Setting up FastAPI with Python Poetry: Episode 1

In this tutorial, we will walk through the process of setting up a FastAPI project using Python Poetry. FastAPI is a modern web framework for building APIs with Python, while Poetry is a dependency manager and packaging tool for Python projects.

Before we begin, make sure you have Python and Poetry installed on your system. You can install Python from the official Python website (https://www.python.org/) and Poetry from the Poetry documentation (https://python-poetry.org/).

Step 1: Create a new project directory

First, create a new directory for your FastAPI project. You can do this using the following command:

mkdir fastapi-tutorial
cd fastapi-tutorial

Step 2: Initialize a new Poetry project

Next, initialize a new Poetry project in the project directory. This will create a new pyproject.toml file that will hold your project configuration and dependencies.

poetry init

You will be prompted to enter some information about your project, such as the name, version, and description. You can leave the defaults or customize them as needed.

Step 3: Install FastAPI and Uvicorn

Next, you need to add FastAPI and Uvicorn as dependencies to your project. Run the following command to add them to your project:

poetry add fastapi uvicorn

This will install FastAPI and Uvicorn as dependencies in your project and update the pyproject.toml file with the new dependencies.

Step 4: Create a FastAPI app

Create a new Python file in your project directory, such as main.py, and add the following code to create a simple FastAPI app:

from fastapi import FastAPI

app = FastAPI()

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

This code creates a FastAPI app with a single endpoint that returns a JSON response with the message ‘Hello, World’ when you send a GET request to the root URL.

Step 5: Run the FastAPI app

Now, you can run the FastAPI app using Uvicorn. Use the following command to start the Uvicorn server and run your FastAPI app:

uvicorn main:app --reload

This will start the Uvicorn server with your FastAPI app running on http://127.0.0.1:8000. You can open a web browser and navigate to http://127.0.0.1:8000 to see your FastAPI app in action.

That’s it! You have successfully set up a FastAPI project using Python Poetry. You can now build on this project by adding more endpoints, middleware, and other features to create powerful APIs with FastAPI.