Love between FastAPI and Django ❤️

FastAPI and Django are two popular web frameworks for building web applications with Python. Both frameworks have their own strengths and weaknesses, and are suitable for different types of applications. In this tutorial, we will explore how to use FastAPI and Django together to build a modern web application.

What is FastAPI?

FastAPI is a modern, fast (high-performance) web framework for building APIs with Python 3.6+ based on standard Python type hints. It is designed to be easy to use, fast to develop with, and to provide a strong foundation for building web APIs.

What is Django?

Django is a high-level Python web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design. It focuses on automating as much as possible to reduce the amount of code required for a given task.

Using FastAPI and Django together

While FastAPI and Django are both popular frameworks for building web applications, they are different in terms of their design and philosophy. FastAPI is designed for building high-performance APIs with a focus on speed and simplicity, while Django is a more complete framework that provides a wide range of features for building web applications.

However, there are scenarios where using FastAPI and Django together can be beneficial. For example, you may want to leverage Django’s built-in authentication and admin panel features while using FastAPI for building high-performance APIs. In this tutorial, we will explore how to integrate FastAPI into a Django project.

Step 1: Create a new Django project

First, create a new Django project by running the following command:

django-admin startproject myproject

Next, create a new Django app within the project by running the following command:

cd myproject
python manage.py startapp myapp

Step 2: Install FastAPI

Next, install FastAPI and Uvicorn, which is the ASGI server that FastAPI uses, by running the following command:

pip install fastapi uvicorn

Step 3: Create a FastAPI endpoint

Create a new file called api.py within the Django app directory (myapp) and add the following code:

from fastapi import FastAPI

app = FastAPI()

@app.get("/api")
def read_root():
    return {"Hello": "World"}

Step 4: Integrate FastAPI with Django

To integrate FastAPI with Django, create a new Django view that will serve FastAPI’s ASGI application. First, create a new file called views.py within the Django app directory (myapp) and add the following code:

from fastapi_asgi.app import fastapi_app

def fastapi_view(request):
    return fastapi_app.handle_request(request)

Next, update the urls.py file within the Django app directory (myapp) to include the FastAPI view:

from django.urls import path
from . import views

urlpatterns = [
    path('api/', views.fastapi_view),
]

Step 5: Run the Django development server

Finally, run the Django development server by running the following command:

python manage.py runserver

Navigate to http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/ in your web browser, and you should see the response from the FastAPI endpoint.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have explored how to integrate FastAPI into a Django project to build a modern web application. By combining the strengths of both frameworks, you can take advantage of Django’s robust features and FastAPI’s high-performance API capabilities. This integration allows you to build scalable and efficient web applications with Python. Happy coding! 💻❤️