FastAPI Project Quickstart Tool

Welcome to the quickstart tool for creating a FastAPI project with the following stack:

• FastAPI
• Jinja2 Templates
• TailwindCSS and Flowbite
• AlpineJS
• HTMX

The default pip packages installed include:

• fastapi
• uvicorn[standard]
• sqlalchemy
• jinja2
• python-dotenv
• poetry

Note: all libraries and packages are automatically installed to their latest versions when running the tool.

Why This Tool?

Creating a project from scratch can be a tedious process. So, I wanted to simplify it! This tool is ideal for those that are looking to quickly prototype a project without worrying about JavaScript frameworks, such as Backend Developers and ML Engineers.

The tool does the following:

• Creates a virtual environment in the project folder
• Accesses it, updates PIP and installs the required packages
• Creates a .env file
• Creates a backend directory with a basic application template for FastAPI
• Creates a frontend directory with some basic Jinja2 template files
  • Such as a _base.html and index.html
• Creates a frontend/public files directory for storing css, js, and img files locally
  • Adds TailwindCSS, Flowbite, HTMX, and AlpineJS static files
• Performs some file cleanup such as removing node_modules (if your OS supports TailwindCSS standalone CLI), venv and package.json files

Dependencies

The tool is intended to be dynamic and aims to install the most recent packages where possible. To do this, we require NodeJS, NPM and Python to be installed on your local machine, with the latest stable versions.

We use node_modules and PIP to maintain the latest versions of the core stack, and remove the node_modules after creation to simplify the project folder.

Fortunately, Tailwind has a Standalone CLI that allows us to watch and minify files without needing NodeJS!

Customisation and Configuration

All files added to the project are stored in setup_assets. If you want add files, feel free but it is recommended not to mess with the file structure. Here a few things to note:

• All the files are added to the project root directory
• Static files MUST be stored in a setup_assets/frontend/static folder
• The static folder name is changed dynamically during project creation from frontend/static -> frontend/public

For configuration customisation go to config.py in the root directory. Here you have three options:

• Changing the database URL -> DATABASE_URL, defaults to a SQLite local database.
• Adding additional PIP packages to the project -> ADDITIONAL_PIP_PACKAGES
• Adding additional .env file variables -> ENV_FILE_ADDITIONAL_PARAMS

Note: the last two options are treated as python list objects that accept strings only.

Creation

1. To get started, clone the repository, enter the folder and run create with a name (e.g., my_project) argument inside a poetry shell. This creates a new project inside the parent directory of the fastapi-quickstart directory:

git clone https://github.com/Achronus/fastapi-quickstart.git
cd fastapi-quickstart
poetry shell
create my_project  # Replace me with custom name!

For example, if you have a parent folder called projects and are making a project called todo_app the project is created in projects/todo_app instead of projects/fastapi-quickstart/todo_app.

And That's It!

Everything is setup with a blank template ready to start building a project from scratch. Run the following commands to run the docker development server and watch TailwindCSS locally!

Not got Docker? Follow these instructions from the Docker website.

cd ../my_project  # Replace me with custom name!
docker-compose up -d --build dev

poetry shell
poetry install

watch

Then access the site at localhost:8080.

Production

Docker also comes configured with a production variant. Inside the my_project folder run:

docker-compose up -d --build prod

Then you are good to go!

Folder Structure

The newly created project should look similar to the following:

project_name
└── config
|   └── docker
|   |   └── Dockerfile.backend
└── project_name
|   └── backend
|   |   └── database
|   |       └── __init__.py
|   |       └── crud.py
|   |       └── models.py
|   |       └── schemas.py
|   └── frontend
|   |   └── public
|   |   |   └── css
|   |   |   |   └── flowbite.min.css
|   |   |   |   └── input.css
|   |   |   |   └── style.min.css
|   |   |   └── imgs
|   |   |   |   └── avatar.svg
|   |   |   └── js
|   |   |       └── alpine.min.js
|   |   |       └── flowbite.min.js
|   |   |       └── htmx.min.js
|   |   |       └── theme-toggle.js
|   |   └── templates
|   |       └── components
|   |       |   └── navbar.html
|   |       └── _base.html
|   |       └── index.html
|   └── tests
|   |   └── __init__.py
|   └── .env
|   └── .gitignore
|   └── build.py
|   └── main.py
|   └── tailwind.config.js
|   └── tailwindcss OR tailwindcss.exe
└── .dockerignore
└── database.db
└── docker-compose.base.yml
└── docker-compose.yml
└── poetry.lock
└── pyproject.toml
└── README.md