StarMallow

StarMallow is a starlette based web framework for building robust APIs with Python and Marshmallow. It's been inspired by FastAPI, but uses Marshmallow instead of Pydantic for it's schema definitions. It's reason for existing is simply because marshmallow is a much more powerful serialization engine, and in most cases it's fast enough. An example of Pydantic's limitations can be found in Issue 2277

Example

Create it

Create a file main.py with:

from typing import Annotated
from marshmallow_dataclass2 import dataclass
from starmallow import Body, Path, StarMallow

app = StarMallow()

# Minimum example
@app.get("/path/{item_id}")
def get_id(item_id):
    return item_id


# Example with explicit location option
@dataclass
class MyBody:
    item_id: int
    sub_item_id: int


@app.get("/body")
async def get_body(body: MyBody = Body()) -> int:
    return body.item_id


# Example with explicit marshmallow schema
class MyBodySchema(ma.Schema):
    item_id = mf.Integer()

@app.get("/path/body_schema")
def get_body_from_schema(body: Dict[str, int] = Body(model=MyBodySchema)) -> int:
    return body['item_id']


# Example with Annotated

@app.get("/body_annotated")
async def get_body_annotated(body: Annotated[MyBody, Body()]) -> int:
    return body.item_id

Run it

Run the server with:

❯ uvicorn sample_server:app --reload

INFO:     Uvicorn running on http://127.0.0.1:8000 (Press CTRL+C to quit)
INFO:     Started reloader process [84092]
INFO:     Started server process [87944]
INFO:     Waiting for application startup.
INFO:     Application startup complete.

View the docs

Open the browser at http://localhost:8000/docs to view the Swagger UI.
Open the browser at http://localhost:8000/redoc to view the Redoc UI.

HTTP Endpoints

You can also use class-based views. This can make it easier to organize your code and gives you an easy migration path if you use flask-smorest

from marshmallow_dataclass2 import dataclass
from starmallow import StarMallow
from starmallow.decorators import route
from starmallow.endpoints import APIHTTPEndpoint


app = StarMallow()


@dataclass
class Pet:
    name: str


@app.api_route('/')
class Pets(APIHTTPEndpoint):
    def get(self) -> Pet:
        return Pet.get()

    def post(self, pet: Pet) -> Pet:
        pet.create()
        return pet


@app.api_route('/id/{pet_id}')
class PetById(ApiHttpEndpoint):
    @route(deprecated=True)  # Specify @route if you need to override parameters
    def get(self, pet_id: int) -> Pet:
        return Pet.get(pet_id)


    @route(status_code=204)  # Specify @route if you need to override parameters
    def get(self, pet_id: int):
        Pet.get(pet_id).delete()

Optional Dependencies

uvicorn - for the server that loads and serves your application.
orjson - Required if you want to use ORJSONResponse.
ujson - Required if you want to use UJSONResponse.

Metadata

Release files for starmallow 0.9.4

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution (sdist)

Source distribution for starmallow 0.9.4
File	Size	Uploaded
starmallow-0.9.4.tar.gz	141.3 kB	Apr 28, 2025	Details

Built distribution (wheel)

Table of built distributions (wheels) for starmallow 0.9.4
File	Interpreter	ABI	Platform	Reset
starmallow-0.9.4-py3-none-any.whl 59.4 kB Apr 28, 2025	Python 3	none	any	Details

Total release size: 200.7 kB

Release files / starmallow-0.9.4.tar.gz

Download URL	starmallow-0.9.4.tar.gz
Size	141.3 kB
Tags	Source
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`936b0312ea62e2dc1e8c102884d5fa25cd3f9d088a5a02b1cbb145f822d9f549`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`3a419a014fd7c6f08d082ca4f7130e6b700a16f2265606b187eaa62f901c5472`
Upload date	Apr 28, 2025
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`uv/0.6.14`

Release files / starmallow-0.9.4-py3-none-any.whl

Download URL	starmallow-0.9.4-py3-none-any.whl
Size	59.4 kB
Tags	Python 3
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`1f9d5cf0d1a4ab6fa64193111bff24131ed501a739d800a7e9da1d14e0db6cb0`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`3685f2e746b3500cad8a313a0512512a723a576ea31e053771afa6bd8afd57b0`
Upload date	Apr 28, 2025
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`uv/0.6.14`