First Steps with FastAPI

Welcome to the exciting world of FastAPI, a modern, high-performance framework for building APIs and web applications in Python. This first chapter is your gateway to understanding and harnessing the power of FastAPI. Here, you’ll take your initial steps into setting up your development environment, creating your very first FastAPI project, and exploring its fundamental concepts.

FastAPI stands out for its speed, ease of use, and comprehensive documentation, making it a preferred choice for developers looking to build scalable and efficient web applications. In this chapter, you’ll practically engage in setting up FastAPI, learning how to navigate its architecture, and understanding its core components. You’ll gain hands-on experience by defining simple API endpoints, handling HTTP methods, and learning about request and response handling. These foundational skills are crucial for any developer stepping into the world of modern web development with FastAPI.

By the end of this chapter, you will have a solid understanding of FastAPI’s basic structure and capabilities. You’ll be able to set up a new project, define API endpoints, and have a grasp on handling data with FastAPI. This knowledge sets the stage for more advanced topics and complex applications you’ll encounter as you progress through the book.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following recipes:

• Setting up your development environment
• Creating a new FastAPI project
• Understanding FastAPI basics
• Defining your first API endpoint
• Working with path and query parameters
• Defining and using request and response models
• Handling errors and exceptions

Each recipe is designed to provide you with practical knowledge and direct experience, ensuring that by the end of this chapter, you’ll be well equipped to start building your own FastAPI applications.