⚡ fastapi-proxykit

Production-ready transparent proxy routes for FastAPI
Turn your FastAPI app into a resilient API gateway with per-route circuit breakers, OpenTelemetry observability, and automatic OpenAPI merging — zero boilerplate.

Features • Quick Start • Installation • Configuration • Examples • Why? • License

✨ Features

• 🔀 Transparent proxying — preserve path, query params, headers automatically
• 🛡️ Per-route circuit breakers — isolated resilience with pybreaker (no cascading failures)
• 📊 Full OpenTelemetry support — tracing, metrics, custom tracer/meter injection
• 📖 Automatic OpenAPI merging — unified /docs from all backend services
• ⚡ Non-blocking I/O — httpx.AsyncClient with pooling & configurable limits
• 🧩 Declarative config — clean Pydantic-powered routes & settings
• 🛠 Structured errors — consistent JSON responses (503 breaker open, 504 timeout, etc.)
• 🔌 Lifespan-aware — client auto cleanup on shutdown
• 🆓 Zero external agents required for observability

🚀 Quick Start

# Clone & install from source
git clone https://github.com/satyamsoni2211/fastapi_proxykit.git
cd fastapi_proxykit
pip install .          # or: uv pip install .

from fastapi import FastAPI
from fastapi_proxykit import proxy_router, ProxyConfig, ProxyRoute, BreakerConfig

app = FastAPI()

app.include_router(
    proxy_router(
        ProxyConfig(
            routes=[
                ProxyRoute(
                    path_prefix="/api/users",
                    target_base_url="https://users.example.com",
                    breaker=BreakerConfig(failure_threshold=5, timeout=30),
                    strip_prefix=True,
                ),
                ProxyRoute(
                    path_prefix="/api/orders",
                    target_base_url="https://orders.example.com",
                    breaker=BreakerConfig(failure_threshold=3, timeout=15),
                ),
            ]
        )
    )
)

→ GET /api/users/42 proxies to https://users.example.com/42

📦 Installation

# From source (recommended for now)
pip install git+https://github.com/satyamsoni2211/fastapi_proxykit.git
# or clone & install locally
git clone https://github.com/satyamsoni2211/fastapi_proxykit.git
cd fastapi_proxykit
pip install .

Requirements: Python 3.13+

⚙️ Configuration

Full power via ProxyConfig:

from fastapi_proxykit import ProxyConfig, ProxyRoute, BreakerConfig, ObservabilityConfig, ClientConfig

config = ProxyConfig(
    routes=[
        ProxyRoute(
            path_prefix="/api/v1/users",
            target_base_url="https://users-service.internal",
            strip_prefix=True,
            breaker=BreakerConfig(failure_threshold=5, timeout=30),
            include_in_openapi=True,
        ),
        # ... more routes
    ],
    observability=ObservabilityConfig(
        tracer=your_tracer,   # opentelemetry trace.get_tracer()
        meter=your_meter,     # opentelemetry metrics.get_meter()
        logger=your_logger,   # optional structlog / logging
    ),
    client=ClientConfig(
        timeout=15.0,
        max_connections=200,
    ),
)

Unified OpenAPI (recommended)

app = FastAPI(openapi_url=None, docs_url=None, redoc_url=None)
app.include_router(proxy_router(config))

→ All backend OpenAPI specs merged at /docs with prefixed paths.

📚 Examples

See the examples/ folder:

• api_gateway/ — Multi-service gateway with different breaker settings
• legacy_facade/ — Modern prefix for legacy backend
• multi_env/ — Route to dev/staging/prod based on env

Run any example:

uv run python -m uvicorn examples.api_gateway.main:app --reload --port 8000

🤔 Why fastapi-proxykit? — Real Developer Benefits

Building proxy/routing logic in FastAPI often means repeating the same boilerplate — manual httpx calls, error handling, timeouts, resilience patterns, tracing, and fragmented docs. fastapi-proxykit eliminates this repetition with a single, configurable, production-grade component.

Here's how it directly benefits you as a developer:

• Save hours (or days) of repetitive coding
  Instead of hand-writing proxy endpoints for every backend service (with custom path handling, headers forwarding, timeouts, etc.), you define routes declaratively once via ProxyRoute. Drop it in with app.include_router(proxy_router(config)) — instant transparent proxying. No more duplicating async def proxy_xxx(...) functions.

• Prevent cascading failures & protect your backends
  Per-route circuit breakers (pybreaker) isolate failures: if /api/users backend flakes out (e.g., 5 failures in a row), that route "opens" automatically — returning fast 503s instead of hanging clients or hammering the failing service. Other routes (e.g., /api/orders) keep working normally. This is huge for microservices/gateway patterns — no more "one slow service kills the whole app".

• Debug & monitor like a pro — zero extra instrumentation
  Full OpenTelemetry integration (traces, metrics, optional structured logs) out-of-the-box. Inject your existing tracer/meter/logger — every proxied request gets spans with target URL, status, duration, errors, etc.
  → Quickly spot slow backends, high-latency routes, error spikes, or retry storms in production. No manual @tracer.start_as_current_span() everywhere.

• Unified Swagger/OpenAPI docs — one /docs to rule them all
  Automatically fetches each backend's /openapi.json, prefixes paths (e.g., /api/users/* → shows as /api/users/... in UI), and merges into your app's docs.
  → Developers/consumers see a single, complete API surface instead of jumping between 5+ service docs. Great for internal APIs, partner integrations, or self-documenting gateways.

• Scale confidently with non-blocking, pooled I/O
  Uses httpx.AsyncClient under the hood with configurable connection limits, timeouts, and pooling. Fully async — no thread blocking, supports high concurrency without spiking CPU/memory.
  → Your gateway stays responsive even under heavy load or when proxying many slow backends.

• Consistent, client-friendly errors — no ugly 502s
  Structured JSON responses for failures:

  {"error": "circuit_breaker_open", "message": "Target service temporarily unavailable"}
  

  or 504 on timeout. Easy for frontend/mobile clients to handle gracefully.

• Clean separation for complex architectures
  Ideal for:

  • Microservices gateway — route /users, /orders, /payments to isolated services with different resilience rules
  • Legacy modernization — facade old APIs behind modern prefixes without rewriting clients
  • Multi-env routing — /dev/* → dev cluster, /prod/* → production
  • Observability-first teams — plug into existing OTEL collectors (Jaeger, Zipkin, Prometheus, etc.) without changing code

In short: fastapi-proxykit turns painful, error-prone proxy boilerplate into a declarative, resilient, observable feature — letting you focus on business logic instead of infrastructure plumbing.

Many FastAPI developers end up reinventing 80% of this themselves. With proxykit, you get it right the first time — resilient, observable, and maintainable.

Contributing

Contributions welcome!

1. Fork the repo
2. Create feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-thing)
3. Commit (git commit -m 'Add amazing thing')
4. Push & open PR

📄 License

MIT License — see LICENSE

Made with ❤️ by Satyam Soni • @_satyamsoni_

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