Virtual Environment - venv#

The virtual environment was installed right at the beginning, now we have an application that works and can be showed off - it is time to package the application and run it as a free standing exe file. To package it first of all install the Auto Py to EXE, ensure you are working in your venv directory and it is active:

pip install auto-py-to-exe

First add a couple of lines to the end of bird.py, when made into an executable the flask server will start when the exe file is run:

# Run the Flask application if this file is executed directly
if __name__ == '__main__':
   app.run(debug=True)

Next import Jinja2 at the start of bird.py, this helps resolve any problems auto-py-to-exe may have with Jinja2:

import jinja2.ext

Before running auto-py-to-exe it's best to change to a newly created subdirectory of venv. Activate venv then just type into cmd auto-py-to-exe, this should bring up a gui interface (uses Chrome). The application actually uses pyinstaller under the hood.

The first window is the Script Location which is the main Python file, which in our case is bird.py. It is less work for the application if it becomes One Directory. Our application will be Console Based since we will run the Flask server as well. If we have and want to add an Icon this is the next window. Then comes Additional Files, put all the templates and static files here under their appropriate directories. Don't forget to include the database as well.

When ready click on the big blue button at the end of the page. If all goes well then after a few minutes the files and folders will be created. If there is some problems then these should be resolved, if the file is huge then the virtual environment was not used, also there are likely problems with pyqt5 and pyqt6. If you are unlucky the antivirus software might treat the whole exercise as an attack, switch it off while running auto-py-to-exe.

There is no executive file supplied, you should use auto-py-to-exe yourself since there may be times when you did need it in earest.

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