This includes, for example:

* Email notifications sent after performing an action:
    * As connecting to an email server and sending an email tends to be "slow" (several seconds), you can return the response right away and send the email notification in the background.
* Processing data:

## Base64 vs Files { #base64-vs-files }

Consider first if you can use [Request Files](../tutorial/request-files.md) for uploading binary data and [Custom Response - FileResponse](./custom-response.md#fileresponse--fileresponse-) for sending binary data, instead of encoding it in JSON.

JSON can only contain UTF-8 encoded strings, so it can't contain raw bytes.

Being able to use asynchronous functions in your tests could be useful, for example, when you're querying your database asynchronously. Imagine you want to test sending requests to your FastAPI application and then verify that your backend successfully wrote the correct data in the database, while using an async database library.

Let's look at how we can make that work.

        "items:read items:write users:read profile openid"
    client_id: optional string. OAuth2 recommends sending the client_id and client_secret (if any)
        using HTTP Basic auth, as: client_id:client_secret
    client_secret: optional string. OAuth2 recommends sending the client_id and client_secret (if any)
        using HTTP Basic auth, as: client_id:client_secret
    """

    def __init__(

/// info

Added in FastAPI 0.134.0.

///

## What is a Stream? { #what-is-a-stream }

"**Streaming**" data means that your app will start sending data items to the client without waiting for the entire sequence of items to be ready.

So, it will send the first item, the client will receive and start processing it, and you might still be producing the next item.

```mermaid

# OpenAPI Webhooks { #openapi-webhooks }

There are cases where you want to tell your API **users** that your app could call *their* app (sending a request) with some data, normally to **notify** of some type of **event**.

This means that instead of the normal process of your users sending requests to your API, it's **your API** (or your app) that could **send requests to their system** (to their API, their app).

This is normally called a **webhook**.

This module enables [Zstandard (zstd)][1] response compression in addition to Gzip, as long as
the `Accept-Encoding` header is not otherwise set. Web servers must be configured to return zstd
responses.

Note that zstd is not used for sending requests.

```java
OkHttpClient client = new OkHttpClient.Builder()
  .addInterceptor(CompressionInterceptor(Zstd, Gzip))
  .build();
```

```kotlin
implementation("com.squareup.okhttp3:okhttp-zstd:5.3.0")

{* ../../docs_src/dependencies/tutorial013_an_py310.py ln[19:21] *}

...would be run after the response finishes sending the slow data:

{* ../../docs_src/dependencies/tutorial013_an_py310.py ln[30:38] hl[31:33] *}

But as `generate_stream()` doesn't use the database session, it is not really necessary to keep the session open while sending the response.

So, you will have to make sure your data is of the correct type. E.g. it is compatible with JSON, if you are returning a `JSONResponse`.

And also that you are not sending any data that should have been filtered by a `response_model`.

///

### More info { #more-info }

/// note | Technical Details

The process that happens when your API app calls the *external API* is named a "callback". Because the software that the external developer wrote sends a request to your API and then your API *calls back*, sending a request to an *external API* (that was probably created by the same developer).