Building Flask API with JWT and PostgreSQL – Part 1

In this article, we will learn how to build a Flask API using JSON Web Tokens (JWT) for authentication and PostgreSQL as the database. This will be the first part of the series where we will set up the basic structure of the Flask application and configure JWT for user authentication.

Setting Up the Environment

Before we start building the API, we need to set up the environment for our Flask application. We will need to install Flask and the required packages for JWT authentication and PostgreSQL database connectivity. You can use pip to install these packages:

      
        pip install Flask
        pip install Flask-JWT-Extended
        pip install psycopg2-binary
      
    

Creating the Flask Application

Once we have the environment set up, we can create the basic structure of our Flask application. We will create a file named app.py and define the following code to set up the application:

      
        from flask import Flask

        app = Flask(__name__)

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

Configuring JWT for Authentication

Next, we will configure JWT for user authentication in our Flask application. We will add the following code to our app.py file to set up the JWT extension:

      
        from flask_jwt_extended import JWTManager

        app.config['JWT_SECRET_KEY'] = 'your_secret_key'
        jwt = JWTManager(app)
      
    

Connecting to PostgreSQL Database

To connect our Flask API to a PostgreSQL database, we will need to install and configure the psycopg2 package. We can then add the following code to our app.py file to establish a connection to the database:

      
        import psycopg2

        conn = psycopg2.connect(
          dbname='your_database_name',
          user='your_username',
          password='your_password',
          host='your_host',
          port='your_port'
        )
      
    

Conclusion

In this first part of the series, we have set up the basic structure of our Flask application and configured JWT for user authentication. We have also established a connection to a PostgreSQL database. In the next part, we will start building the actual API endpoints and implementing user authentication using JWT.