But when checking benchmarks and comparisons you should keep the following in mind.

## Benchmarks and speed

When you check the benchmarks, it is common to see several tools of different types compared as equivalent.

Specifically, to see Uvicorn, Starlette and FastAPI compared together (among many other tools).

* It takes each **request** that comes to your application.
* It can then do something to that **request** or run any needed code.
* Then it passes the **request** to be processed by the rest of the application (by some *path operation*).
* It then takes the **response** generated by the application (by some *path operation*).

The first `"/static"` refers to the sub-path this "sub-application" will be "mounted" on. So, any path that starts with `"/static"` will be handled by it.

The `directory="static"` refers to the name of the directory that contains your static files.

The `name="static"` gives it a name that can be used internally by **FastAPI**.

All these parameters can be different than "`static`", adjust them with the needs and specific details of your own application.

# Path Parameters

You can declare path "parameters" or "variables" with the same syntax used by Python format strings:

```Python hl_lines="6-7"
{!../../../docs_src/path_params/tutorial001.py!}
```

The value of the path parameter `item_id` will be passed to your function as the argument `item_id`.

!!! tip

{% for lang_name, lang_content in section_content.items() %}

### {{ lang_name }}

{% for item in lang_content %}

* <a href="{{ item.link }}" class="external-link" target="_blank">{{ item.title }}</a> by <a href="{{ item.author_link }}" class="external-link" target="_blank">{{ item.author }}</a>.

{% endfor %}
{% endfor %}
{% endfor %}

## Projects

Latest GitHub projects with the topic `fastapi`:

After you have tests, then you can upgrade the **FastAPI** version to a more recent one, and make sure that all your code is working correctly by running your tests.

If everything is working, or after you make the necessary changes, and all your tests are passing, then you can pin your `fastapi` to that new recent version.

## About Starlette

The main thing you need to run a **FastAPI** application (or any other ASGI application) in a remote server machine is an ASGI server program like **Uvicorn**, this is the one that comes by default in the `fastapi` command.

There are several alternatives, including:

* <a href="https://www.uvicorn.org/" class="external-link" target="_blank">Uvicorn</a>: a high performance ASGI server.

```Python hl_lines="8-13"
{!../../../docs_src/sql_databases/sql_app/tests/test_sql_app.py!}
```

!!! tip
    You could reduce duplication in that code by putting it in a function and using it from both `database.py` and `tests/test_sql_app.py`.

    For simplicity and to focus on the specific testing code, we are just copying it.

## Create the database

!!! info
    To use `TestClient`, first install <a href="https://www.python-httpx.org" class="external-link" target="_blank">`httpx`</a>.

    E.g. `pip install httpx`.

Import `TestClient`.

Create a `TestClient` by passing your **FastAPI** application to it.

Create functions with a name that starts with `test_` (this is standard `pytest` conventions).

Use the `TestClient` object the same way as you do with `httpx`.