Build RestAPI | FastAPI for beginners

API stands for Application Programming Interface. It is a set of rules and protocols that allows different software applications to communicate with each other.

APIs define the methods, data formats, and rules that enable interaction between software components, such as applications, libraries, or operating systems.

In simple terms, an API acts as an intermediary, facilitating communication and data exchange between different software systems.

It provides a standardized way for developers to access the functionality or services of another application or platform without having to understand the internal implementation details.

Python project setup | Create Virtual environment

Setting up a Python project involves creating a structured and organized environment that facilitates development, collaboration, and deployment.

Proper project setup ensures efficient workflow, dependency management, and easy scalability.

Python virtual environments are an essential tool for managing dependencies and ensuring a clean and isolated development environment. They promote code modularity and help maintain consistency across different projects.

Thus, it is recommended to use a virtual environment to isolate your project's dependencies. This ensures that the project's packages do not interfere with the system-wide Python packages.

How to create Rest End Points using FastAPI

FastAPI is a modern, fast, & high-performance web framework for building APIs with Python 3.7+ based on standard Python type hints. It provides easy-to-use decorators and functions to create REST endpoints quickly.

A REST endpoint, also known as a RESTful endpoint. It is a specific URL or URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) that represents a resource in a RESTful web service. It is a way to interact with the server and perform operations on the resources using the HTTP methods such as GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc.

You can add many endpoints by defining additional route decorators and functions in a similar manner. FastAPI will automatically generate an interactive API documentation based on the function signatures and type hints.

Set up API router and Manage Bigger Applications

APIRouter is a class provided by FastAPI that allows you to define and manage API endpoints in a modular and organized manner. It acts as a container for grouping related endpoints together. APIRouter helps in structuring your API code, improving code organization, and facilitating scalability and maintainability.

APIRouter provides a way to create a router instance that can be included in your FastAPI application. By using routers, you can divide your API into logical sections, such as different resource types or functional areas. Each router can have its own set of endpoints and can be independently managed.

When building a bigger application using FastAPI, it is a good practice to organize your API endpoints using API routers. API routers allow you to modularize and structure your code by grouping related endpoints together. This helps in better organization, maintainability, and scalability of your application.

Database connection with SqlAlchemy

When building web applications with FastAPI, it's common to interact with databases to store and retrieve data. FastAPI provides flexibility in choosing and connecting to various databases.

Remember to handle database-related errors and exceptions appropriately within your FastAPI application to ensure smooth handling of database operations.

It's worth noting that some databases have specific libraries or ORMs that integrate well with FastAPI.

For example, you can use libraries like SQLAlchemy or Tortoise ORM for database operations in FastAPI. These libraries provide abstractions and convenience functions to simplify database interactions.

Create Schema, Models & Depedency Injection using FastAPI

FastAPI, provides several powerful features that contribute to its popularity and efficiency. Among these features, schemas, models, and dependency injection play vital roles in building scalable and well-structured applications.

Schemas in FastAPI, powered by the Pydantic library, define the structure and validation rules for incoming and outgoing data.

Models, on the other hand, focus on representing the data storage structures or database models within your application. FastAPI seamlessly integrates with popular ORMs (Object-Relational Mapping) like SQLAlchemy to define and interact with your database models.
By leveraging models, you can easily create, read, update, and delete data from your database using the power of SQL queries. Models provide a clear separation between the business logic of your application and the data persistence layer, ensuring a clean and maintainable codebase.

Dependency injection is a powerful design pattern that FastAPI embraces to manage dependencies between different components of your application.
FastAPI's dependency injection system allows you to declare your dependencies and have them automatically resolved and injected into your API routes or other functions.
This promotes modular and reusable code by encapsulating complex logic into separate components. Whether you need to connect to a database, authenticate users, or access external services, dependency injection in FastAPI simplifies the process by handling the creation and lifecycle management of dependencies.

By using dependency injection, you can easily build loosely coupled systems that are more testable, maintainable, and extensible.
FastAPI's dependency injection system, combined with its support for asynchronous programming, enables efficient handling of requests by minimizing resource usage and maximizing performance.

In summary, FastAPI's schemas, models, and dependency injection features provide powerful tools for building robust and scalable web applications.
Schemas ensure data consistency and validation, models facilitate data storage and retrieval, and dependency injection promotes modularity and code reuse.
Leveraging these features allows you to build well-structured, maintainable, and efficient APIs with FastAPI.

Create API End Points using Schema in FastAPI

Creating API endpoints in FastAPI is a straightforward and intuitive process. FastAPI leverages Python's type hints and declarative syntax to provide a clean and efficient way to define your API routes.

With this, you can successfully create your API endpoint in FastAPI, and can access the defined endpoint using a web browser or a tool like cURL or Postman.

FastAPI provides a wide range of decorators and parameter types to handle different HTTP methods, request and response bodies, path parameters, query parameters, headers, and more. Additionally, FastAPI offers automatic request validation, serialization, and generation of interactive API documentation based on your defined API routes.