fastapi-postgres-exercise

Small FastAPI example that stores a Person (id, first_name, last_name, email) into Postgres using async SQLAlchemy.

Purpose

This is a project I used to learn more about writing a service using FastAPI. I'm using it to make sure I understand how to use a database, run CI/CD, and use the builtin tools for exercising and documenting the JSON API. I used an AI agent to assist.

Quick start

Prerequisites

Assumes you have a development environment on your system with the following installed:

• postgresql database (I used 14.19 installed with Homebrew)
• python3 (I used 3.9 installed with Homebrew)

Installation instructions

1. Create and activate a virtual environment (recommended):

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate

2. Install dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Copy and set your database URL in .env (see .env.example):

cp .env.example .env
# edit .env to set your DATABASE_URL

Running the app

uvicorn app.main:app --reload

Open http://127.0.0.1:8000/ to see the form and insert a Person into the person table.

Notes

• The app uses an async SQLAlchemy engine and will create the person table at startup if it doesn't exist.
• The default DATABASE_URL in .env.example points to a local Postgres with user postgres and database postgres — change it for your environment.