Given the simplicity of Flask, it seemed like a good match for building APIs. The next thing to find was a "Django REST Framework" for Flask.

!!! check "Inspired **FastAPI** to"
    Be a micro-framework. Making it easy to mix and match the tools and parts needed.

    Have a simple and easy to use routing system.


### <a href="https://requests.readthedocs.io" class="external-link" target="_blank">Requests</a>

```

Whenever you need the client to pass information in the request and you don't know how to, you can search (Google) how to do it in `httpx`, or even how to do it with `requests`, as HTTPX's design is based on Requests' design.

Then you just do the same in your tests.

E.g.:

* To pass a *path* or *query* parameter, add it to the URL itself.

# Advanced Middleware

In the main tutorial you read how to add [Custom Middleware](../tutorial/middleware.md){.internal-link target=_blank} to your application.

And then you also read how to handle [CORS with the `CORSMiddleware`](../tutorial/cors.md){.internal-link target=_blank}.

In this section we'll see how to use other middlewares.

## Adding ASGI middlewares

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!}
```

Up to here, everything would work as normally.

* Check if there's a <a href="https://github.com/tiangolo/fastapi/discussions/categories/translations" class="external-link" target="_blank">GitHub Discussion</a> to coordinate translations for your language. You can subscribe to it, and when there's a new pull request to review, an automatic comment will be added to the discussion.

# Middleware

You can add middleware to **FastAPI** applications.

A "middleware" is a function that works with every **request** before it is processed by any specific *path operation*. And also with every **response** before returning it.

* It takes each **request** that comes to your application.
* It can then do something to that **request** or run any needed code.

That's why in this example we have to declare it in the `response_model` parameter.

...but continue reading below to see how to overcome that.

## Return Type and Data Filtering

Let's continue from the previous example. We wanted to **annotate the function with one type** but return something that includes **more data**.

We want FastAPI to keep **filtering** the data using the response model.

And it shows their true commitment to FastAPI and its **community** (you), as they not only want to provide you a **good service** but also want to make sure you have a **good and healthy framework**, FastAPI. 🙇

You can create production applications with **FastAPI** right now (and you have probably been doing it for some time), you just have to make sure that you use a version that works correctly with the rest of your code.

## Pin your `fastapi` version

The first thing you should do is to "pin" the version of **FastAPI** you are using to the specific latest version that you know works correctly for your application.