# Middleware

You can add middleware to **FastAPI** applications.

A "middleware" is a function that works with every **request** before it is processed by any specific *path operation*. And also with every **response** before returning it.

* It takes each **request** that comes to your application.
* It can then do something to that **request** or run any needed code.

```

### Cache the OpenAPI schema

You can use the property `.openapi_schema` as a "cache", to store your generated schema.

That way, your application won't have to generate the schema every time a user opens your API docs.

It will be generated only once, and then the same cached schema will be used for the next requests.

```Python hl_lines="13-14  25-26"
{!../../../docs_src/extending_openapi/tutorial001.py!}

In an advanced scenario where you know you need the dependency to be called at every step (possibly multiple times) in the same request instead of using the "cached" value, you can set the parameter `use_cache=False` when using `Depends`:

=== "Python 3.8+"

    ```Python hl_lines="1"

Then wrap the WSGI (e.g. Flask) app with the middleware.

And then mount that under a path.

```Python hl_lines="2-3  23"
{!../../../docs_src/wsgi/tutorial001.py!}
```

## Check it

Now, every request under the path `/v1/` will be handled by the Flask application.

And the rest will be handled by **FastAPI**.

This provider might be charging you per request, and calling it might take some extra time than if you had a fixed mock user for tests.

You probably want to test the external provider once, but not necessarily call it for every test that runs.

In this case, you can override the dependency that calls that provider, and use a custom dependency that returns a mock user, only for your tests.

### Use the `app.dependency_overrides` attribute

# GraphQL

As **FastAPI** is based on the **ASGI** standard, it's very easy to integrate any **GraphQL** library also compatible with ASGI.

You can combine normal FastAPI *path operations* with GraphQL on the same application.

!!! tip
    **GraphQL** solves some very specific use cases.

    It has **advantages** and **disadvantages** when compared to common **web APIs**.

!!! tip
    The "MINOR" is the number in the middle, for example, in `0.2.3`, the MINOR version is `2`.

## Upgrading the FastAPI versions

You should add tests for your app.

With **FastAPI** it's very easy (thanks to Starlette), check the docs: [Testing](../tutorial/testing.md){.internal-link target=_blank}

It is based on <a href="https://www.python-httpx.org" class="external-link" target="_blank">HTTPX</a>, which in turn is designed based on Requests, so it's very familiar and intuitive.

With it, you can use <a href="https://docs.pytest.org/" class="external-link" target="_blank">pytest</a> directly with **FastAPI**.

## Using `TestClient`

!!! info

Let's imagine that loading the model can **take quite some time**, because it has to read a lot of **data from disk**. So you don't want to do it for every request.

* Implement and use well-known cryptographic tools, like Passlib and JWT tokens, etc.
* Add more granular permission controls with OAuth2 scopes where needed.
* ...etc.

Nevertheless, you might have a very specific use case where you really need to disable the API docs for some environment (e.g. for production) or depending on configurations from environment variables.

## Conditional OpenAPI from settings and env vars