FastAPI uses a standard for building Python web frameworks and servers called <abbr title="Asynchronous Server Gateway Interface">ASGI</abbr>. FastAPI is an ASGI web framework.

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.

# Behind a Proxy

In some situations, you might need to use a **proxy** server like Traefik or Nginx with a configuration that adds an extra path prefix that is not seen by your application.

In these cases you can use `root_path` to configure your application.

The `root_path` is a mechanism provided by the ASGI specification (that FastAPI is built on, through Starlette).

The `root_path` is used to handle these specific cases.

I'll tell you a bit more about these **concepts** here, and that would hopefully give you the **intuition** you would need to decide how to deploy your API in very different environments, possibly even in **future** ones that don't exist yet.

By considering these concepts, you will be able to **evaluate and design** the best way to deploy **your own APIs**.

    * [Path Parameters and Numeric Validations - Order the parameters as you need, tricks](https://fastapi.tiangolo.com/tutorial/path-params-numeric-validations/#order-the-parameters-as-you-need-tricks)
        * [Better with `Annotated`](https://fastapi.tiangolo.com/tutorial/path-params-numeric-validations/#better-with-annotated)

### Short

It has sensible **defaults** for everything, with optional configurations everywhere. All the parameters can be fine-tuned to do what you need and to define the API you need.

But by default, it all **"just works"**.

### Validation

* Validation for most (or all?) Python **data types**, including:
    * JSON objects (`dict`).

# WebSockets

You can use <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebSockets_API" class="external-link" target="_blank">WebSockets</a> with **FastAPI**.

## Install `WebSockets`

First you need to install `WebSockets`:

<div class="termy">

```console
$ pip install websockets

---> 100%
```

</div>

## WebSockets client

### In production

## Write the callback documentation code

This code won't be executed in your app, we only need it to *document* how that *external API* should look like.

But, you already know how to easily create automatic documentation for an API with **FastAPI**.

In most cases you would (and should) have a "termination proxy" handling HTTPS for you on top, this will depend on how you deploy your application, your provider might do this for you, or you might need to set it up yourself.

!!! tip

When using Poetry, it would make sense to use **Docker multi-stage builds** because you don't really need to have Poetry and its dependencies installed in the final container image, you **only need** to have the generated `requirements.txt` file to install your project dependencies.

# Settings and Environment Variables

In many cases your application could need some external settings or configurations, for example secret keys, database credentials, credentials for email services, etc.

Most of these settings are variable (can change), like database URLs. And many could be sensitive, like secrets.

For this reason it's common to provide them in environment variables that are read by the application.

## Environment Variables

!!! tip