///

## Previous Steps Before Starting { #previous-steps-before-starting }

There are many cases where you want to perform some steps **before starting** your application.

For example, you might want to run **database migrations**.

But in most cases, you will want to perform these steps only **once**.

     * @param dst the destination buffer
     * @param dstIndex the starting position in the buffer
     * @return number of bytes written
     */
    protected abstract int writeBytesWireFormat(byte[] dst, int dstIndex);

    /**
     * Reads the message body from the wire format.
     *
     * @param buffer the buffer to read from
     * @param bufferIndex the starting position in the buffer
     * @return number of bytes read

If you run **multiple processes per container** you will have to make sure that the number of processes started doesn't **consume more memory** than what is available.

## Previous Steps Before Starting and Containers { #previous-steps-before-starting-and-containers }

If you are using containers (e.g. Docker, Kubernetes), then there are two main approaches you can use.

### Multiple Containers { #multiple-containers }

These examples run the server program (e.g Uvicorn), starting **a single process**, listening on all the IPs (`0.0.0.0`) on a predefined port (e.g. `80`).

This is the basic idea. But you will probably want to take care of some additional things, like:

* Security - HTTPS
* Running on startup
* Restarts
* Replication (the number of processes running)
* Memory
* Previous steps before starting

Let's check back those deployment concepts from before:

* Security - HTTPS
* Running on startup
* Restarts
* **Replication (the number of processes running)**
* Memory
* Previous steps before starting

Up to this point, with all the tutorials in the docs, you have probably been running a **server program**, for example, using the `fastapi` command, that runs Uvicorn, running a **single process**.

   * the already-requested ones are in service, otherwise we might create more threads than we need.
   *
   * We use [executeCallCount] and [runCallCount] to defend against starting more threads than we
   * need. Both fields are guarded by `this`.
   */
  private var executeCallCount = 0
  private var runCallCount = 0

If you know perfectly how imports work, continue to the next section below.

///

A single dot `.`, like in:

```Python
from .dependencies import get_token_header
```

would mean:

* Starting in the same package that this module (the file `app/routers/items.py`) lives in (the directory `app/routers/`)...
* find the module `dependencies` (an imaginary file at `app/routers/dependencies.py`)...

Templates, while typically come with a specific setup, are designed to be flexible and customizable. This allows you to modify and adapt them to your project's requirements, making them an excellent starting point. 🏁

You can use this template to get started, as it includes a lot of the initial set up, security, database and some API endpoints already done for you.

<div class="termy">

```console
$ <font color="#4E9A06">fastapi</font> dev <u style="text-decoration-style:solid">main.py</u>

  <span style="background-color:#009485"><font color="#D3D7CF"> FastAPI </font></span>  Starting development server 🚀

             Searching for package file structure from directories
             with <font color="#3465A4">__init__.py</font> files

     */
    @Nonnull
    Optional<List<String>> goals();

    /**
     * Returns the target POM model version for upgrades.
     * Supported values include "4.0.0" and "4.1.0".
     *
     * @return an {@link Optional} containing the model version, or empty if not specified
     */
    @Nonnull
    Optional<String> modelVersion();

    /**
     * Returns the directory to use as starting point for POM discovery.