Here's a little bit of that history.

## Alternatives { #alternatives }

I have been creating APIs with complex requirements for several years (Machine Learning, distributed systems, asynchronous jobs, NoSQL databases, etc), leading several teams of developers.

As part of that, I needed to investigate, test and use many alternatives.

The history of **FastAPI** is in great part the history of its predecessors.

  public void testSingletonMapLast() {
    assertEquals(a.getKey(), navigableMap.lastKey());
  }

  @CollectionSize.Require(SEVERAL)
  public void testFirst() {
    assertEquals(a.getKey(), navigableMap.firstKey());
  }

  @CollectionSize.Require(SEVERAL)
  public void testLast() {
    assertEquals(c.getKey(), navigableMap.lastKey());
  }

  @CollectionSize.Require(absent = ZERO)

  public void testSingletonMapLast() {
    assertEquals(a.getKey(), navigableMap.lastKey());
  }

  @CollectionSize.Require(SEVERAL)
  public void testFirst() {
    assertEquals(a.getKey(), navigableMap.firstKey());
  }

  @CollectionSize.Require(SEVERAL)
  public void testLast() {
    assertEquals(c.getKey(), navigableMap.lastKey());
  }

  @CollectionSize.Require(absent = ZERO)

///

### Flask REST frameworks { #flask-rest-frameworks }

There are several Flask REST frameworks, but after investing the time and work into investigating them, I found that many are discontinued or abandoned, with several standing issues that made them unfit.

### [Marshmallow](https://marshmallow.readthedocs.io/en/stable/) { #marshmallow }

## Integrated middlewares { #integrated-middlewares }

**FastAPI** includes several middlewares for common use cases, we'll see next how to use them.

/// note | Technical Details

For the next examples, you could also use `from starlette.middleware.something import SomethingMiddleware`.

# Middleware

There are several middlewares available provided by Starlette directly.

Read more about them in the [FastAPI docs for Middleware](https://fastapi.tiangolo.com/advanced/middleware/).

::: fastapi.middleware.cors.CORSMiddleware

It can be imported from `fastapi`:

```python
from fastapi.middleware.cors import CORSMiddleware
```

::: fastapi.middleware.gzip.GZipMiddleware

It can be imported from `fastapi`:

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

## Benchmarks and speed { #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).

# Metadata and Docs URLs { #metadata-and-docs-urls }

You can customize several metadata configurations in your **FastAPI** application.

## Metadata for API { #metadata-for-api }

You can set the following fields that are used in the OpenAPI specification and the automatic API docs UIs:

| Parameter | Type | Description |
|------------|------|-------------|
| `title` | `str` | The title of the API. |

# Path Operation Configuration { #path-operation-configuration }

There are several parameters that you can pass to your *path operation decorator* to configure it.

/// warning

Notice that these parameters are passed directly to the *path operation decorator*, not to your *path operation function*.

///

## Response Status Code { #response-status-code }

You can define the (HTTP) `status_code` to be used in the response of your *path operation*.

But there are several cases in which you might benefit from using `UploadFile`.

## File Parameters with `UploadFile` { #file-parameters-with-uploadfile }

Define a file parameter with a type of `UploadFile`:

{* ../../docs_src/request_files/tutorial001_an_py310.py hl[14] *}

Using `UploadFile` has several advantages over `bytes`: