Check out online example: https://minimal-fastapi-postgres-template.rafsaf.pl, it's 100% code used in template (docker image) with added my domain and https only.

Minimal async FastAPI + PostgreSQL template

Minimal async FastAPI + PostgreSQL template

Features

Template repository
SQLAlchemy 2.0, async queries, best possible autocompletion support
PostgreSQL 16 database under asyncpg, docker-compose.yml
Full Alembic migrations setup
Refresh token endpoint (not only access like in official template)
Ready to go Dockerfile with uvicorn webserver as an example
Poetry, mypy, pre-commit hooks with ruff
Perfect pytest asynchronous test setup with +40 tests and full coverage

Quickstart

1. Create repository from a template

See docs.

2. Install dependecies with Poetry

cd your_project_name

### Poetry install (python3.12)
poetry install

Note, be sure to use python3.12 with this template with either poetry or standard venv & pip, if you need to stick to some earlier python version, you should adapt it yourself (remove new versions specific syntax for example str | int for python < 3.10)

3. Setup database and migrations

### Setup database
docker-compose up -d

### Run Alembic migrations
alembic upgrade head

4. Now you can run app

### And this is it:
uvicorn app.main:app --reload

You should then use git init (if needed) to initialize git repository and access OpenAPI spec at http://localhost:8000/ by default. To customize docs url, cors and allowed hosts settings, read section about it.

5. Activate pre-commit

pre-commit is de facto standard now for pre push activities like isort or black or its nowadays replacement ruff.

Refer to .pre-commit-config.yaml file to see my current opinionated choices.

# Install pre-commit
pre-commit install --install-hooks

# Run on all files
pre-commit run --all-files

6. Running tests

Note, it will create databases for session and run tests in many processes by default (using pytest-xdist) to speed up execution, based on how many CPU are available in environment.

For more details about initial database setup, see logic app/tests/conftest.py file, fixture_setup_new_test_database function.

Moreover, there is coverage pytest plugin with required code coverage level 100%.

# see all pytest configuration flags in pyproject.toml
pytest

About

This project is heavily based on the official template https://github.com/tiangolo/full-stack-fastapi-postgresql (and on my previous work: link1, link2), but as it now not too much up-to-date, it is much easier to create new one than change official. I didn't like some of conventions over there also (crud and db folders for example or schemas with bunch of files). This template aims to be as much up-to-date as possible, using only newest python versions and libraries versions.

2.0 style SQLAlchemy API is good enough so there is no need to write everything in crud and waste our time... The core folder was also rewritten. There is great base for writting tests in tests, but I didn't want to write hundreds of them, I noticed that usually after changes in the structure of the project, auto tests are useless and you have to write them from scratch anyway (delete old ones...), hence less than more. Similarly with the User model, it is very modest, with just id (uuid), email and password_hash, because it will be adapted to the project anyway.

2024 update:

The template was adpoted to my current style and knowledge, the test based expanded to cover more, added mypy, ruff and test setup was completly rewritten to have three things:

run test in paraller in many processes for speed
transactions rollback after every test
create test databases instead of having another in docker-compose.yml

Step by step example - POST and GET endpoints

I always enjoy to have some kind of an example in templates (even if I don't like it much, some parts may be useful and save my time...), so let's create two example endpoints:

POST endpoint /pets/create for creating Pets with relation to currently logged User
GET endpoint /pets/me for fetching all user's pets.

1. Create SQLAlchemy model

We will add Pet model to app/models.py.

# app/models.py

(...)

class Pet(Base):
    __tablename__ = "pet"

    id: Mapped[int] = mapped_column(BigInteger, primary_key=True)
    user_id: Mapped[str] = mapped_column(
        ForeignKey("user_account.user_id", ondelete="CASCADE"),
    )
    pet_name: Mapped[str] = mapped_column(String(50), nullable=False)

Note, we are using super powerful SQLAlchemy feature here - Mapped and mapped_column were first introduced in SQLAlchemy 2.0, if this syntax is new for you, read carefully "what's new" part of documentation https://docs.sqlalchemy.org/en/20/changelog/whatsnew_20.html.

2. Create and apply alembic migration

### Use below commands in root folder in virtualenv ###

# if you see FAILED: Target database is not up to date.
# first use alembic upgrade head

# Create migration with alembic revision
alembic revision --autogenerate -m "create_pet_model"


# File similar to "2022050949_create_pet_model_44b7b689ea5f.py" should appear in `/alembic/versions` folder


# Apply migration using alembic upgrade
alembic upgrade head

# (...)
# INFO  [alembic.runtime.migration] Running upgrade d1252175c146 -> 44b7b689ea5f, create_pet_model

PS. Note, alembic is configured in a way that it work with async setup and also detects specific column changes if using --autogenerate flag.

3. Create request and response schemas

There are only 2 files: requests.py and responses.py in schemas folder and I would keep it that way even for few dozen of endpoints. Not to mention this is opinionated.

