OVERVIEW

Most guides show how to set up servers on a Linux box (which makes sense) but macOS also works if you don't have a Linux box handy.

I've also posted this on Stack Overflow in very condensed form.

WHAT WE'LL DO

                +---------------+
                |    Nginx      |
                |               |
                |               |
                +---------------+
                       X
                       X
                       X
                       X
        XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
        X                            X
        X                            X
        X                            X
+----------------+                   X
|    gunicorn    |                   X
|                |                   X
|                |             +----------------+
+----------------+             |    static      |
        X                      |    assets      |
        X                      |                |
+----------------+             +----------------+
|    Flask       |
|                |
|                |
+----------------+

THINGS WE'LL USE

• packages from Homebrew: nginx and httpie
• Python 3
• Makefile for our commands (to understand what all the commands do, just run make help)
• Flask for the webserver (our gunicorn and Nginx config should hold true for any WSGI server -> if you try this with Django, Pyramid, et al. and run into a problem, just open an issue and we'll figure it out!)

STEP 1: NGINX ➡️ STATIC ASSETS

                +---------------+
                |    Nginx      |
                |               |
                |               |
                +---------------+
                       X
                       X
                       X
                       X
                       XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
                                     X
                                     X
                                     X
                                     X
                                     X
                                     X
                               +----------------+
                               |    static      |
                               |    assets      |
                               |                |
                               +----------------+

• download Nginx using Homebrew: brew install nginx
• start Nginx: make ng-serve
• hit Nginx: make ng-hit to hit our Nginx server, which will return its default welcome page

$ make ng-hit

http http://127.0.0.1:8080
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
# other output
<h1>Welcome to nginx!</h1>

• next, go update the Nginx configuration file (/etc/nginx/nginx.conf) to point at our repo's static assets

- location / {
+ location /static {
-   root   html;
+   root   path/to/your/nginx-wsgi;
-   index  index.html index.htm;
+   index  my-asset.html;
}

• reload Nginx so it knows about our updated config: make ng-up
• hit Nginx at the static route to validate it's serving our bespoke HTML 😄: make ng-static

$ make ng-static

http http://127.0.0.1:8080/static/
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
# other output
<h1>Nginx is serving my-asset.html!</h1>

STEP 2: GUNICORN ➡️ FLASK

+----------------+                   
|    gunicorn    |                   
|                |                   
|                |             
+----------------+             
        X                      
        X                      
+----------------+             
|    Flask       |
|                |
|                |
+----------------+

• make a virtual environment and activate it, then install the dependencies: make pipin
• start Flask: make flask-serve
• hit Flask on port 5000: make flask-hit

$ make flask-hit

http http://127.0.0.1:5000
<h1>Flask running!</h1>

• start gunicorn: make guni-serve
• hit gunicorn on port 8000 to validate that it passes the request to Flask on port 5000: make guni-hit

$ make guni-hit

http http://127.0.0.1:8000
<h1>Flask running!</h1>

STEP 3: NGINX ➡️ GUNICORN

                +---------------+
                |    Nginx      |
                |               |
                |               |
                +---------------+
                       X
                       X
                       X
                       X
        XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
        X                            
        X                            
        X                            
+----------------+                   
|    gunicorn    |                   
|                |                   
|                |             
+----------------+             

• update the Nginx conf again, this time to pass requests to gunicorn

+ location / {
+     proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8000;
+ }

• reload Nginx so it knows about our updated config: make ng-up
• hit Nginx: make ng-hit -> this time, instead of the default Nginx page, we'll see that the request passes from Nginx to gunicorn and finally to Flask

$ make ng-hit

http http://127.0.0.1:8080
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
# other output
<h1>Flask running!</h1>

---

Now, everything is wired together:

                +---------------+
                |    Nginx      |
                |               |
                |               |
                +---------------+
                       X
                       X
                       X
                       X
        XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
        X                            X
        X                            X
        X                            X
+----------------+                   X
|    gunicorn    |                   X
|                |                   X
|                |             +----------------+
+----------------+             |    static      |
        X                      |    assets      |
        X                      |                |
+----------------+             +----------------+
|    Flask       |
|                |
|                |
+----------------+

This guide is just to get you up-and-running. For more explanation, here are some articles that helped me from three guys named Cheng, Honza, and Patrick