FastAPI

FastAPI is a minimal framework for building web application programming interfaces (APIs) in Python quickly.

Common Applications

In Stack Overflow 2021 Developer Survey, FastAPI is the third most loved web framework.

One real life example of FastAPI usage is Netflix’s Dispatch (crisis management orchestration framework).

Example

All of the code examples are written in Python, unless otherwise noted.

For this example, we will build a FastAPI for tracking expenses. Users can input their expenses with categories and dates and read those expenses. The example will follow this tutorial: fastapi.tiangolo.com/how-to/async-sql-encode-databases/

The FastAPI example has five different features:

  • Create a User

    • Input: name as a string

    • Output: [internally] assign an ID number to the name and store it in database

  • Get a List of Users

    • Input: skip first # users (default: 0), limit query (default: 10)

    • Output: print the users following the input conditions

  • Read a User

    • Input: user ID

    • Output: print all info associating to the given user ID

  • Create an Expense

    • Input: user ID, expense info (category, date, amount, description)

    • Output: store the expense under given user ID in database

  • Get a List of Expenses

    • Input: skip first # expenses (default: 0), limit query (default: 10)

    • Output: print the expenses following the input conditions

The example uses the Desktop in Anvil as you need to use a browser to run the app. SQLite is used as the database as it’s simple and easy to use. You can adjust the code to be accomodated to a PostgreSQL.

If you don’t want to build a FastAPI with a database, you can follow FastAPI’s simple tuortial

FastAPI also has a project generation template avaliable.

Code

The container version is still work in progress. Here’s the code you can copy and paste into your environment.

It’s important to note that it’s necessary to use a Linux desktop in Anvil to launch a FastAPI.

Need help implementing any of this code? Feel free to reach out to [email protected].

Setup

Open a terminal in the desktop, and run those commands in order to load TDM seminar environment.

#load tdm environment
module use /anvil/projects/tdm/opt/core/
module load tdm
module load python/seminar

The FastAPI example reequires six different python files to be built, so let’s make a directory.

#make a directory
mkdir tdm-fastapi-example
#go to the directory
cd tdm-fastapi-example

database.py

database configuration python file

# import SQLAlchemy parts
from sqlalchemy import create_engine
from sqlalchemy.ext.declarative import declarative_base
from sqlalchemy.orm import sessionmaker

# database URL for SQLAlchemy
# open a file with the SQLite database in the same directory
SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URL = "sqlite:///./tdm-fastapi-example.db"

# create SQLAlchemy engine (home base for the database)
engine = create_engine(SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URL, connect_args={"check_same_thread": False})
# by default, SQLite only accepts one thread
# but in FastAPI, using (def) functions can interact with the database for the same request, hence multiple threads
# so `False` for checking the same thread is needed

# instance of the SessionLocal class
SessionLocal = sessionmaker(autocommit=False, autoflush=False, bind=engine)

# returns a class to create each database model/class
Base = declarative_base()

models.py

class configuration python file

# import SQLAlchemy parts
from sqlalchemy import Boolean, Column, Date, Double, ForeignKey, Integer, String
from sqlalchemy.orm import relationship

# import Base from the file database.py
from .database import Base

# create User class
class User(Base):
    # the name of the table
    __tablename__ = "users"

    # Class attributes with each attribute being a column in the table
    id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True, index=True)
    name = Column(String, unique=True, index=True)

    # relationship is a "magic" attribute that conatains values from another table
    # expense table is related to this owner table
    expenses = relationship("Expense", back_populates="owner")

# create Expense class
class Expense(Base):
    # the name of the table
    __tablename__ = "expenses"

    # Class attributes
    id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True, index=True)
    category = Column(String, index=True)
    date = Column(Date, index=True)
    amount = Column(Double, index=True)
    description = Column(String, index=True)
    owner_id = Column(Integer, ForeignKey("users.id"))

