✔ReMarks!

Remarks app made with Python using flet module.

Create python virtual environment

First make sure you have installed virtualenv:

pip install virtualenv

To use venv in your project, in your terminal, create a new project folder, cd to the project folder in your terminal, and run the following command:

python<version> -m venv <virtual-environment-name>

Example:

mkdir remarksApp
cd remarksApp
python3.8 -m venv env

Python virtual environment created!✨

Notes:

• In this project <virtual-environment-name> is called venv, so you can call it however you want!
• Also, python interpreter version used was Python 3.9.0!

Clone the repo

First clone the repository in a new folder or in remarksApp folder created before then create there the virtual environment so the structure would look like this:

├── remarksApp
    ├── data
    │ 	├── data.json
    ├── build
    │ 	├── remarks.pkg
    │ 	├── remarks.exe.manifest
    │ 	├── ...
    ├── dist
    │ 	├── remarks.exe
    ├── venv
    │ 	├── Include
    │ 	├── Lib
    │ 	│ 	├── site-packages
    │ 	├── Scripts
    │ 	│ 	├── activate.bat
    │ 	│ 	├── ...
    │ 	├── pyvenv.cfg
    ├── README.md ----------> This file
    ├── icon.png
    ├── requirements.txt
    ├── remarks.py
    └── .gitignore

Activate python virtual environment

To activate the venv go to root folder of the project and run the activation script created before:

remarksApp\venv\Scripts>activate.bat

Now in the terminal it should show the activated virtual environment:

(venv) D:\projects\remarksApp>

or

(venv) D:\projects\remarksApp\venv\Scripts>

Install needed packages

Install needed packages for the project using the requirements.txt file:

pip install -r requirements.txt

All should be done and good to go!

Check if the app is working

You can run the main script remarks.py to check if the app runs or you can run flet with hot reload on a development environment:

flet `run` remarks.py

After running this, the app should open and it should reload it every time you save the changes done to the script remarks.py (development environment)

Create a windows application

You can compile an executable .exe using flet by using the following command:

flet `pack` <script-name.py>

It can take multiple optional arguments also:

 (venv) D:\projects\remarksApp>flet pack --help
usage: flet pack [-h] [-v] [-i ICON] [-n NAME] [-D] [--distpath DISTPATH] [--add-data [ADD_DATA ...]]
                 [--hidden-import [HIDDEN_IMPORT ...]] [--product-name PRODUCT_NAME]
                 [--file-description FILE_DESCRIPTION] [--product-version PRODUCT_VERSION]
                 [--file-version FILE_VERSION] [--company-name COMPANY_NAME] [--copyright COPYRIGHT]
                 [--bundle-id BUNDLE_ID]
                 script

Package Flet app to a standalone bundle

positional arguments:
  script                path to a Python script

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -v, --verbose         -v for detailed output and -vv for more detailed
  -i ICON, --icon ICON  path to an icon file (.ico, .png, .icns)
  -n NAME, --name NAME  name for the generated executable (Windows) or app bundle (macOS)
  -D, --onedir          create a one-folder bundle containing an executable (Windows)
  --distpath DISTPATH   where to put the bundled app (default: ./dist)
  --add-data [ADD_DATA ...]
                        additional non-binary files or folders to be added to the executable
  --hidden-import [HIDDEN_IMPORT ...]
                        add an import not visible in the code of the script(s)
  --product-name PRODUCT_NAME
                        executable product name (Windows) or bundle name (macOS)
  --file-description FILE_DESCRIPTION
                        executable file description (Windows)
  --product-version PRODUCT_VERSION
                        executable product version (Windows) or bundle version (macOS)
  --file-version FILE_VERSION
                        executable file version, n.n.n.n (Windows)
  --company-name COMPANY_NAME
                        executable company name (Windows)
  --copyright COPYRIGHT
                        executable (Windows) or bundle (macOS) copyright
  --bundle-id BUNDLE_ID
                        bundle identifier (macOS)

For example to create an executable that also has a custom icon we can pass --icon argument like so:

flet pack --icon icon.png remarks.py

This will use pyinstaller to create the application and it will be found in the root folder in the dist directory created by pyinstaller as remarks.exe

DONE! 🎉