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Self Hosting

Host a Flet app on your own server with NGINX.

There are free and inexpensive cloud server tiers available at AWS, Oracle, Linode, and more.

Setup Flet Environment​

requirements.txt and virtualenv​

Create requirements.txt with a list of application dependencies. At minimum it should contain flet module:

flet

Create a virtualenv and install requirements:

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

Sample Flet app​

import flet as ft

def main(page: ft.Page):
    page.title = "My Flet app"
    page.add(ft.Text("Hello, world!"))

if __name__ == "__main__":
    ft.app(main)

Flet app will be served from the root URL, but you can configure FLET_WEB_APP_PATH environment variable to serve beneath the root e.g. /apps/myapp.

By default, Flet web app will be running on port 8000, but you can change that by setting up FLET_SERVER_PORT environment variable.

Complete list of environment variables supported by a web app.

Automatically start Flet app​

Create systemd unit file​

Automatically start the Flet app using a systemd service unit file flet.service.

Setup below assumes your Flet app script is defined in $HOME/flet-app/main.py. Replace User, Group, WorkingDirectory, etc. as per your setup.

[Unit]
Description=Flet App
After=network.target

[Service]
User=ubuntu
Group=ubuntu
WorkingDirectory=/home/ubuntu/flet-app
Environment="PATH=/home/ubuntu/flet-app/.venv/bin"
ExecStart=/home/ubuntu/flet-app/.venv/bin/python /home/ubuntu/flet-app/main.py

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable Flet app service​

cd /etc/systemd/system
sudo ln -s /home/ubuntu/flet-app/flet.service
sudo systemctl start flet
sudo systemctl enable flet
sudo systemctl status flet

NGINX Proxy Setup​

NGINX will proxy the Flet app and the websocket.

In your /etc/nginx/sites-available/* config file, updating path and port as needed:

    location / {
        proxy_pass         http://127.0.0.1:8000/;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header   Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header   Connection keep-alive;
        proxy_set_header   Host $host;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    }
  
    location /ws {
        proxy_pass         http://127.0.0.1:8000/ws;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header   Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header   Connection "upgrade";
        proxy_set_header   Host $host;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    }

That's it! Restart NGINX, and open your app in a browser.