Earlier quoted context omitted.
I usually just use asyncpg.
You can use asyncpg in SQLAlchemy
Yep! But I don't.
Litestar is worth a look
21–30 of 86 posts
Re: Litestar is worth a look
#22Thank you for writing this, I've been building a large backend with FastAPI for the last year or so and I've gone through all the levels of the purgatory.
I began using the standard "tutorial" style and started cringing when I saw the official template [1] place all CRUD operations in a single file (I've been doing Rails and Spring for a while before) and the way dependencies where managed... let's just say I wasn't feeling very comfortable.
Then came the SQLModel problems. The author pushes it very hard in the FastAPI docs (which imho are terrible because when I'm looking for docs I want that, documentation, not a fancy tutorial) but as an ORM (yes I know its a layer on top of SQLAlchemy) it doesn't even support polymorphic models and the community even has contributed PRs that have gone months without any review (is it even maintained anymore? I honestly can't tell).
I guess I'm the only one to blame for choosing FastAPI to build a big project but after having used it quite a lot (and also read its code because again, docs are extremely poor) I wouldn't recommend it for anything serious. Sure, if you want to build a quick CRUD then go ahead and use SQLModel and FastAPI, but keep in mind that its not built for complex applications (at least not without requiring you to write a framework on top, like I've unfortunately done).
So yeah, a big thank you to the author of this post because I will migrate to Litestar as soon as I wake up tomorrow.
Re: Litestar is worth a look
#23Thank you for writing this, I've been building a large backend with FastAPI for the last year or so and I've gone through all the levels of the purgatory. I began using the standard "tutorial" style and started cringing when I saw the official template [1] place all CRUD operations in a single file (I've been doing Rails and Spring for a while before) and the way dependencies where managed... let's just say I wasn't…
edit: reading the litestar docs, it even has a built-in event system! I spent a couple weeks building something I could use with FastAPI...
Re: Litestar is worth a look
#24I love Starlette but not a fan of FastAPI and do not use it.
I read this article but didn’t really get the sense there was anything sufficiently compelling to switch from Starlette.
Re: Litestar is worth a look
#25Thanks for writing this. I have similar gripes about FastAPI having developed an application over the past few years; I'm also continually surprised at how prevalent the attitude is that FastAPI has excellent docs, given how divorced the tutorial / toy examples in the docs are from real-world development and measurement of an API.
I am really disappointed at the new generation of Python frameworks' documentation, which seem to have the same "docs are tutorials + chatty blog posts which imprecisely describe the APIs" attitude of Javascript libs.
Two words: API Reference.
Have the clinical explanation of methods exposed, with actual breakdowns of what method parameters do. List them all, don't surround it by prose. List out the options! Don't make me dive into the source to find out what I can or can't pass into a parameter!
Having to play this game of "alright I want to know how to use this API, so first I need to figure out what tutorial page _might_ use this" to find the tiny examples that should just be next to the methods I care about in the reference is really frustrating.
Re: Litestar is worth a look
#26Good to see it using port 8000 as default, and not Flasks 5000 (does not work on Mac anymore)
I wasted a couple of hours recently before realizing that AirPlay was using port 5000...
Re: Litestar is worth a look
#27I know fastapi gets the hype, but I have found plain starlette quite usable by itself. Sure, it doesn't have the whole kitchen sink, but if you just need something small and simple then it fits the bill. In comparison Litestar seems closer to fastapi/django in scope
Re: Litestar is worth a look
#28How does this compare to Django? I see you have quite a bit of Django content. How would you decide to use Litestar vs Django on a new greenfield project?
Re: Litestar is worth a look
#29Thank you for writing this, I've been building a large backend with FastAPI for the last year or so and I've gone through all the levels of the purgatory. I began using the standard "tutorial" style and started cringing when I saw the official template [1] place all CRUD operations in a single file (I've been doing Rails and Spring for a while before) and the way dependencies where managed... let's just say I wasn't…
TBH, the FastAPI "docs" are at https://github.com/polarsource/polar/tree/main/server
If you want to actually figure out how to scale FastAPI for a large-ish app, including auth, testing and all that stuff, all with modern practices, "how they do it in that repo" is probably a good way to start with.
Re: Litestar is worth a look
#30I think Litestar is superb for building API backends. Love it; use it; only good things to say. Their Advanced Alchemy is coming along nicely, too.
Litestar of course supports old-school server-template-rendered sites, too; it even has a plugin for HTMX requests and responses. In practice, I find that the patterns that serve API endpoints so well sometimes get in the way of old-school "validate form and redirect, or re-render with errors" endpoints. In particular, Litestar has no "true" form support of its own; validation is really intended to flag inbound schema mismatch on API calls, not flag multiple individual error fields. Using `@post("/route", exception_handlers={...})` is pretty awkward for these endpoints. I'd be excited to see some better tools/DX in-the-box here.