If you use a `requirements.txt` file you could specify the version with:

```txt
fastapi==0.45.0
```

that would mean that you would use exactly the version `0.45.0`.

Or you could also pin it with:

```txt
fastapi>=0.45.0,<0.46.0
```

that would mean that you would use the versions `0.45.0` or above, but less than `0.46.0`, for example, a version `0.45.2` would still be accepted.

* **Uvicorn**:
    * Will have the best performance, as it doesn't have much extra code apart from the server itself.

# Using Dataclasses

FastAPI is built on top of **Pydantic**, and I have been showing you how to use Pydantic models to declare requests and responses.

But FastAPI also supports using <a href="https://docs.python.org/3/library/dataclasses.html" class="external-link" target="_blank">`dataclasses`</a> the same way:

```Python hl_lines="1  7-12  19-20"
{!../../../docs_src/dataclasses/tutorial001.py!}
```

What inspired **FastAPI**, how it compares to alternatives and what it learned from them.

## Intro

**FastAPI** wouldn't exist if not for the previous work of others.

There have been many tools created before that have helped inspire its creation.

I have been avoiding the creation of a new framework for several years. First I tried to solve all the features covered by **FastAPI** using many different frameworks, plug-ins, and tools.

browser("Browser")
proxy["Proxy on http://0.0.0.0:9999/api/v1/app"]
server["Server on http://127.0.0.1:8000/app"]

browser --> proxy
proxy --> server
```

!!! tip
    The IP `0.0.0.0` is commonly used to mean that the program listens on all the IPs available in that machine/server.

The docs UI would also need the OpenAPI schema to declare that this API `server` is located at `/api/v1` (behind the proxy). For example:

This schema definition includes your API paths, the possible parameters they take, etc.

#### Data "schema"

The term "schema" might also refer to the shape of some data, like a JSON content.

In that case, it would mean the JSON attributes, and data types they have, etc.

#### OpenAPI and JSON Schema

* Review Pull Requests, [especially important for translations](contributing.md#translations){.internal-link target=_blank}.

A round of applause to them. 👏 🙇

## FastAPI Experts

These are the users that have been [helping others the most with questions in GitHub](help-fastapi.md#help-others-with-questions-in-github){.internal-link target=_blank}. 🙇

They have proven to be **FastAPI Experts** by helping many others. ✨

!!! tip

# Using the Request Directly

Up to now, you have been declaring the parts of the request that you need with their types.

Taking data from:

* The path as parameters.
* Headers.
* Cookies.
* etc.

And by doing so, **FastAPI** is validating that data, converting it and generating documentation for your API automatically.

But there are situations where you might need to access the `Request` object directly.

So, to avoid ID collisions, when creating the JWT token for the user, you could prefix the value of the `sub` key, e.g. with `username:`. So, in this example, the value of `sub` could have been: `username:johndoe`.

The important thing to keep in mind is that the `sub` key should have a unique identifier across the entire application, and it should be a string.

## Check it

You can use simple tools like `htop` to see the CPU and RAM used in your server or the amount used by each process. Or you can use more complex monitoring tools, which may be distributed across servers, etc.

## Recap

You have been reading here some of the main concepts that you would probably need to keep in mind when deciding how to deploy your application:

* Security - HTTPS
* Running on startup
* Restarts