Modern Web Development with Python and FastAPI

Introduction

• Instructor: Zach, experienced software engineer from London
• Course focus: Build apps using FastAPI and modern libraries
• Event-driven architecture for managing different tasks

Prerequisites

• Basic understanding of Python programming
• Familiarity with front-end technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript)
• Fundamental knowledge of HTTP networking

Course Structure

• Project 1: Real-time translation service using FastAPI and GPT-4

  • Users can input text for translation into multiple languages.
  • Asynchronous processing to inform users of request status.

• Project 2: Content generation and sentiment analysis tool

• Project 3: API interaction with FastAPI and OpenAI

• Project 4: Image to text web app with Pytesseract and Flask

  • Integrate OCR technology for extracting text from images.

• Project 5: KV app for downloading videos

  • Introduces KV for building multitouch applications.

Project 1: Real-time Translation Service

Overview

• Utilizes FastAPI for backend and PostgreSQL for database.
• Communicates with OpenAI's GPT-4 for translations.
• Returns 200 response while processing translation.
• Allows users to search for previous translations via a database.

Project Structure

• FastAPI Web App Structure:
  • Main folder with subfolders for app, templates, migrations, and configuration.

Development Steps

1. Create main folder and subfolder for the application.
2. Set up virtual environment and install dependencies (e.g. OpenAI API).
3. Define FastAPI app and configure routes.
4. Implement translation service logic.
5. Test functionality to ensure all components work together.

Important Code Snippets

• FastAPI Initialization:

  from fastapi import FastAPI
  app = FastAPI()
  

• Creating Endpoints:

  @app.post("/translate")
  async def translate(request: TranslationRequest):
      # Logic for translation
  

Conclusion

• This course provides hands-on experience in building modern web applications with Python and FastAPI.
• The practical projects help reinforce skills for aspiring Python backend engineers.