As **FastAPI** is based on Starlette and implements the <abbr title="Asynchronous Server Gateway Interface">ASGI</abbr> specification, you can use any ASGI middleware.

A middleware doesn't have to be made for FastAPI or Starlette to work, as long as it follows the ASGI spec.

In general, ASGI middlewares are classes that expect to receive an ASGI app as the first argument.

You can check it at <a href="http://127.0.0.1:8000/docs" class="external-link" target="_blank">http://127.0.0.1:8000/docs</a>:

<img src="/img/tutorial/behind-a-proxy/image01.png">

But if we access the docs UI at the "official" URL using the proxy with port `9999`, at `/api/v1/docs`, it works correctly! 🎉

    As these keys may not necessarily be part of the OpenAPI specification, some OpenAPI tools, for example [the OpenAPI validator](https://validator.swagger.io/), may not work with your generated schema.

## Recap

You can use Pydantic's `Field` to declare extra validations and metadata for model attributes.

    ```

With this, we get tooling support, from editors and mypy as this code is correct in terms of types, but we also get the data filtering from FastAPI.

How does this work? Let's check that out. 🤓

### Type Annotations and Tooling

First let's see how editors, mypy and other tools would see this.

    * With <a href="https://github.com/ciscorn/starlette-graphene3" class="external-link" target="_blank">starlette-graphene3</a>

## GraphQL with Strawberry

If you need or want to work with **GraphQL**, <a href="https://strawberry.rocks/" class="external-link" target="_blank">**Strawberry**</a> is the **recommended** library as it has the design closest to **FastAPI's** design, it's all based on **type annotations**.

It is a plug-in for many frameworks (and there's a plug-in for Starlette too).

The way it works is that you write the definition of the schema using YAML format inside the docstring of each function handling a route.

And it generates OpenAPI schemas.

That's how it works in Flask, Starlette, Responder, etc.

<font color="#4E9A06">INFO</font>:     Application startup complete.
<font color="#4E9A06">INFO</font>:     Uvicorn running on <b>http://0.0.0.0:8000</b> (Press CTRL+C to quit)
```

</div>

That would work for most of the cases. 😎

You could use that command for example to start your **FastAPI** app in a container, in a server, etc.

## ASGI Servers

Let's go a little deeper into the details.

Nevertheless, you can still do it in **FastAPI**, using one of the internal tools from Starlette.

And the docs would still work, although not adding any documentation telling that the parameter should contain a path.

### Path convertor

Using an option directly from Starlette you can declare a *path parameter* containing a *path* using a URL like:

<img src="/img/tutorial/sub-applications/image02.png">

If you try interacting with any of the two user interfaces, they will work correctly, because the browser will be able to talk to each specific app or sub-app.

### Technical Details: `root_path`

```Python hl_lines="3" title="app/routers/items.py"
{!../../../docs_src/bigger_applications/app/routers/items.py!}
```

#### How relative imports work

!!! tip
    If you know perfectly how imports work, continue to the next section below.

A single dot `.`, like in:

```Python
from .dependencies import get_token_header
```

would mean: