Building Python Web APIs with FastAPI

FastAPI is a modern Python web framework for building APIs quickly and efficiently. It is built on top of Python type hints, allowing for automatic generation of documentation and validation of request and response data. In this article, we will explore how to build web APIs using FastAPI.

Installation

To get started with FastAPI, you can install it using pip:

pip install fastapi

Basic Example

Here is a basic example of building a simple API using FastAPI:

    from fastapi import FastAPI
    
    app = FastAPI()
    
    @app.get('/')
    def read_root():
        return {'message': 'Hello, World!'}
    

Request Handling

FastAPI provides decorators for defining different types of HTTP methods such as GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc. These decorators allow you to define the URL path for the API endpoint and the function that will handle the request. Here is an example of handling a POST request:

    @app.post('/items/')
    def create_item(item: dict):
        return item
    

Automatic Documentation

FastAPI automatically generates interactive API documentation based on your code and type hints. You can access the documentation by visiting the /docs endpoint in your browser. This makes it easy to test your API endpoints and provides helpful information for other developers consuming your API.

Conclusion

FastAPI is a powerful framework for building web APIs in Python. Its performance and ease of use make it a great choice for developers looking to create APIs quickly and efficiently. We hope this article has given you a good introduction to FastAPI and its capabilities.