How to Build and Deploy a Python Web App for Free in 10 Minutes

Are you interested in building a Python web app but don't want to pay for hosting? With DataStax Astra, you can build and deploy a Python web app for free in less than 10 minutes! In this tutorial, we will guide you through the steps to create a Python web app and interface it with a database using DataStax Astra.

Step 1: Sign up for DataStax Astra

Before we start building our Python web app, we need to sign up for a free account on DataStax Astra. Once you've signed up, you will be presented with a screen prompting you to create a new project. We will use a Windows machine for this tutorial.

Step 2: Create a New Folder and Files

We'll start by creating a new folder named "Fast API Data." Open Visual Studio Code and create a new file named "main.py". We will grab the FastAPI code from the documentation and copy it into the main.py file.

We'll also create a requirements.txt file for the requirements that our web app needs to function properly. We'll add "data" to the requirements file to interface with the database later on.

Step 3: Set up the Space CLI

To set up the Space CLI, we need to run a command in the terminal that we copied earlier from the DataStax Astra dashboard. Once we've set up the CLI, we need to generate a token that we'll use to log in to the CLI.

Step 4: Create and Deploy Project

With everything set up, we can create and deploy our project to DataStax Astra. We will enter "space new" in the terminal and specify the name of our project as "fast-API-data". We confirm that we want to set up the project, and the space file for the project is generated.

To deploy the project to DataStax Astra, we use the command "space push". Our builder instance is set up, and the project is successfully deployed.

Step 5: Interface Python Web App with Database using Astra API

We now have a functional Python web app that we can access at the URL provided by DataStax Astra. However, our API only returns "Hello, World!" and doesn't interface with the database. To provide full functionality to our API, we need to interface it with a database.

We'll start by creating a new collection called "YouTube Test." Within the collection, we'll create a new table called "user."

Next, we'll generate a key to access our collection and add it to our main.py file as "DB key." We'll use this key to initialize and connect to our database and a specific table.

We'll also modify our code to get data from our database using the key and table we just created. Once the database is connected using the key, we'll use "user.get" to retrieve data from the "user" table.

Step 6: Rebuild and Redeploy the Python Web App

With all the changes in our code, we'll run "space push" again to rebuild and redeploy our Python web app. Once it's completed, we can reload the app to see the updated data from our database.

Conclusion

In conclusion, DataStax Astra provides a simple and free solution for building and deploying a Python web app with database functionality. With just a few modifications to the FastAPI code and the addition of a few files, we were able to create an API that retrieves data from a database. Now, you can build your own Python web app and host it for free with DataStax Astra.