**FastAPI** provides it as a convenience for you, the developer. But it comes directly from Starlette.

### Before and after the `response`

You can add code to be run with the `request`,  before any *path operation* receives it.

And also after the `response` is generated, before returning it.

Without a data validation system, you would have to do all the checks by hand, in code.

These features are what Marshmallow was built to provide. It is a great library, and I have used it a lot before.

But it was created before there existed Python type hints. So, to define every <abbr title="the definition of how data should be formed">schema</abbr> you need to use specific utils and classes provided by Marshmallow.

{!../../../docs_src/app_testing/test_main.py!}
```

...and have the code for the tests just like before.

## Testing: extended example

Now let's extend this example and add more details to see how to test different parts.

### Extended **FastAPI** app file

Let's continue with the same file structure as before:

```
.
├── app
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── main.py
│   └── test_main.py
```

Let's create a dependency `get_current_user`.

Remember that dependencies can have sub-dependencies?

`get_current_user` will have a dependency with the same `oauth2_scheme` we created before.

The same as we were doing before in the *path operation* directly, our new dependency `get_current_user` will receive a `token` as a `str` from the sub-dependency `oauth2_scheme`:

=== "Python 3.10+"

    ```Python hl_lines="25"

    * So, the **certificate and encryption** handling is done **before HTTP**.
* **TCP doesn't know about "domains"**. Only about IP addresses.
    * The information about the **specific domain** requested goes in the **HTTP data**.
* The **HTTPS certificates** "certify" a **certain domain**, but the protocol and encryption happen at the TCP level, **before knowing** which domain is being dealt with.

And then you can also have a path `/users/{user_id}` to get data about a specific user by some user ID.

Because *path operations* are evaluated in order, you need to make sure that the path for `/users/me` is declared before the one for `/users/{user_id}`:

```Python hl_lines="6  11"
{!../../../docs_src/path_params/tutorial003.py!}
```

## 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**.

So, you will want to have a **single process** to perform those **previous steps**, before starting the application.

In some cases, you may want to override the logic used by the `Request` and `APIRoute` classes.

In particular, this may be a good alternative to logic in a middleware.

For example, if you want to read or manipulate the request body before it is processed by your application.

!!! danger
    This is an "advanced" feature.

    If you are just starting with **FastAPI** you might want to skip this section.

## Use cases

Some use cases include:

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

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