    # owner table is related to this expenses table
    owner = relationship("User", back_populates="expenses")

schemas.py

define your data models (sorta like validation)

from pydantic import BaseModel
from datetime import date

class ExpenseBase(BaseModel):
    category: str
    date: date
    amount: float
    description: str | None = None
class ExpenseCreate(ExpenseBase):
    pass
class Expense(ExpenseBase):
    id: int
    owner_id: int
    class Config:
        orm_mode = True

class UserBase(BaseModel):
    name: str
class UserCreate(UserBase):
    pass
class User(UserBase):
    id: int
    expenses: list[Expense] = []
    class Config:
        orm_mode = True

crud.py

CRUD utils: Create, Read, Update, Delete For this example, only create and read

from sqlalchemy.orm import Session

# import models (SQLAlchemy models) and schemas (Pydantic models/schemas) files
from . import models, schemas

# Utility Functions

# Read a single user by ID
def get_user(db: Session, user_id: int):
    return db.query(models.User).filter(models.User.id==user_id).first()

# read a single user by name
def get_user_by_name(db: Session, name: str):
    return db.query(models.User).filter(models.User.name==name).first()

# Read multiple users
def get_users(db: Session, skip: int=0, limit: int=10):
    return db.query(models.User).offset(skip).limit(limit).all()

# Read multiple expenses
def get_expenses(db: Session, skip: int=0, limit: int=10):
    return db.query(models.Expense).offset(skip).limit(limit).all()

# Create a SQLAlchemy model instance
def create_user(db: Session, user: schemas.UserCreate):
    db_user = models.User(name=user.name)

    # add the instance to the database system
    db.add(db_user)
    # commit the changes to the database session to be saved
    db.commit()
    # refresh the instance to contain any new data from the database
    db.refresh(db_user)
    return db_user

def create_user_expense(db: Session, expense: schemas.ExpenseCreate, user_id: int):
    db_expense = models.Expense(**expense.dict(), owner_id=user_id)

    # add the instance to the database session
    db.add(db_expense)
    # commit the changes to the database session to be saved
    db.commit()
    # refresh the instance to contain any new data from the database
    db.refresh(db_expense)
    return db_expense

_init_.py

create a blank python and save it as _init_.py

main.py

the python file you call to deploy the app

from fastapi import Depends, FastAPI, HTTPException
from sqlalchemy.orm import Session

from . import crud, models, schemas
from .database import SessionLocal, engine

models.Base.metadata.create_all(bind=engine)

app = FastAPI()

# Dependency: use the same session for the request and then close it
def get_db():
    db=SessionLocal()
    try:
        yield db
    finally:
        db.close()

@app.post("/users/", response_model=schemas.User)
def create_user(user: schemas.UserCreate, db: Session=Depends(get_db)):
    db_user = crud.get_user_by_name(db, user.name)

    if db_user:
        raise HTTPException(status_code=400, detail="Name already registered")

    return crud.create_user(db=db, user=user)

@app.get("/users/", response_model=list[schemas.User])
def read_users(skip: int=0, limit: int=10, db: Session=Depends(get_db)):
    return crud.get_users(db, skip=skip, limit=limit)

@app.get("/users/{user_id}", response_model=schemas.User)
def read_user(user_id: int, db: Session=Depends(get_db)):
    db_user = crud.get_user(db, user_id=user_id)
    if db_user is None:
        raise HTTPException(status_code=404, detail="User not found")
    return db_user

@app.post("/users/{user_id}/expenses/", response_model=schemas.Expense)
def create_expense_for_user(user_id: int, expense: schemas.ExpenseCreate, db: Session=Depends(get_db)):
    return crud.create_user_expense(db=db, expense=expense, user_id=user_id)

@app.get("/expenses/", response_model=list[schemas.Expense])
def read_expenses(skip: int=0, limit: int=10, db: Session=Depends(get_db)):
    return crud.get_expenses(db, skip=skip, limit=limit)

Launch the app

Once all the required files are created, make sure you’re one step outside of the tdm-fastapi-example directory.

To launch the app, run this command in the terminal:

python3 -m uvicorn tdm-fastapi-example.main:app --reload

Then in the Desktop, open Web Broswer under Applications. Visit 127.0.0.1:8000/docs

You can find your database in the current directory called tdm-fastapi-example.db You can access the data via Jupyter Notebook if you want. Learn how to access the database: docs.python.org/3/library/sqlite3.html

Resources

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