FastAPI Issue Tracker

A mini production-style REST API built with FastAPI for tracking issues. This project demonstrates core FastAPI concepts including routing, data validation with Pydantic, CRUD operations, and file-based persistence.

Features

• Full CRUD operations for issues
• Data validation with Pydantic schemas
• UUID generation for issue IDs
• Priority levels (low, medium, high)
• Status tracking (open, in_progress, closed)
• JSON file-based storage
• Auto-generated API documentation
• Custom middleware (timing, CORS)

Requirements

• Python 3.9+

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/bradtraversy/fastapi-issue-tracker.git
cd fastapi-issue-tracker

2. Create and activate a virtual environment:

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate  # On Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate

3. Install dependencies:

pip install "fastapi[standard]"

Running the API

Start the development server:

fastapi dev main.py

The API will be available at http://localhost:8000

API Documentation

Once running, visit:

• Swagger UI: http://localhost:8000/docs
• ReDoc: http://localhost:8000/redoc

API Endpoints

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	/api/v1/health	Health check
GET	/api/v1/issues	Get all issues
GET	/api/v1/issues/{id}	Get issue by ID
POST	/api/v1/issues	Create a new issue
PUT	/api/v1/issues/{id}	Update an issue
DELETE	/api/v1/issues/{id}	Delete an issue

Request/Response Examples

Create an Issue

curl -X POST http://localhost:8000/api/v1/issues \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "title": "Fix login bug",
    "description": "Users cannot log in with special characters in password",
    "priority": "high"
  }'

Response

{
  "id": "550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000",
  "title": "Fix login bug",
  "description": "Users cannot log in with special characters in password",
  "priority": "high",
  "status": "open"
}

Update an Issue

curl -X PUT http://localhost:8000/api/v1/issues/{id} \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "status": "in_progress"
  }'

Middleware

This project includes custom middleware to demonstrate the middleware pattern in FastAPI.

Timing Middleware

Adds an X-Process-Time header to all responses showing how long the request took to process:

# app/middleware/timing.py
async def timing_middleware(request: Request, call_next):
    start = time.perf_counter()
    response = await call_next(request)
    response.headers["X-Process-Time"] = f"{time.perf_counter() - start:.4f}s"
    return response

CORS Middleware

Enables cross-origin requests from frontend applications:

app.add_middleware(
    CORSMiddleware,
    allow_origins=["*"],
    allow_credentials=True,
    allow_methods=["*"],
    allow_headers=["*"],
)

Project Structure

fastapi-issue-tracker/
├── main.py              # Application entry point
├── app/
│   ├── schemas.py       # Pydantic models for validation
│   ├── storage.py       # JSON file storage functions
│   ├── middleware/
│   │   └── timing.py    # Response timing middleware
│   └── routes/
│       └── issues.py    # Issue CRUD endpoints
├── data/
│   └── issues.json      # Data storage (auto-created)
└── docs/
    ├── crash_course.md              # Written FastAPI tutorial
    └── crash_course_excalidraw.png  # Architecture diagram from video

Documentation

The docs folder contains supplementary learning materials:

• crash_course.md - A written FastAPI crash course covering all the concepts used in this project
• crash_course_excalidraw.png - The Excalidraw architecture diagram from the YouTube video

License

MIT