My Curriculum Vitae Website (now in Flask).

This is a website created for my Curriculum Vitae.

For my portfolio, see https://marvintensuan.github.io/

Related repository: cv-django

Overview

There were many reasons why I had to create a Flask version of my cv-django project. First and foremost is the cost. Cloud SQL instances are expensive, and for an app whose sole purpose is to serve static files, I didn't think it's worth it.

Hence why I chose Flask and Firestore. Flask not being bulky means less storage use and Firestore is a serverless service with free tier. Django also doesn't natively support document databases.

Another thing that's different this time is the way I deployed the app. This website is deployed directly from VSCode (instead of using the built-in cloud shell editor).

How To Build

Flask on Cloud Run

The official Flask tutorial uses an application factory pattern. That is not required; a single app.py file will do.

Required dependencies include:

• gunicorn - for deploying the app. Earlier versions of the flask app were deployed via python app.py and the project got suspended on GCP due to "cryptocurrency mining".
• GCP SDKs google-auth, google-cloud, and google-cloud-firestore. Firestore (Native) is our document database. Environment variables are saved via Secrets Manager.
• python-dotenv loads .env file into the app.

Setting up Firestore

• Firestore database should be in the same project as where you deployed the Flask app, for convenience.
• Create a service account using this guide. This will grant your Flask app with the configured access to the Firestore database. After this, you should be able to download a JSON file.
• Store the JSON file in a directory inside the project. Add the location of this file to your environment variables (e.g. GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="app/path/to/file.json")

Secrets Manager

• Secrets Manager contains your environment variable, which will be converted by main.py into a .env at runtime. These variables include PORT, SECRET_KEY, DEBUG and GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS.

Others

There are definitely topics which were glossed over (e.g. setting up a GCP project). For all things Google Cloud, the documentation for each product is enough. There are also GCP-related topics found at Stack Overflow. Same goes with Flask.

Project History

. . . (continued from cv-django README.)

2021-02-12 — deployed https://mrvn-flask-service-qmtxf7rosq-de.a.run.app/. Created repository cv-flask.

2021-02-13 — migrated data from Cloud SQL to Firestore. See migration script.

2021-02-17 — added Jinja templating to pages.

2021-02-18 — routed domain marvintensuan.com to the deployed app. Project for cv-django was shutdown.