Serving a front end created with create-react-app with Flask

import os
from flask import Flask, send_from_directory

app = Flask(__name__, static_folder='react_app/build')

# Serve React App
@app.route('/', defaults={'path': ''})
@app.route('/<path:path>')
def serve(path):
    if path != "" and os.path.exists(app.static_folder + '/' + path):
        return send_from_directory(app.static_folder, path)
    else:
        return send_from_directory(app.static_folder, 'index.html')


if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(use_reloader=True, port=5000, threaded=True)

Thats what I ended up with. So bascially catch all routes, test if the path is a file => send file => else send the index.html. That way you can reload the react app from any route you wish and it does not break.

First do npm run build to build the static production files as mentioned by you above

from flask import Flask, render_template

app = Flask(__name__, static_folder="build/static", template_folder="build")

@app.route("/")
def hello():
    return render_template('index.html')

print('Starting Flask!')

app.debug=True
app.run(host='0.0.0.0')

Unfortunately, I don't think you can get it work with the development hot-reload.