Flask Note app with aws, terraform and github action

18-11-2023

This project is part of a mentoring program from my current work - Vanguard Au. Thanks Indika for the guidance and supports through this project.

Please test out the app here: https://tnote.tdinvoke.net

Flask note app

Source: https://github.com/tduong10101/tnote/tree/env/tnote-dev-apse2/website

Simple flask note application that let user sign-up/in, create/delete notes. Thanks to Tech With Tim for the tutorial.

Changes from the tutorial

Moved the db out to a mysql instance

Setup .env variables:

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from dotenv import load_dotenv
....
load_dotenv()

SQL_USERNAME=os.getenv('SQL_USERNAME')
SQL_PASSWORD=os.getenv('SQL_PASSWORD')
SQL_HOST=os.getenv('SQL_HOST')
SQL_PORT=os.getenv('SQL_PORT')
DB_NAME=os.getenv('DB_NAME')

connection string:

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url=f"mysql+pymysql://{SQL_USERNAME}:{SQL_PASSWORD}@{SQL_HOST}:{SQL_PORT}/{DB_NAME}"

update create_db function as below:

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def create_db(url,app):
    try:
        if not database_exists(url):
            create_database(url)
            with app.app_context():
                db.create_all()
            print('Created Database!')
    except Exception as e:
        if e.code!='f405':
            raise e

Updated encryption method to use ‘scrypt’

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new_user=User(email=email,first_name=first_name,password=generate_password_hash(password1, method='scrypt'))

Added Gunicorn Server

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/home/python/.local/bin/gunicorn -w 2 -b 0.0.0.0:80 "website:create_app()"

Github Workflow configuration

Source: https://github.com/tduong10101/tnote/tree/env/tnote-dev-apse2/.github/workflows

Github - AWS OIDC configuration

Follow this doco to configure OIDC so Github action can access AWS resources.

app

Utilise aws-actions/amazon-ecr-login couple with OIDC AWS to configure docker registry.

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- name: Configure AWS credentials
  uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v4
  with:
    role-to-assume: arn:aws:iam::<aws_acc_num>:role/github-ecr-img-builder
    role-session-name: GitHub_to_AWS_via_FederatedOIDC
    aws-region: ap-southeast-2

- name: Login to Amazon ECR
  id: login-ecr
  uses: aws-actions/amazon-ecr-login@v1

This action can only be triggered manually.

network

Source: https://github.com/tduong10101/tnote/blob/env/tnote-dev-apse2/.github/workflows/network.yml

This action cover aws network resource management for the app. It can be triggered manually, push and PR flow.

Here the trigger details:

Action Trigger
Atmos Terraform Plan Manual, PR create
Atmos Terraform Apply Manual, PR merge (Push)
Atmos Terraform Destroy Manual

Auto trigger only apply on branch with “env/*“

infra

Source: https://github.com/tduong10101/tnote/blob/env/tnote-dev-apse2/.github/workflows/infra.yml

This action for creating AWS ECS resources, dns record and rds mysql db.

Action Trigger
Atmos Terraform Plan Manual, PR create
Atmos Terraform Apply Manual
Atmos Terraform Destroy Manual

Terraform - Atmos

Atmos solve the missing param management piece over multi stacks for Terraform.

name_pattern is set with: {tenant}-{state}-{environment} example: tnote-dev-apse2

Source: https://github.com/tduong10101/tnote/tree/env/tnote-dev-apse2/atmos-tf

Structure:

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.
├── atmos.yaml
├── components
│   └── terraform
│       ├── infra
│       │   ├── _data.tf
│       │   ├── _provider.tf
│       │   ├── _vars.tf
│       │   └── main.tf
│       └── network
│           ├── _provider.tf
│           ├── _var.tf
│           ├── backend.tf.json
│           └── main.tf
└── stacks
    ├── tnote
    │   ├── _defaults.yaml
    │   ├── dev
    │   │   ├── _defaults.yaml
    │   │   └── ap-southeast-2
    │   │       ├── _defaults.yaml
    │   │       └── main.yaml
    │   ├── prod
    │   │   ├── _defaults.yaml
    │   │   └── us-east-1
    │   │       ├── _defaults.yaml
    │   │       └── main.yaml
    │   └── test
    └── workflows
        └── workflows-tnote.yaml

Issue encoutnered

Avoid service start deadlock when start ecs service from UserData

Symptom: ecs service is in ‘inactive’ status and run service command stuck when manually run on the ec2 instance.

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sudo systemctl enable --now --no-block ecs.service

Ensure rds and ecs are in same vpc

Remember to turn on ecs logging by adding the cloudwatch loggroup resource.

Error:

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pymysql.err.OperationalError: (2003, "Can't connect to MySQL server on 'terraform-20231118092121881600000001.czfqdh70wguv.ap-southeast-2.rds.amazonaws.com' (timed out)")

Don’t declare db_name in rds resource block

This is due to the note app has a db/table create function, if the db_name is declared in terraform it would create an empty db without the required tables. Which would then resulting in app fail to run.

Load secrets into atmos terraform using github secret and TFVAR

Ensure sensitive is set to true for the secret. Use github secret and TF_VAR to load the secret into atmos terraform TF_VAR_secret_name={secrets.secret_name}

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