voltwire-fastapi-exceptions

Reusable exception handling for FastAPI apps: a base AppError hierarchy you can raise (and extend), plus a middleware + validation handler so that every error — raised before, during, or after the route — reaches the client as the same JSON body.

Bring your own response model. The library never defines or imposes a response schema — you pass your own model down, and the handlers use only the slice they need (construct it with message + errors, then call .model_dump()). Your app keeps one model for both success and error responses; nothing is coupled across the boundary.

Installation

pip install voltwire-fastapi-exceptions
# or with Poetry:
poetry add voltwire-fastapi-exceptions

Raising errors

Raise an AppError (or a subclass) anywhere; the middleware turns it into your response model with the right status code.

from voltwire.fastapi.exceptions import EntityNotFoundError, ForbiddenError

def get_user(user_id: str):
    user = repo.find(user_id)
    if not user:
        raise EntityNotFoundError(f"No user {user_id}")   # -> 404
    if not user.active:
        raise ForbiddenError()                            # -> 403
    return user

Built-in classes: UnauthorizedRequestError (401), ForbiddenError (403), BadRequestError (400), EntityNotFoundError (404), ResourceConflictError (409), UnprocessableRequestError (422), UnsupportedFeatureError (501), DownstreamServiceError (502).

AppWarning is an AppError subclass for expected/recoverable conditions — logged at warning level instead of error. ForbiddenError and UnsupportedFeatureError are warnings.

Extend them

from voltwire.fastapi.exceptions import UnprocessableRequestError

class DivideByZeroError(UnprocessableRequestError):
    def __init__(self, message="Cannot divide by zero"):
        super().__init__(message)

Your response model

Provide any model whose instances have a .model_dump() and that can be constructed with message= and errors= (a pydantic model with those two fields — plus whatever else you want, e.g. timestamp, metadata — is the common case). The library only ever sets message and errors; the rest come from your model's defaults. This is the ApiErrorBody protocol:

class ApiErrorBody(Protocol):
    def __init__(self, *, message: str, errors: list[str]) -> None: ...
    def model_dump(self, *, mode: str = "json", exclude_none: bool = True) -> dict: ...

Wiring it into your app

from fastapi import FastAPI
from fastapi.exceptions import RequestValidationError
from voltwire.fastapi.exceptions import (
    ExceptionMiddleware,
    DefaultExceptionHandlerSettings,
    build_validation_handler,
    build_error_responses,
)
from myapp.models import ApiMessage   # <-- YOUR model

app = FastAPI(responses=build_error_responses(ApiMessage))   # OpenAPI error schemas

# Catches AppError (-> its status) and any unexpected Exception (-> 500).
app.add_middleware(
    ExceptionMiddleware,
    error_model=ApiMessage,
    settings=DefaultExceptionHandlerSettings(production=is_production()),
)

# RequestValidationError is raised during request parsing, before the middleware runs,
# so register it as an exception handler too — same body, built from your model.
app.add_exception_handler(RequestValidationError, build_validation_handler(ApiMessage))

Settings (why not read your env directly?)

The middleware only needs to know one thing: are we in production? (In production the 500 handler hides the raw exception string; otherwise it includes it to aid debugging.)

Rather than force a settings system on you, it takes any object matching the ExceptionHandlerSettings protocol — a single production: bool. Use the provided DefaultExceptionHandlerSettings, or pass your own object exposing production.