How To Setup A FastAPI Project ?¶

• Create myproject folder and open it with your favorite code editor. We recommend Visual Studio Code.
• Open up your terminal and navigate to myproject directory.
• It is recommended to create a virtual environment for python projects.
• This will isolate your projects and dependencies from each other.

$ cd myproject
# create virtual environment using venv module(-m) and name it as venv-myproejct
$ python3.11 -m venv venv-myproject

• Linux/MacOS users can activate like the following

$ source venv-myproject/bin/activate

• Windows users can activate like the following

$ .\venv-myproject\Scripts\activate

• Install FastAPI

  # after activating venv-myproject use pip to install fastapi
  (venv-myproject) $ pip install fastapi
  

• Install uvicorn For App Server

(venv-myproject) $ pip install "uvicorn[standard]"

• Write Project Dependencies To a File
• Usually python app dependencies are written to requirements.txt
• pip freeze command shows how to list installed dependencies

(venv-myproject) $ pip freeze
annotated-types==0.5.0
anyio==3.7.1
click==8.1.5
fastapi==0.100.0
h11==0.14.0
httptools==0.6.0
idna==3.4
pydantic==2.0.3
pydantic_core==2.3.0
python-dotenv==1.0.0
PyYAML==6.0.1
sniffio==1.3.0
starlette==0.27.0
typing_extensions==4.7.1
uvicorn==0.23.1
uvloop==0.17.0
watchfiles==0.19.0
websockets==11.0.3

• You can write this output list to requirements.txt using the following command:

  (venv-myproject) $ pip freeze > requirements.txt
  

• Project Files/Folders Structure

• Create app and tests folders under the myproject folder.
• Create run.py and init.py files under app folder
• Create test_views.py and init.py files under tests folder

• For now project files and folders structure is like the following.

  myproject
  .
  ├── app
  │   ├── __init__.py
  │   └── run.py
  ├── tests
  │   ├── __init__.py
  │   └── test_views.py
  └──  requirements.txt
  │
  └── venv-myproject
  

• This is the setup for a simple and basic project you can follow.