Deploying Python Web Apps on AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Prerequisites
  3. Setting Up AWS Elastic Beanstalk
  4. Creating a Python Web Application
  5. Deploying the Application
  6. Conclusion

Introduction

In this tutorial, we will learn how to deploy Python web applications on AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Elastic Beanstalk is a fully managed service that allows you to quickly deploy and scale applications built with various programming languages, including Python. By the end of this tutorial, you will be able to deploy your Python web applications on AWS Elastic Beanstalk and easily scale them to handle increased traffic.

Prerequisites

Before we get started, you should have the following prerequisites:

  • An AWS account
  • Basic knowledge of Python and web development concepts
  • AWS CLI (Command Line Interface) installed on your local machine
  • Python and pip installed on your local machine
  • Git installed on your local machine

Setting Up AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Before we can start deploying our application, we need to set up Elastic Beanstalk on our AWS account.

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console.

  2. Navigate to the Elastic Beanstalk service page.

  3. Click on “Create Application” and provide a name for your application.

  4. Select the appropriate platform (in our case, Python) and platform branch.

  5. Choose a configuration for your environment (such as single-instance or load-balanced) and provide a name for your environment.

  6. Click on “Create environment” to create your Elastic Beanstalk environment.

Creating a Python Web Application

Now that we have our Elastic Beanstalk environment ready, let’s create a simple Python web application.

  1. Open your favorite text editor or Python IDE.

  2. Create a new directory for your project and navigate to it in your terminal.

  3. Initialize a new Python virtual environment by running the following command: 
     python3 -m venv myenv
  4. Activate the virtual environment:
  • For macOS/Linux: 
      source myenv/bin/activate
  • For Windows: 
      myenv\Scripts\activate
    1. Install Flask, a lightweight web framework, using pip: 
        pip install flask
    2. Create a new file called app.py and add the following code to it: ```python from flask import Flask

    app = Flask(name)

    @app.route(‘/’) def home(): return “Hello, World!”

    if name == ‘main’: app.run() ``` This code sets up a simple Flask application with a single route (“/”) that returns a “Hello, World!” message.

  1. Save the file and exit the text editor.

Deploying the Application

Now that we have our Python web application ready, let’s deploy it to AWS Elastic Beanstalk.

  1. Open your terminal and navigate to the project directory.

  2. Initialize a new Git repository by running the following command: 
     git init
  3. Add the project files to the Git repository: 
     git add .
  4. Commit the changes: 
     git commit -m "Initial commit"
  5. Configure AWS CLI with your AWS account credentials: 
     aws configure
  6. Deploy the application to Elastic Beanstalk using the following command: 
     eb init -p python-3.9 myapp

    Replace “myapp” with the name of your Elastic Beanstalk application.

  7. Follow the prompts to configure your environment and choose a region.

  8. Deploy the application to AWS Elastic Beanstalk: 
     eb create myenv

    Replace “myenv” with the name of your Elastic Beanstalk environment.

  9. Wait for the deployment process to complete. You can monitor the progress in the terminal.

  10. Once the deployment is finished, AWS Elastic Beanstalk will provide you with a URL where you can access your web application.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we learned how to deploy Python web applications on AWS Elastic Beanstalk. We went through the steps of setting up Elastic Beanstalk on our AWS account, creating a simple Python web application using Flask, and deploying the application to Elastic Beanstalk. We can now easily scale our web application to handle increased traffic and take advantage of the fully managed environment provided by AWS Elastic Beanstalk.

By following this tutorial, you should now have a good understanding of how to deploy Python web applications on AWS Elastic Beanstalk and use it as a powerful platform for hosting your applications.

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