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Simple Hero API with FastAPI
Let's start by building a simple hero web API with FastAPI. ✨
Install FastAPI
The first step is to install FastAPI.
FastAPI is the framework to create the web API.
But we also need another type of program to run it, it is called a "server". We will use Uvicorn for that. And we will install Uvicorn with its standard dependencies.
Make sure you have a virtual environment activated{.internal-link target=_blank}.
Then install FastAPI and Uvicorn:
$ python -m pip install fastapi "uvicorn[standard]"
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SQLModel Code - Models, Engine
Now let's start with the SQLModel code.
We will start with the simplest version, with just heroes (no teams yet).
This is almost the same code we have seen up to now in previous examples:
{!./docs_src/tutorial/fastapi/simple_hero_api/tutorial001.py[ln:1]!}
# One line of FastAPI imports here later 👈
{!./docs_src/tutorial/fastapi/simple_hero_api/tutorial001.py[ln:4]!}
{!./docs_src/tutorial/fastapi/simple_hero_api/tutorial001.py[ln:7-22]!}
# Code below omitted 👇
👀 Full file preview
{!./docs_src/tutorial/fastapi/simple_hero_api/tutorial001.py!}
There's only one change here from the code we have used before, the check_same_thread in the connect_args.
That is a configuration that SQLAlchemy passes to the low-level library in charge of communicating with the database.
check_same_thread is by default set to True, to prevent misuses in some simple cases.
But here we will make sure we don't share the same session in more than one request, and that's the actual safest way to prevent any of the problems that configuration is there for.
And we also need to disable it because in FastAPI each request could be handled by multiple interacting threads.
!!! info
That's enough information for now, you can read more about it in the FastAPI docs for async and await.
The main point is, by ensuring you **don't share** the same **session** with more than one request, the code is already safe.
FastAPI App
The next step is to create the FastAPI app.
We will import the FastAPI class from fastapi.
And then create an app object that is an instance of that FastAPI class:
{!./docs_src/tutorial/fastapi/simple_hero_api/tutorial001.py[ln:1-4]!}
# SQLModel code here omitted 👈
{!./docs_src/tutorial/fastapi/simple_hero_api/tutorial001.py[ln:25]!}
# Code below omitted 👇
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{!./docs_src/tutorial/fastapi/simple_hero_api/tutorial001.py!}
Create Database and Tables on startup
We want to make sure that once the app starts running, the function create_tables is called. To create the database and tables.
This should be called only once at startup, not before every request, so we put it in the function to handle the "startup" event:
# Code above omitted 👆
{!./docs_src/tutorial/fastapi/simple_hero_api/tutorial001.py[ln:25-30]!}
# Code below omitted 👇
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{!./docs_src/tutorial/fastapi/simple_hero_api/tutorial001.py!}
Create Heroes Path Operation
!!! info If you need a refresher on what a Path Operation is (an endpoint with a specific HTTP Operation) and how to work with it in FastAPI, check out the FastAPI First Steps docs.
Let's create the path operation code to create a new hero.
It will be called when a user sends a request with a POST operation to the /heroes/ path:
# Code above omitted 👆
{!./docs_src/tutorial/fastapi/simple_hero_api/tutorial001.py[ln:25-39]!}
# Code below omitted 👇
👀 Full file preview
{!./docs_src/tutorial/fastapi/simple_hero_api/tutorial001.py!}
!!! info If you need a refresher on some of those concepts, checkout the FastAPI documentation:
* <a href="https://fastapi.tiangolo.com/tutorial/first-steps/" class="external-link" target="_blank">First Steps</a>
* <a href="https://fastapi.tiangolo.com/tutorial/path-params/" class="external-link" target="_blank">Path Parameters - Data Validation and Data Conversion</a>
* <a href="https://fastapi.tiangolo.com/tutorial/body/" class="external-link" target="_blank">Request Body</a>
The SQLModel Advantage
Here's where having our SQLModel class models be both SQLAlchemy models and Pydantic models at the same time shine. ✨
Here we use the same class model to define the request body that will be received by our API.
