Using the Flask CLI

| programming | python |

Who knew that flask had a cli? Previously I used to just use manage.py just like Django does it to “do stuff”. The CLI is great, but again it follows the theme of kind of wanting you to install your flask app. (I really should do this). So in order to get your app to work you must point the FLASK_APP variable to the actual python file (not your app module). This is true even if you have a true python module. For instance.

export FLASK_APP = blog/blog.py
flask run
Works, while
export FLASK_APP = blog
flask run
Does not. Even though blog consists of:
blog/
  __init__.py
  blog.py

Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.

Check out some more stuff to read down below.

Most popular posts this month

Recent Favorite Blog Posts

This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.

Articles from blogs I follow around the net

My last 5 books - July 2026 edition

My last 5 books - July 2026 edition This is a new feature in which I will copy and paste my recent book reviews from my books page These are the last 5 books I have read. I will update in a month or 2 when I've read 5 more. I'm Starting to Worry About this...

via O'DonnellWeb July 12, 2026

“Animating something and animating something well are two very different things.”

From Jakub Krehel, a new blog post about self constraint in the era when AI makes it easy to ignore constraints altogether. My caveat is that the post doesn’t fully come together for me – jumping from AI to animations and then back to AI the way the author...

via Unsung July 12, 2026

Generated and suppressed demand.

Eight years ago, I wrote about my theory of restoring struggling teams, which came down to four steps: A team is falling behind if each week their backlog is longer than the week before. Solve by hiring more. A team is treading water if they’re able to get...

via Irrational Exuberance July 11, 2026

Generated by openring