FastAPI + Docker development setup ⚡️

Here is a very simple example of how we can set up a dev environment for a FastAPI app with Docker.

Below is a simplified api endpoint with FastAPI:

# main.py
from fastapi import FastAPI, HTTPException, Response

app = FastAPI()

@app.get("/")
def read_root() -> Response:
    return Response("Server is running...")

🐳 Dockerfile:

FROM python:3.11

# set working directory in container
WORKDIR /app

# install dependencies
COPY ./requirements.txt /app
RUN pip install --no-cache-dir --upgrade -r requirements.txt

# copy files to the folder
COPY . /app

# start server
CMD ["uvicorn", "main:app", "--host", "0.0.0.0", "--port", "80"]

We can build and run the Docker image with docker build -t my-api . and docker run -d -p 8080:80 my-api

However, Docker compose will make things easier as we don't have to keep rebuilding and rerunning the server when changes are made to the code.

🛳️ docker-compose.yml:

services:
  app:
    build: . # folder we use to build container
    container_name: fastapi-server
    command: uvicorn main:app --host 0.0.0.0 --port 80 --reload # replaces CMD in Dockerfile
    ports:
      - 8080:80 # local port:container port
    volumes:
      - .:/app # sync current folder to app folder in container, overrides "COPY . /app" in Dockerfile

Build and run the container with docker-compose up --build