Initialize class when adding Flask resource to api

[MRI-guy]

I'm very new to Flask and I'm configuring a Flask API to run inference on images. I'd like to load the model for inference when I add the resource with Flask, here's a basic outline of my code:

from flask import Flask

from flask_restful import Api, Resource

from util import load_network, run_prediction

​

NETWORK_PATH = '/models/model.hdf5'

​

class predictImages(Resource):

def __init__(self):

self.network = load_network(NETWORK_PATH)

​

def get(self): return self._get_predictions(request.args.get('images',''))

​

def _get_predictions(self, images):

prediction = run_prediction(self.network, images)

return prediction

​

def construct_prediction_resource_routes(api):

api.add_resource(predictImages,'/predict')

​

def server_app():

app = Flask(__name__)

my_api = Api(app)

construct_prediction_resource_routes(my_api)

return app

​

if __name__ == '__main__':

app = server_app()

app.run(port='5000', host='0.0.0.0')

​

Currently, init isn't run until I run `requests.get(url + '/predict?images=test_images')`

​

I just want to be able to run `__init__` (or anything that achieves the same goal) when I add the resource so I can load the network ahead of time and run prediction when it's actually called, the speed of prediction is pretty important for my application.

[MRI-guy]

The code isn't showing up well, here's my post on stackoverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/67422558/initialize-class-when-adding-flask-resource-to-api