asymmetric 0.0.1

A powerful tool to enable super fast [async] module-to-API transformations. Learn in minutes, implement in seconds.

Asymmetric

A powerful tool to enable super fast [async] module-to-API transformations. Learn in minutes, implement in seconds.

Why Asymmetric?

Raw developing speed and ease of use, that's why. asymmetric is based on Starlette ✨! While Starlette is a powerful tool to have, getting it to work from scratch can be a bit of a pain, especially if you have never used it before. The idea behind asymmetric is to be able to take any module already written and transform it into a working API in a matter of minutes, instead of having to design the module ground-up to work with Starlette (it can also be used to build an API from scratch really fast). With asymmetric, you will also get some neat features, namely:

• Auto logging.
• Server-side error detection and exception handling.
• Auto-generated /docs endpoint for your API with interactive documentation. [UNDER CONSTRUCTION]
• Auto-generated OpenAPI Specification documentation files for your API. [UNDER CONSTRUCTION]

The complete documentation is available on the official website.

Installing

Install using pip!

pip install asymmetric

Usage

Running the development server

To start a server, choose your favorite ASGI server and target the asymmetric object!

uvicorn run:<module>

Where <module> is your module name (in the examples, we will be writing in a file named module.py, so the module name will be just module). A Starlette instance will be spawned immediately and can be reached at http://127.0.0.1:8000 by default. We don't have any endpoints yet, so we'll add some later.

Defining the API endpoints

The module consists of a main object called asymmetric, which includes an important element: the router decorator. Let's analyze it:

from asymmetric import asymmetric

@asymmetric.router("/some-route", methods=["post"], response_code=200)

The decorator recieves 3 arguments: the route argument (the endpoint of the API to which the decorated function will map), the methods argument (a list of the methods accepted to connect to that endpoint, defaults in only POST requests) and the response_code argument (the response code of the endpoint if everything goes according to the plan. Defaults to 200).

Now let's imagine that we have the following method:

def some_function():
    """Greets the world."""
    return "Hello World!"

To transform that method into an API endpoint, all you need to do is add one line:

@asymmetric.router("/sample", methods=["get"])
def some_function():
    """Greets the world."""
    return "Hello World!"

Run uvicorn run:module and send a GET request to http://127.0.0.1:8000/sample. You should get a Hello World! in response! (To try it with a browser, make sure to run the above command and click this link).

But what about methods with arguments? Of course they can be API'd too! Let's now say that you have the following function:

def another_function(a, b=372):
    """
    Adds :a and :b and returns the result of
    that operation.
    """
    return a + b

To transform that method into an API endpoint, all you need to do, again, is add one line:

@asymmetric.router("/add")
def another_function(a, b=372):
    """
    Adds :a and :b and returns the result of
    that operation.
    """
    return a + b

Querying API endpoints

To give parameters to a function, all we need to do is send a json body with the names of the parameters as keys. Let's see how! Run symmetric run module and send a POST request (the default HTTP method) to http://127.0.0.1:8000/add, now using the httpx module.

import httpx

payload = {
    "a": 48,
    "b": 21
}
response = httpx.post("http://127.0.0.1:8000/add", json=payload)
print(response.json())

We got a 69 response! (48 + 21 = 69). Of course, you can return dictionaries from your methods and those will get returned as a json body in the response object automagically!

With this in mind, you can transform any existing project into a usable API very quickly!

What about async?

Given that the underlying framework is Starlette, you can use async to define your methods, no problem! Here's an example:

@asymmetric.router("/another-add")
async def another_async_function(a, b=372):
    """
    Adds :a and :b asynchronously and returns the
    result of that operation.
    """
    return a + b

ReDoc Documentation

[UNDER CONSTRUCTION]

By default, you can GET the /docs endpoint (using a browser) to access to interactive auto-generated documentation about your API. It will include request bodies for each endpoint, response codes, authentication required, default values, and much more!

Tip: Given that the ReDoc Documentation is based on the OpenAPI standard, using type annotations in your code will result in a more detailed interactive documentation. Instead of the parameters being allowed to be any type, they will be forced into the type declared in your code. Cool, right?

Developing

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/daleal/asymmetric.git

cd asymmetric

Recreate environment:

./environment.sh

. .venv/bin/activate

Test install:

poetry install

Resources

• Official Website
• Issue Tracker