Flask Quotes Web App — AWS Deployment

Production-ready deployment of a Dockerized Flask + PostgreSQL app on AWS EC2, using Terraform for infrastructure provisioning and Docker Compose for container orchestration.

Deployment Status: Offline — destroy via terraform destroy to avoid charges. All IaC configs in /terraform.

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🏗️ Architecture

AWS (EC2 - Amazon Linux 2023)
┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
│  ┌───────────────┐   ┌─────────────┐ │
│  │ Flask App      │   │ PostgreSQL   │ │
│  │ Port: 5000     │   │ Volume: yes  │ │
│  └───────────────┘   └─────────────┘ │
│  Docker Compose (multi-container)     │
└──────────────────────────────────────┘

Component	Technology
Infrastructure	AWS EC2 + Security Groups
IaC	Terraform
Orchestration	Docker Compose v2
Backend	Flask (Python)
Database	PostgreSQL (persistent volume)
CI/CD	GitHub Actions

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🔄 CI/CD Pipeline

Push to main
      ↓
✅ App CI (parallel)          ✅ Terraform CI (parallel)
   → pip install                 → terraform fmt
   → docker build                → terraform validate
      ↓                               ↓
      └──────────── both pass ────────┘
                      ↓
           ⏸️ Manual approval gate
                      ↓
            🚀 terraform apply → provisions EC2

AWS credentials stored as GitHub Secrets — never hardcoded.

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🚀 Deployment

cd terraform
terraform init
terraform apply -auto-approve

The user_data script automatically installs Docker, clones the repo, and starts all containers (~5 min). Access at http://<EC2_PUBLIC_IP>:5000.

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🐍 Local Development

pip install -r requirements.txt
flask run

Requires PostgreSQL running locally. Configure .env based on .env.example.

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📡 API Routes

Route	Method	Description
/	GET	All quotes
/random	GET	Random quote from external API
/insert	POST	Add new quote
/update	PUT	Update existing quote
/delete/{id}/	DELETE	Delete quote by ID

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🧹 Cleanup

terraform destroy -auto-approve

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📝 Lessons Learned

• CI/CD with GitHub Actions — parallel Flask + Terraform validation with manual approval gate before AWS provisioning
• user_data automation — fully automated EC2 bootstrap: Docker install, repo clone, and Compose stack start on first boot
• Docker Compose v2 — resolved compatibility issues between Amazon Linux 2023 and modern Compose plugin syntax
• Persistent volumes — configured PostgreSQL data volume to survive container restarts

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Fork of jaykantrprj/sample-flask-quotes-webapp. Cloud infrastructure and CI/CD pipeline added by MisaelTox.