fastapi-hotwire

fastapi-hotwire brings Hotwire's Turbo protocol to FastAPI. Render targeted DOM updates with <turbo-stream> responses, return individual Jinja blocks for <turbo-frame> requests, queue session-backed flash messages, and validate forms in place — all from your existing FastAPI handlers, with no JSON layer or client-side framework. Ships with pytest helpers and a Protocol-based design so you can swap template engines or session backends.

Install

pip install fastapi-hotwire
# or
uv add fastapi-hotwire

For the Pydantic-backed validation-error stream:

pip install "fastapi-hotwire[forms]"

Quickstart

from fastapi import FastAPI, Form, Request
from fastapi_hotwire import HotwireTemplates, TurboStreamResponse, streams

app = FastAPI()
templates = HotwireTemplates(directory="templates", flashes=False)
todos: list[dict] = []


@app.get("/")
def index(request: Request):
    return templates.TemplateResponse(request, "index.html", {"todos": todos})


@app.post("/todos")
def create(request: Request, text: str = Form(...)):
    todo = {"id": len(todos) + 1, "text": text}
    todos.append(todo)
    return templates.render_stream(
        request, "index.html", "todo_row",
        action="append", target="todos", todo=todo,
    )


@app.post("/todos/{todo_id}/delete")
def delete(todo_id: int):
    todos[:] = [t for t in todos if t["id"] != todo_id]
    return TurboStreamResponse(streams.remove(target=f"todo-{todo_id}"))

A complete runnable version of this example lives in examples/minimal/.

What's in the box

Module	What it does
TurboStreamResponse	A Response subclass with Content-Type: text/vnd.turbo-stream.html.
streams	Pure-function builders for <turbo-stream> actions (append, prepend, replace, update, remove, before, after, refresh).
TurboContext	A FastAPI dependency that summarizes how the current request relates to Turbo (frame? stream? top-level visit?).
HotwireTemplates	A Jinja2Templates wrapper that adds render_block(...) and render_stream(...), plus an automatic flashes context processor.
flash / get_flashed	Session-backed flash messages with both a redirect-style and a Hotwire-native turbo-stream flow.
forms	A Pydantic ValidationError → turbo-stream renderer for in-place form validation.
testing	pytest assertions and request helpers (assert_turbo_stream, parse_streams, assert_turbo_frame, turbo_frame_request, turbo_stream_request).

TurboStreamResponse

from fastapi_hotwire import TurboStreamResponse, streams

@app.post("/items")
def create():
    return TurboStreamResponse([
        streams.append(item_html, target="items"),
        streams.update(counter_html, target="item-count"),
    ])

Pass a single string, a list of strings, or None. The class also works as response_class=TurboStreamResponse so OpenAPI documents the media type.

streams

Each builder returns a markupsafe.Markup so it composes safely with Jinja templates:

from fastapi_hotwire import streams

streams.append("<li>...</li>", target="todos")
streams.replace(form_html, target="contact-form")
streams.remove(target="todo-42")
streams.refresh()  # Turbo 8 page-refresh

The html argument is interpolated verbatim into the <template> envelope. It must be safe HTML (Jinja autoescaped output is safe). Attribute values (target=, targets=) are HTML-escaped automatically.

TurboContext

from typing import Annotated
from fastapi import Depends
from fastapi_hotwire import TurboContext, turbo_context

@app.post("/items")
async def create(turbo: Annotated[TurboContext, Depends(turbo_context)]):
    if turbo.is_frame:
        return frame_response(...)
    if turbo.accepts_stream:
        return stream_response(...)
    return full_page_response(...)

Fields: is_frame, frame_id, accepts_stream, is_visit.

HotwireTemplates

from fastapi_hotwire import HotwireTemplates

templates = HotwireTemplates(directory="templates")

@app.get("/items/{id}")
def item_frame(request: Request, id: int):
    # Render only the {% block item %} of items.html — useful for
    # responding to a <turbo-frame src="..."> request.
    return templates.render_block(request, "items.html", "item", item=load(id))

@app.post("/items")
def create(request: Request, text: str = Form(...)):
    item = save(text)
    # Render the {% block item %} as a turbo-stream that appends to #items.
    return templates.render_stream(
        request, "items.html", "item",
        action="append", target="items", item=item,
    )

The flashes context processor is registered automatically; pass flashes=False to opt out.

flash

from fastapi_hotwire import flash, get_flashed

# 1. Classic post-redirect-get flow:
@app.post("/save")
def save(request: Request):
    flash(request, "Saved", category="success")
    return RedirectResponse("/", status_code=303)

# 2. Hotwire-native: respond with a stream that appends to #flash without redirecting:
@app.post("/save")
def save(request: Request):
    return flash.stream(request, "Saved", category="success")

Templates rendered through HotwireTemplates automatically receive the queued flashes list.

A complete runnable example lives in examples/flash/.

forms

from fastapi_hotwire.forms import validation_error_stream

# Render Pydantic validation errors as a turbo-stream that replaces
# only the form's block — no full-page reload, no scroll loss.
try:
    Contact.model_validate(form_data)
except ValidationError as exc:
    return validation_error_stream(
        exc, templates=templates, template="contact.html",
        block="form", target="contact-form", request=request,
    )

testing

from fastapi_hotwire.testing import (
    assert_turbo_stream, parse_streams, assert_turbo_frame,
    turbo_frame_request, turbo_stream_request,
)

def test_create_appends_a_row(client):
    resp = client.post("/todos", data={"text": "ship"})
    assert_turbo_stream(resp)
    actions = parse_streams(resp)
    assert actions[0].action == "append"
    assert actions[0].target == "todos"

Pluggability

fastapi_hotwire.protocols defines the integration seams:

• TemplateRenderer — anything implementing render(name, context) -> str.
• BlockRenderer — anything implementing render_block(name, block, context) -> str. The default Jinja2BlockRenderer is one implementation.
• SessionLike — any MutableMapping[str, Any] that hangs off request.session (Starlette SessionMiddleware, starsessions, an in-memory dict).

You don't need to use the bundled Jinja2 / Starlette code paths to use this library.

Examples

Two full runnable examples live under examples/:

• examples/minimal/ — A todo list with turbo-stream append + remove. The simplest possible integration.
• examples/flash/ — Session-backed flash messages, with both a PRG and a Hotwire-native flow.

Run either with uv run uvicorn app:app --reload from inside the example directory.

Non-goals

fastapi-hotwire deliberately does not:

• Push to clients via WebSocket / SSE — Hotwire's broadcast / turbo_stream_from patterns belong in app code with your message bus of choice.
• Bundle a Stimulus JavaScript distribution — load Stimulus the way you load any other JS.
• Inject logging / observability / tracing — those are application concerns, not library concerns.
• Replace request.url_for(...) with anything more magical.

This list will not grow.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Issues and PRs welcome — please file an issue first for anything bigger than a typo so we can align on scope.

This project follows the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct.

License

MIT © 2026 Pyre