In this case, you could want to document how that external API *should* look like. What *path operation* it should have, what body it should expect, what response it should return, etc.

## An app with callbacks

Let's see all this with an example.

Imagine you develop an app that allows creating invoices.

These invoices will have an `id`, `title` (optional), `customer`, and `total`.

async def create_item(item: Item):
    """
    Create an item with all the information:

    - **name**: each item must have a name
    - **description**: a long description
    - **price**: required
    - **tax**: if the item doesn't have tax, you can omit this
    - **tags**: a set of unique tag strings for this item
    """

)
async def create_item(item: Item):
    """
    Create an item with all the information:

    - **name**: each item must have a name
    - **description**: a long description
    - **price**: required
    - **tax**: if the item doesn't have tax, you can omit this
    - **tags**: a set of unique tag strings for this item
    """

                    },
                    "summary": "Create an item",
                    "description": "Create an item with all the information:\n\n- **name**: each item must have a name\n- **description**: a long description\n- **price**: required\n- **tax**: if the item doesn't have tax, you can omit this\n- **tags**: a set of unique tag strings for this item",
                    "operationId": "create_item_items__post",
                    "requestBody": {

    * And validators allow complex data schemas to be clearly and easily defined, checked and documented as JSON Schema.
    * You can have deeply **nested JSON** objects and have them all validated and annotated.
* **Extensible**:
    * Pydantic allows custom data types to be defined or you can extend validation with methods on a model decorated with the validator decorator.

# Deploy FastAPI on Cloud Providers

You can use virtually **any cloud provider** to deploy your FastAPI application.

In most of the cases, the main cloud providers have guides to deploy FastAPI with them.

## Cloud Providers - Sponsors

Some cloud providers ✨ [**sponsor FastAPI**](../help-fastapi.md#sponsor-the-author){.internal-link target=_blank} ✨, this ensures the continued and healthy **development** of FastAPI and its **ecosystem**.

### In production

In your production system, you probably have a frontend created with a modern framework like React, Vue.js or Angular.

And to communicate using WebSockets with your backend you would probably use your frontend's utilities.

Or you might have a native mobile application that communicates with your WebSocket backend directly, in native code.

Or you might have any other way to communicate with the WebSocket endpoint.

---

* Data validation
* Automatic documentation

## Defaults

As query parameters are not a fixed part of a path, they can be optional and can have default values.

In the example above they have default values of `skip=0` and `limit=10`.

So, going to the URL:

```
http://127.0.0.1:8000/items/
```

would be the same as going to:

```

For that, **FastAPI** provides a `jsonable_encoder()` function.

## Using the `jsonable_encoder`

Let's imagine that you have a database `fake_db` that only receives JSON compatible data.

For example, it doesn't receive `datetime` objects, as those are not compatible with JSON.

# Async Tests

You have already seen how to test your **FastAPI** applications using the provided `TestClient`. Up to now, you have only seen how to write synchronous tests, without using `async` functions.