[python] Flask at first run: Do not use the development server in a production environment

I installed the Flask plugin in PyCharm Community Edition and I just have this simple code in my flask app:

from flask import Flask
app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route('/')
def index():
    return '<h1>Hello!</h1>'

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

And I get this message:

WARNING: This is a development server. Do not use it in a production deployment.
Use a production WSGI server instead

* Restarting with stat
* Debugger is active!
* Debugger PIN: 123-456-789
* Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/

Why am I getting this error when I run Flask?

_{A previous version of the message read "Do not use the development server in a production environment."}

The official tutorial discusses deploying an app to production. One option is to use Waitress, a production WSGI server. Other servers include Gunicorn and uWSGI.

When running publicly rather than in development, you should not use the built-in development server (flask run). The development server is provided by Werkzeug for convenience, but is not designed to be particularly efficient, stable, or secure.

Instead, use a production WSGI server. For example, to use Waitress, first install it in the virtual environment:

$ pip install waitress

You need to tell Waitress about your application, but it doesn’t use FLASK_APP like flask run does. You need to tell it to import and call the application factory to get an application object.

$ waitress-serve --call 'flaskr:create_app'
Serving on http://0.0.0.0:8080

Or you can use waitress.serve() in the code instead of using the CLI command.

from flask import Flask

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route("/")
def index():
    return "<h1>Hello!</h1>"

if __name__ == "__main__":
    from waitress import serve
    serve(app, host="0.0.0.0", port=8080)

$ python hello.py

If for some people (like me earlier) the above answers don't work, I think the following answer would work (for Mac users I think) Enter the following commands to do flask run

$ export FLASK_APP = hello.py
$ export FLASK_ENV = development
$ flask run

Alternatively you can do the following (I haven't tried this but one resource online talks about it)

$ export FLASK_APP = hello.py
$ python -m flask run

source: For more

When running the python file, you would normally do this

python app.py

To avoid these messsages. Inside the CLI (Command Line Interface), run these commands.

export FLASK_APP=app.py
export FLASK_RUN_HOST=127.0.0.1
export FLASK_ENV=development
export FLASK_DEBUG=0
flask run

This should work perfectlly. :) :)