Course Wiki

Web services: introduction to Flask — Machine Learning Zoomcamp Module 5

In this session we talked about what is a web service and how to create a simple web service. - What is actually a web service - A web service is a method used to communicate between electronic devices. - There are some methods in web...

mlz-module-05

Machine Learning Zoomcamp › Module 5: Deploying Machine Learning Models › Web services: introduction to Flask

Notes

In this session we talked about what is a web service and how to create a simple web service.

What is actually a web service
- A web service is a method used to communicate between electronic devices.
- There are some methods in web services that we can use to satisfy our problems. Here below we would list some.
  - GET: GET is a method used to retrieve files, For example when we are searching for a cat image in google we are actually requesting cat images with GET method.
  - POST: POST is the second common method used in web services. It enables sending data to a server to create or update a resource. For example in a sign up process, when we are submiting our name, username, passwords, etc we are posting our data to a server that is using the web service. (Note that there is no specification where the data goes)
  - PUT: PUT is same as POST but we are specifying where the data is going to.
  - DELETE: DELETE is a method that is used to request to delete some data from the server.
  - For more information just google the HTTP methods, You’ll find useful information about this.
To create a simple web service, there are plenty libraries available in every language. Here we would like to introduce Flask library in python.
- If you haven’t installed the library just try installing it with the code pip install Flask
- To create a simple web service just run the code below:
- ```
from flask import Flask
        app = Flask('ping') # give an identity to your web service
        
        @app.route('/ping', methods=['GET']) # use decorator to add Flask's functionality to our function
        def ping():
            return 'PONG'
        if __name__ == '__main__':
           app.run(debug=True, host='0.0.0.0', port=9696) # run the code in local machine with the debugging mode true and port 9696
        
```
- With the code above we made a simple web server and created a route named ping that would send pong string.
- To test it, just use the cURL command in a new terminal by typing curl http://localhost:9696/ping, or simply open your browser and search localhost:9696/ping, You’ll see that the ‘PONG’ string is received. Congrats You’ve made a simple web server 🥳.
To use our web server to predict new values we must modify it. See how in the next session.

Add notes from the video (PRs are welcome)

⚠️	The notes are written by the community. If you see an error here, please create a PR with a fix.

Notes from Peter Ernicke

DataTalks.Club

Web services: introduction to Flask — Machine Learning Zoomcamp Module 5

Related Pages

Notes

Key concepts

Sources

DataTalks.Club

Web services: introduction to Flask — Machine Learning Zoomcamp Module 5

Related Pages

Notes

Key concepts

Related notes

Sources