Working with Flask AppBuilder
This page describes considerations for using Flask AppBuilder.
Create Flask AppBuilder Admin
The FAB system requires tables in your database for authenticating and authorizing users (tables such as ab_user, ab_user_role, etc). Create these as follows (Username: admin, Password: p):
cd api_logic_server # your --project_name
export PYTHONPATH="/Users/val/dev/servers/api_logic_server"
source venv/bin/activate # windows: venv\Scripts\activate
(venv)cd ui/basic_web_app
(venv)$ export FLASK_APP=app
(venv)$ flask fab create-admin
Username [admin]:
User first name [admin]:
User last name [user]:
Email [admin@fab.org]:
Password:p
Repeat for confirmation:p
Important: Activate Logic after Create Admin
For databases other than Northwind, logic is initially disabled to avoid unhashable issues in Create Admin.
When Create Admin is completed, edit ui/basic_web_app/app/__init__.py to enable logic like this:
import database.models as models
from logic import declare_logic
from logic_bank.logic_bank import LogicBank
# *** Enable the following after creating Flask AppBuilder Admin ***
LogicBank.activate(session=db.session, activator=declare_logic) # edited to enable logic
Edit views.py Files to Customize Pages
Background: views.py files
Flask AppBuilder ui/basic_web_app/app/views.py files contain segments like this that define pages for each table:
class EmployeeModelView(ModelView):
datamodel = SQLAInterface(Employee)
list_columns = ["LastName", "Employee.LastName", "FirstName", "Title", "ReportsTo"]
show_columns = ["LastName", "Employee.LastName", "FirstName", "Title", "ReportsTo", "BirthDate", "HireDate", "Address", "City", "State", "Country", "PostalCode", "Phone", "Fax", "Email", "EmployeeId"]
edit_columns = ["LastName", "FirstName", "Title", "ReportsTo", "BirthDate", "HireDate", "Address", "City", "State", "Country", "PostalCode", "Phone", "Fax", "Email", "EmployeeId"]
add_columns = ["LastName", "FirstName", "Title", "ReportsTo", "BirthDate", "HireDate", "Address", "City", "State", "Country", "PostalCode", "Phone", "Fax", "Email", "EmployeeId"]
related_views = [EmployeeModelView , CustomerModelView]. # FAILS TO COMPILE
appbuilder.add_view(
EmployeeModelView, "Employee List", icon="fa-folder-open-o", category="Menu")
# table already generated per recursion: Track
These are tedious to code, so they are created by ApiLogicServer. In order to create good-looking pages, these are not simply column lists, e.g.:
* "Favorite" fields are placed first
* Control this with the ApiLogicServer CLI --favorites option
* Joins are created for "id" columns (e.g., show Product Names, not Product IDs)
* etc
Edit views.py - display options (e.g., charts)
You can hand-edit these pages to make further customizations, including advanced functionality such as charts.
Mutually Referring Tables Require Fixup
Note the related_views makes class references in the code snippet above. Recall that Python is a 1 pass compiler - you can't make references to things that aren't defined.
So, ApiLogicServer sorts the view classes so that referenced classes are first. That's why you will see "table already generated" messages, as shown above.
The problem is that when 2 tables (pages) refer to each other, this is not possible. So, you need to hand-edit the view.py files to remove these, like this:
related_views = [CustomerModelView] # omitted self relationships: employees
Self-relationships are corrected automatically; you may need to correct other mutually referring tables.
Starting Flask AppBuilder
Start the server as follows:
cd ui/basic_web_app
export FLASK_APP=app
python run.py [server [port]