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

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.

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.