Introduction

This projects consist of a cookiecutter template that generates a full structure for creating a RESTful API service project based on FastAPI following the MVC (Model-View-Controller) structure in the same way Django projects does.

While using this project, you will be asked to provide some inputs such the authors, the name of the project, etc. As result you will obtain the complete file and folder structure to quickly start to code your project.

Prerequisites

It uses Python (>=3.7) behind the scenes. Please install the Python package cookiecutter before using it.

Project Generation Options

project_name:

Your project’s human-readable name, capitals and spaces allowed.

project_slug:

Your project’s slug without dashes or spaces. Used to name your repo and in other places where a Python-importable version of your project name is needed.

project_url:

The url of your project hosted in gitlab or github.

author:

This is you! The value goes into places like README.md and such.

email:

The email address you want to identify yourself in the project.

short_description:

Describes your project briefly and gets used in places like README.md and setup.py.

version:

The version of the project at its inception.

use_oauth:

Indicates whether the project should be configured for using OAuth2 authentication. The choices are:

1. No

2. Yes

use_database:

Indicates whether the project should be configured for using database. The choices are:

1. No

2. Yes

ci_tool:

Select a CI tool. The choices are:

1. GitHub

2. GitLab

3. Bitbucket

4. None

ci_tool:

Select the python version for configuring the created project’s CI/CD pipeline. The choices are:

1. 3.10

2. 3.11

3. 3.9

4. 3.8

5. 3.7

Tutorial

Let’s pretend you want to create a FastAPI project called “redditclone”. By using this template based on cookiecutter, you will be able to quickly setup a runnable FastAPI project.

First, get Cookiecutter. Trust me, it’s awesome:

$ pip install "cookiecutter>=1.7.0"

Now run it against this repo:

$ cookiecutter https://github.com/zhiwei2017/FastAPI-Cookiecutter.git

You’ll be prompted for some values. Provide them, then a FastAPI project will be created for you.

Warning: After this point, change ‘My Awesome Project’, ‘John Doe’, etc to your own information.

Answer the prompts with your own desired Project Generation Options. For example:

Cloning into 'fastapi-cookiecutter'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 219, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (219/219), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (123/123), done.
remote: Total 219 (delta 83), reused 181 (delta 69), pack-reused 0
Receiving objects: 100% (219/219), 41.09 KiB | 1.71 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (83/83), done.
project_name [My Awesome Project]: Reddit Clone
project_slug [reddit_clone]: reddit_clone
project_url [https://github.com/example_project]: https://github.com/redditclone
author [John Doe]: John Doe
email [john-doe@example.com]: john.doe@example.com
short_description [Behold My Awesome Project!]: A reddit clone.
version [0.0.1]: 0.1.0
Select use_oauth:
1 - No
2 - Yes
Choose from 1, 2 [1]: 1
Select use_database:
1 - Yes
2 - No
Choose from 1, 2 [1]: 1
Select ci_tool:
1. GitHub
2. GitLab
3. Bitbucket
4. None
Choose from 1, 2 [1]: 1
Select python_version:
1. 3.10
2. 3.11
3. 3.9
4. 3.8
5. 3.7
Choose from 1, 2 [1]: 1

Enter the project and take a look around:

$ cd reddit_clone/
$ ls

Now take a look at your repo. Don’t forget to carefully look at the generated README.

Project Structure

Files related to application are in the src or tests directories. Application components are:

{{cookiecutter.project_slug}}
├── docs                            - sphinx documentastion
├── scripts                         - scripts
│   └── prestart.sh
├── {{cookiecutter.project_slug}}
│   ├── app
│   │   ├── api                     - api endpoints
│   │   │   └── base.py             - basic endpoints
│   │   ├── application.py          - function for FastAPI application creation and configuration
│   │   ├── configs                 - application configuration
│   │   │   └── base.py             - basic configuration class
│   │   ├── constants.py            - constants used inside the application
│   │   ├── db                      - database related stuff
│   │   │   ├── base.py             - base sqlalchemy DB model class
│   │   │   ├── models              - folder for defining sqlalchemy DB model classes
│   │   │   ├── queries             - folder for predefined sqlalchemy queries
│   │   │   └── session.py          - a local session instance used inside application
│   │   ├── events                  - events for startup, shutdown
│   │   │   └── base.py             - dummy startup event and shudown event
│   │   ├── globals.py              - global variables
│   │   ├── middlewares             - middleware stuff
│   │   │   └── logging.py          - middleware function related to logging
│   │   ├── schemas                 - pydantic models for this application
│   │   │   └── base.py             - pydantic models for the basic endpoints
│   │   ├── services                - logic that is not included in the other folders
│   │   ├── utils                   - utility stuff
│   │   │   ├── errors.py           - customized exception classes
│   │   │   ├── logging.py          - logging related utility functions, classes
│   │   │   └── security.py         - security related functions, classes
│   │   └── version.py              - version information
│   ├── data                        - data used for this application
│   └── main.py                     - main function to run the application
├── tests                           - unit tests
│   ├── conftest.py                 - fixtures in tests
│   ├── resources                   - resources used in tests
│   └── ...
├── Dockerfile                      - docker file for building docker image
├── Makefile                        - predefined commands
├── README.md                       - package information
├── requirements                - package dependencies
│   ├── base.txt                - documentation dependecies
│   ├── doc.txt                 - documentation dependecies
│   ├── dev.txt                 - tests dependencies
├── setup.cfg                       - configurations for mypy, bandit, pytest etc. Centralizing all the configurations to one place.
└── setup.py                        - package installation configuration

Advanced Usage

Contributing Guide

Please check the Contributing Guide for details.

Core Team

• Zhiwei Zhang - Author / Maintainer - zhiwei2017@gmail.com

Literature

• cookiecutter

• FastAPI

• Pydantic

• SQLAlchemy

• Alembic

• PyJWT

• python-jose