Flask Quick Start Guide

In this quickstart, we will show you how to get started with SQLite Cloud and Flask by building a simple application that connects to and reads from a SQLite Cloud database.

1. Set up a SQLite Cloud account

• If you haven’t already, sign up for a SQLite Cloud account and create a new project.
• In this guide, we will use the sample datasets that come pre-loaded with SQLite Cloud.

2. Create a Flask app

• You should have the latest Python version (3) installed locally.

mkdir sqlc-quickstart
cd sqlc-quickstart

python3 -m venv .venv
. .venv/bin/activate

pip install flask

3. Install the SQLite Cloud SDK

pip install sqlitecloud

4. Query data

• Copy the following code into a new app.py file.
• In your SQLite Cloud account dashboard, click on a Node, copy the Connection String, and replace <your-connection-string> below.

from flask import Flask
import sqlitecloud

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route('/')
def get_albums():
    conn = sqlitecloud.connect('<your-connection-string>')

    db_name = 'chinook.sqlite'
    db_query = "SELECT albums.AlbumId as id, albums.Title as title, artists.name as artist FROM albums INNER JOIN artists WHERE artists.ArtistId = albums.ArtistId LIMIT 20"

    conn.execute(f"USE DATABASE {db_name}")

    cursor = conn.execute(db_query)

    conn.close()

    result = '<div><h1>Albums</h1>'

    for row in cursor:
        album = f"{row[1]} by {row[2]}"
        result += f"<li>{album}</li>"

    return result + '</div>'

5. Run your app

• If you’re using port 5000 or on MacOS, also pass the --port option to provdie an open port.
• Pass the —debug option to enable hot reloading and interactive debugging on your dev server.

flask run --port 3000 --debug

6. View your app

• Open your browser and navigate to http://127.0.0.1:3000/ to see your app data.
• If you’re unfamiliar with Flask, the code above calls the get_albums function when you load the root URL. The function returns a string with HTML for the browser to render.

And that’s it! You’ve successfully built a Flask app that reads data from a SQLite Cloud database.