPython 3.11’s Specializing, Adaptive Interpreter
• 00:54:08 – Typer, build great CLIs
• 00:56:29 – Thanks and goodbye

Show Links:

• About Philipp Acsany – Real Python
• Python REST APIs With Flask, Connexion, and SQLAlchemy – Part 1
• Python REST APIs With Flask, Connexion, and SQLAlchemy – Part 2
• Python REST APIs With Flask, Connexion, and SQLAlchemy – Part 3
• Ten Tasty Ingredients for a Delicious Pull Request – LB is a core team member of the open-source project Wagtail and, as such, has a lot of experience dealing with community contributions. This article talks about how to be a good contributor, whether for your next open-source software (OSS) PR or within your own organization.
• Method Chaining in Pandas: Bad Form or a Recipe for Success? – Python trainer Matt Harrison has been creating a bit of a stir. Some of his pandas examples have elicited criticism from different folks in the Twitterverse. Dave Amos interviews Matt to discuss the pros and cons of his approach.
• More Suspicious PyPI Packages – Researchers at Phylum have come across over a dozen new malicious uploads to PyPI. Many of them are copied and pasted versions of legitimate packages that have been renamed and had malicious code inserted. This detailed article shows some of the tactics used by the bad actors.

Discussion:

• What Tools Find Syntax Errors Without Stopping?

Projects:

• videocr: Perform OCR upon entire videos to look for credentials or similar
• Visualize CPython 3.11’s Specializing, Adaptive Interpreter
• Typer, build great CLIs

Additional Links:

• What Percentage Of Websites Use WordPress In 2022?
• “Here’s a recipe to clean up the Ames housing dataset.” Matt Harrison - Twitter
• Idiomatic Pandas - Matt Harrison | Conf42 Python 2021 - YouTube
• Episode #103: Becoming More Effective at Manipulating Data With Pandas – The Real Python Podcast
• Getting started - Polars - User Guide
• py_compile — Compile Python source files — Python 3.11.0 documentation
• Build a Command-Line To-Do App With Python and Typer – Real Python

Level up your Python skills with our expert-led courses:

• Deploy Your Python Script on the Web With Flask
• The pandas DataFrame: Working With Data Efficiently
• SQLite and SQLAlchemy in Python: Moving Your Data Beyond Flat Files

Support the podcast & join our community of Pythonistas