# app/schemas/requests.py

(...)


class PetCreateRequest(BaseRequest):
    pet_name: str

# app/schemas/responses.py

(...)


class PetResponse(BaseResponse):
    id: int
    pet_name: str
    user_id: str

4. Create endpoints

# app/api/endpoints/pets.py

from fastapi import APIRouter, Depends, status
from sqlalchemy import select
from sqlalchemy.ext.asyncio import AsyncSession

from app.api import deps
from app.models import Pet, User
from app.schemas.requests import PetCreateRequest
from app.schemas.responses import PetResponse

router = APIRouter()


@router.post(
    "/create",
    response_model=PetResponse,
    status_code=status.HTTP_201_CREATED,
    description="Creates new pet. Only for logged users.",
)
async def create_new_pet(
    data: PetCreateRequest,
    session: AsyncSession = Depends(deps.get_session),
    current_user: User = Depends(deps.get_current_user),
) -> Pet:
    new_pet = Pet(user_id=current_user.user_id, pet_name=data.pet_name)

    session.add(new_pet)
    await session.commit()

    return new_pet


@router.get(
    "/me",
    response_model=list[PetResponse],
    status_code=status.HTTP_200_OK,
    description="Get list of pets for currently logged user.",
)
async def get_all_my_pets(
    session: AsyncSession = Depends(deps.get_session),
    current_user: User = Depends(deps.get_current_user),
) -> list[Pet]:
    pets = await session.scalars(
        select(Pet).where(Pet.user_id == current_user.user_id).order_by(Pet.pet_name)
    )

    return list(pets.all())

Also, we need to add newly created endpoints to router.

# app/api/api.py

(...)

from app.api.endpoints import auth, pets, users

(...)

api_router.include_router(pets.router, prefix="/pets", tags=["pets"])

5. Write tests

We will write two really simple tests in combined file inside newly created app/tests/test_pets folder.

# app/tests/test_pets/test_pets.py

from fastapi import status
from httpx import AsyncClient
from sqlalchemy.ext.asyncio import AsyncSession

from app.main import app
from app.models import Pet, User


async def test_create_new_pet(
    client: AsyncClient, default_user_headers: dict[str, str], default_user: User
) -> None:
    response = await client.post(
        app.url_path_for("create_new_pet"),
        headers=default_user_headers,
        json={"pet_name": "Tadeusz"},
    )
    assert response.status_code == status.HTTP_201_CREATED

    result = response.json()
    assert result["user_id"] == default_user.user_id
    assert result["pet_name"] == "Tadeusz"


async def test_get_all_my_pets(
    client: AsyncClient,
    default_user_headers: dict[str, str],
    default_user: User,
    session: AsyncSession,
) -> None:
    pet1 = Pet(user_id=default_user.user_id, pet_name="Pet_1")
    pet2 = Pet(user_id=default_user.user_id, pet_name="Pet_2")

    session.add(pet1)
    session.add(pet2)
    await session.commit()

    response = await client.get(
        app.url_path_for("get_all_my_pets"),
        headers=default_user_headers,
    )
    assert response.status_code == status.HTTP_200_OK

    assert response.json() == [
        {
            "user_id": pet1.user_id,
            "pet_name": pet1.pet_name,
            "id": pet1.id,
        },
        {
            "user_id": pet2.user_id,
            "pet_name": pet2.pet_name,
            "id": pet2.id,
        },
    ]

Design

Deployment strategies - via Docker image

This template has by default included Dockerfile with Uvicorn webserver, because it's simple and just for showcase purposes, with direct relation to FastAPI and great ease of configuration. You should be able to run container(s) (over :8000 port) and then need to setup the proxy, loadbalancer, with https enbaled, so the app stays behind it.

If you prefer other webservers for FastAPI, check out Nginx Unit, Daphne, Hypercorn.

Docs URL, CORS and Allowed Hosts

There are some opinionated default settings in /app/main.py for documentation, CORS and allowed hosts.

Docs

app = FastAPI(
    title="minimal fastapi postgres template",
    version="6.0.0",
    description="https://github.com/rafsaf/minimal-fastapi-postgres-template",
    openapi_url="/openapi.json",
    docs_url="/",
)

Docs page is simpy / (by default in FastAPI it is /docs). You can change it completely for the project, just as title, version, etc.

CORS
```
app.add_middleware(
    CORSMiddleware,
    allow_origins=[str(origin) for origin in config.settings.BACKEND_CORS_ORIGINS],
    allow_credentials=True,
    allow_methods=["*"],
    allow_headers=["*"],
)
```
If you are not sure what are CORS for, follow https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/CORS. React and most frontend frameworks nowadays operate on http://localhost:3000 thats why it's included in BACKEND_CORS_ORIGINS in .env file, before going production be sure to include your frontend domain here, like https://my-fontend-app.example.com.
Allowed Hosts
```
app.add_middleware(TrustedHostMiddleware, allowed_hosts=config.settings.ALLOWED_HOSTS)
```
Prevents HTTP Host Headers attack, you shoud put here you server IP or (preferably) full domain under it's accessible like example.com. By default in .env there are two most popular records: ALLOWED_HOSTS=["localhost", "127.0.0.1"]

License

The code is under MIT License. It's here for educational purposes, created mainly to have a place where up-to-date Python and FastAPI software lives. Do whatever you want with this code.