Side Projects

In the last posts, I described how the Web service is created and how it works. Now it is time to deploy it on a server. This post contains some background information about server-side python, the deployment of such applications and the automation of the deployment process itself. After reading this post, you’ll know how server-side python works and how to deploy the Network Configuration Generator on a server or within a VM.

I like to show you today, how I update the style of the Network Configuration Generator using the UIkit CSS framework. As mentioned in my last post, the (most) functional requirements are already satisfied, but plain HTML is not the best look and feel for a Web service.

I’ll like to discuss the Mako Template Engine and the integration to the Network Configuration Generator in this post. The initial Use Case for the Web service includes the following requirements: dynamically detection of configuration variables, control structures within the templates and the bulk generation of configuration data.

I’ll like to provide a quick overview about the Flask microframework and the associated modules and libraries that I used during the development of the Network Configuration Generator. There are many tutorials out there on “how to develop a Flask application”, therefore I will limit the code examples to a minimum in this post. I’ll focus on the resources that I’ve used for learning.

Today I like to describe the target Use Case, functionality and structure of the Network Configuration Generator. Furthermore, I like to describe the Integration and API capabilities that should be implemented. At the end of this post, I discuss some limitations and functionalities that are considered out-of-scope for the first version.