Setup

Every tutorial starts with the painful first step of getting setup. In person, we will try to do these parts in advance, to avoid surprises and stay on schedule.

At the end of this step, you will have a “Hello World” Flask application running in PyCharm.

Note: We will be in the hallway 20 minutes before the tutorial, in front of the room, to help any installation issues. Or, come visit us in the PyCharm booth for help.

View video/audio walkthrough

Install

  1. Install Python 3.5. You can get this from any location.

    Note

    For Windows, during the install, ensure you select the box to Add Python to your environment variables.

  2. PyCharm. Please download PyCharm Community Edition and install it. For Windows, make sure you click the checkbox to Create Desktop shortcut.

  3. Git. We have a couple of tasks that rely on git integration. You can skip these tasks, but it’s better if you have an installation.

  4. Browser. Any kind of modern browser. We’re not doing advanced JS.

Note

For a video guide to setup, see our Getting Started: Setup screencast on YouTube.

Steps

  1. Open PyCharm Community Edition.

  2. Choose I do not have a previous edition of PyCharm when asked about importing settings..

  3. Accept the privacy policy.

  4. In PyCharm Initial Configuration, click OK to accept the default theme etc.

  5. In the Welcome to PyCharm dialog, choose Create New Project.

  6. On the Interpreter line, click on the gear at the end of the line. In the sub-menu, choose Create VirtualEnv.

  7. In the Create Virtual Environment dialog, enter env35 in the Name field. Make sure the Base interpreter field is pointed at Python 3.5, then click OK.

  8. Back in the new project dialog, enter epc as the name of the project.

  9. Click the Create button.

  10. Click Close to dismiss the tips.

  11. Tool Windows Quick Access in the bottom points to a button in the bottom left. Click that button to reveal the tool window buttons on the left, bottom, and right, then dismiss the popup by clicking Got it.

  12. Make a new Python file by choosing File -> New, then choose File, and name it epc.py.

  13. In the editor for epc.py, enter the following for your starting Flask application:

    from flask import Flask

app = Flask(__name__)


@app.route('/')
def hello_world():
    return 'Hello World!'


if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(debug=True)

  14. In the Run menu, choose Run.

    Note

    You might have to wait for PyCharm’s initial indexing to finish before the toolbar button turns green.

  15. When the Run Tool window opens in the bottom, click the http://127.0.0.1:5000/ hyperlink to open the Flask application in a browser.

Optional Configuration

Many developers like the dark look on their themes. Let’s adopt that for this tutorial.

  1. In PyCharm’s menu, click File-Settings to open PyCharm preferences.

    Note

    This tutorial uses Windows-based keyboard shortcuts. If you are on Mac, we try to also provide Mac-style alternatives. For more help, check the Keymap Reference in PyCharm’s Help menu.

  2. In the preferences, go to Editor -> Colors & Fonts -> Fonts and for the Scheme: dropdown, choose Darcula.

  3. In the preferences search box, type theme and select Darcula from the Theme: drop-down on the right.

  4. Click OK to dismiss the Preferences dialog.

Analysis

In this setup step we did quite a number of items:

  • Python Installation. PyCharm projects can choose from a number of installed Pythons, as well as make virtual environments.
  • Projects. PyCharm projects are simple: a regular directory of your source files, in which PyCharm adds a .idea subdirectory for its project-y stuff.
  • Configuration. PyCharm has a number of global and per-project settings.

Extra Credit

  1. Can PyCharm help me see if my pip is out-of-date, and if so, update it?
  2. Where can I compare the features in different PyCharm editions, such as Community, Professional, and Edu?
  3. Will the Flask app restart if you make a change? Is that PyCharm doing the restart or Flask? Will it reload the browser?