Because FastAPI is based on Pydantic, it will use the same model (the Pydantic part) to do automatic data validation and conversion from the JSON request to an object that is an actual instance of the Hero class.
And then, because this same SQLModel object is not only a Pydantic model instance but also a SQLAlchemy model instance, we can use it directly in a session to create the row in the database.
So we can use intuitive standard Python type annotations, and we don't have to duplicate a lot of the code for the database models and the API data models. 🎉
!!! tip We will improve this further later, but for now, it already shows the power of having SQLModel classes be both SQLAlchemy models and Pydantic models at the same time.
Read Heroes Path Operation
Now let's add another path operation to read all the heroes:
# Code above omitted 👆
{!./docs_src/tutorial/fastapi/simple_hero_api/tutorial001.py[ln:25-46]!}
👀 Full file preview
{!./docs_src/tutorial/fastapi/simple_hero_api/tutorial001.py!}
This is pretty straightforward.
When a client sends a request to the path /heroes/ with a GET HTTP operation, we run this function that gets the heroes from the database and returns them.
One Session per Request
Remember that we should use a SQLModel session per each group of operations and if we need other unrelated operations we should use a different session?
Here it is much more obvious.
We should normally have one session per request in most of the cases.
In some isolated cases, we would want to have new sessions inside, so, more than one session per request.
But we would never want to share the same session among different requests.
In this simple example, we just create the new sessions manually in the path operation functions.
In future examples later we will use a FastAPI Dependency to get the session, being able to share it with other dependencies and being able to replace it during testing. 🤓
Run the FastAPI Application
Now we are ready to run the FastAPI application.
Put all that code in a file called main.py.
Then run it with Uvicorn:
$ uvicorn main:app
<span style="color: green;">INFO</span>: Uvicorn running on http://127.0.0.1:8000 (Press CTRL+C to quit)
<span style="color: green;">INFO</span>: Started reloader process [28720]
<span style="color: green;">INFO</span>: Started server process [28722]
<span style="color: green;">INFO</span>: Waiting for application startup.
<span style="color: green;">INFO</span>: Application startup complete.
!!! info
The command uvicorn main:app refers to:
* `main`: the file `main.py` (the Python "module").
* `app`: the object created inside of `main.py` with the line `app = FastAPI()`.
Uvicorn --reload
During development (and only during development), you can also add the option --reload to Uvicorn.
It will restart the server every time you make a change to the code, this way you will be able to develop faster. 🤓
$ uvicorn main:app --reload
<span style="color: green;">INFO</span>: Will watch for changes in these directories: ['/home/user/code/sqlmodel-tutorial']
<span style="color: green;">INFO</span>: Uvicorn running on http://127.0.0.1:8000 (Press CTRL+C to quit)
<span style="color: green;">INFO</span>: Started reloader process [28720]
<span style="color: green;">INFO</span>: Started server process [28722]
<span style="color: green;">INFO</span>: Waiting for application startup.
<span style="color: green;">INFO</span>: Application startup complete.
Just remember to never use --reload in production, as it consumes much more resources than necessary, would be more error prone, etc.
Check the API docs UI
Now you can go to that URL in your browser http://127.0.0.1:8000. We didn't create a path operation for the root path /, so that URL alone will only show a "Not Found" error... that "Not Found" error is produced by your FastAPI application.
But you can go to the automatically generated interactive API documentation at the path /docs: http://127.0.0.1:8000/docs. ✨
You will see that this automatic API docs UI has the paths that we defined above with their operations, and that it already knows the shape of the data that the path operations will receive:
Play with the API
You can actually click the button Try it out and send some requests to create some heroes with the Create Hero path operation.
And then you can get them back with the Read Heroes path operation:
Check the Database
Now you can terminate that Uvicorn server by going back to the terminal and pressing Ctrl+C.
And then, you can open DB Browser for SQLite and check the database, to explore the data and confirm that it indeed saved the heroes. 🎉
Recap
Good job! This is already a FastAPI web API application to interact with the heroes database. 🎉
There are several things we can improve and extend. For example, we want the database to decide the ID of each new hero, we don't want to allow a user to send it.
We will make all those improvements in the next chapters. 🚀