Flask Mega-Tutorial: Microblog App

This repository contains my progress while following Miguel Grinberg's Flask Mega-Tutorial. I am building a full-featured microblogging application step-by-step, implementing features like user authentication, a database, and a responsive UI.

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📚 Chapters Covered So Far

I have successfully completed up to Chapter 11: Facelift, which introduces a Bootstrap-based redesign of the application.

• Chapter 1: Hello, World!
• Chapter 2: Templates
• Chapter 3: Web Forms
• Chapter 4: Database
• Chapter 5: User Logins
• Chapter 6: Profile Page and Avatars
• Chapter 7: Error Handling
• Chapter 8: Followers
• Chapter 9: Pagination
• Chapter 10: Email Support
• Chapter 11: Facelift (Bootstrap 5 UI)
• Chapter 12: Dates and Times (moment.js & Flask-Moment)
• Chapter 13: I18n and L10n (Flask-Babel, CLI translation commands)

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⚙️ Features Implemented

The application currently includes the following functionalities:

• User Management: Registration, authentication, and user sessions.
• User Profiles: Profile pages with avatars (via Gravatar).
• Posts & Interactions: Posting and displaying user posts with a followers/following system.
• Post Pagination: Pagination for browsing posts.
• Error Handling: Custom error pages for 404 and 500 errors.
• Email Support: Sending emails for password reset.
• Frontend: A responsive and modern UI using Bootstrap 5.
• Dates and Times: Time zone–aware timestamps with Flask-Moment (Chapter 12).
• Internationalization: Multi-language support using Flask-Babel, translation markers (_()/_l()), language catalog management, and translation CLI commands (Chapter 13).

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🚀 Tech Stack

• Flask: A lightweight Python web framework.
• Flask-WTF: For handling web forms.
• Flask-Login: For managing user sessions and authentication.
• Flask-Mail: For email support.
• Flask-Migrate & SQLAlchemy: For database migrations and object-relational mapping (ORM).
• Flask-Moment: Client-side timestamps with moment.js (Dates & Times).
• Flask-Babel: Internationalization & localization (I18n & L10n).
• Bootstrap 5: For frontend styling and UI components.

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▶️ How to Run Locally

Follow these steps to get the application up and running on your local machine.

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone [https://github.com/](https://github.com/)<your-username>/<your-repo-name>.git
   cd <your-repo-name>

2. Create and activate a virtual environment:

   python -m venv venv
   # On Linux/macOS
   source venv/bin/activate
   # On Windows
   venv\Scripts\activate

3. Install dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Set environment variables:

   # On Linux/macOS
   export FLASK_APP=microblog.py
   export FLASK_ENV=development
   
   # On Windows
   set FLASK_APP=microblog.py
   set FLASK_ENV=development

5. Initialize the database:

   flask db upgrade

6. Run the application:

   flask run

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📌 Notes

This is a work-in-progress repository. As I continue the tutorial, I will add more features, including APIs, background jobs, testing, and deployment.