<img src="/img/tutorial/security/image01.png">

!!! check "Authorize button!"
    You already have a shiny new "Authorize" button.

    And your *path operation* has a little lock in the top-right corner that you can click.

And if you click it, you have a little authorization form to type a `username` and `password` (and other optional fields):

<img src="/img/tutorial/security/image02.png">

!!! note

}

.screenshot:before {
  content: '';
  position: absolute;
  top: 15px;
  left: 15px;
  display: inline-block;
  width: 15px;
  height: 15px;
  border-radius: 50%;
  /* A little hack to display the window buttons in one pseudo element. */
  background: #d9515d;
  -webkit-box-shadow: 25px 0 0 #f4c025, 50px 0 0 #3ec930;
          box-shadow: 25px 0 0 #f4c025, 50px 0 0 #3ec930;

If you are paying for 3 servers but you are using only a little bit of their RAM and CPU, you are probably **wasting money** 💸, and probably **wasting server electric power** 🌎, etc.

This is just a **quick tutorial / refresher** about Python type hints. It covers only the minimum necessary to use them with **FastAPI**... which is actually very little.

**FastAPI** is all based on these type hints, they give it many advantages and benefits.

But even if you never use **FastAPI**, you would benefit from learning a bit about them.

!!! note

```

</div>

It is **HIGHLY encouraged** that you write or copy the code, edit it and run it locally.

Using it in your editor is what really shows you the benefits of FastAPI, seeing how little code you have to write, all the type checks, autocompletion, etc.

---

## Install FastAPI

The first step is to install FastAPI.

!!! info
    To declare headers, you need to use `Header`, because otherwise the parameters would be interpreted as query parameters.

## Automatic conversion

`Header` has a little extra functionality on top of what `Path`, `Query` and `Cookie` provide.

Most of the standard headers are separated by a "hyphen" character, also known as the "minus symbol" (`-`).

* declare the `q` query parameter without a `Query` nor any default value
* declare the path parameter `item_id` using `Path`
* have them in a different order
* not use `Annotated`

...Python has a little special syntax for that.

Pass `*`, as the first parameter of the function.

**Typer** is FastAPI's little sibling. And it's intended to be the **FastAPI of CLIs**. ⌨️ 🚀

## Requirements

Python 3.8+

FastAPI stands on the shoulders of giants:

It doesn't use a data validation, serialization and documentation third-party library like Pydantic, it has its own. So, these data type definitions would not be reusable as easily.

It requires a little bit more verbose configurations. And as it is based on WSGI (instead of ASGI), it is not designed to take advantage of the high performance provided by tools like Uvicorn, Starlette and Sanic.

        That's a lot of work they are doing, but if more FastAPI users came to help others like them just a little bit more, it would be much less effort for them (and you and me 😅).

        By asking questions in a structured way (following this) it will be much easier to help you.