**Course Title:** Mastering Flask Framework: Building Modern Web Applications **Section Title:** Deployment Strategies and CI/CD **Topic:** Deploy a Flask application to a cloud platform and set up a CI/CD pipeline with GitHub Actions.(Lab topic) **Objective:** By the end of this topic, you will be able to deploy a Flask application to a cloud platform and set up a CI/CD pipeline with GitHub Actions. You will learn how to automate the build, test, and deployment process, ensuring that your application is always up-to-date and running smoothly. **Prerequisites:** * You have a basic understanding of Flask and its ecosystem. * You have a GitHub account and a repository set up for your Flask project. * You have a cloud platform account (e.g., Heroku, AWS, DigitalOcean). **Step 1: Set up a GitHub Actions workflow** GitHub Actions is a CI/CD tool that allows you to automate the build, test, and deployment process. To set up a GitHub Actions workflow, follow these steps: 1. Log in to your GitHub account and navigate to your repository. 2. Click on the "Actions" tab and then click on "New workflow". 3. Choose a workflow name and description, and select the branch you want to trigger the workflow (e.g., main). 4. In the workflow file, add the following code to specify the build and deployment steps: ```yml name: Deploy to Heroku on: push: branches: - main jobs: deploy: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - name: Checkout code uses: actions/checkout@v2 - name: Set up Python uses: actions/setup-python@v2 with: python-version: '3.x' - name: Install dependencies run: | pip install -r requirements.txt - name: Build and deploy to Heroku uses: heroku/deploy@v1 with: api-key: ${{ secrets.HEROKU_API_KEY }} app-name: your-app-name branch: main ``` 5. Replace `your-app-name` with your actual Heroku app name. 6. Save the workflow file and commit the changes to your repository. **Step 2: Set up a Heroku app** To set up a Heroku app, follow these steps: 1. Log in to your Heroku account and navigate to the dashboard. 2. Click on the "New" button and select "Create a new app". 3. Choose a name for your app and select the region. 4. Click on the "Create app" button. **Step 3: Configure the Heroku app** To configure the Heroku app, follow these steps: 1. Navigate to the Heroku app dashboard and click on the "Settings" tab. 2. Click on the "Reveal Config Vars" button and add the following variables: * `HEROKU_API_KEY`: your Heroku API key * `HEROKU_APP_NAME`: your Heroku app name 3. Click on the "Save" button. **Step 4: Deploy the Flask application** To deploy the Flask application, follow these steps: 1. Navigate to the GitHub repository and click on the "Actions" tab. 2. Click on the "Deploy to Heroku" workflow and select the "Run workflow" button. 3. Wait for the workflow to complete and verify that the Flask application is deployed successfully. **Conclusion:** In this topic, you learned how to deploy a Flask application to a cloud platform and set up a CI/CD pipeline with GitHub Actions. You can automate the build, test, and deployment process, ensuring that your application is always up-to-date and running smoothly. **Additional Resources:** * GitHub Actions documentation: <https://docs.github.com/en/actions> * Heroku documentation: <https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/getting-started-with-python> **Leave a comment or ask for help:** If you have any questions or need help with deploying your Flask application, please leave a comment below.