FastAPI Backend

🧭 Overview

This repository is a FastAPI-based REST backend that uses SQLAlchemy for ORM, Pydantic (via pydantic_settings) for configuration, and PostgreSQL for data persistence.
Alembic is included for database schema migrations.

The application is structured in modular routers (for posts, users, authentication, and votes), providing clear separation of concerns and easy scalability.

---

⚙️ Tech Stack

Component	Purpose
Python 3.13.2	Core programming language
FastAPI	Web framework for building APIs
Uvicorn	ASGI server for running the FastAPI app
SQLAlchemy	ORM layer for database interaction
PostgreSQL	Relational database
Alembic	Database migrations
Pydantic Settings	Environment variable management
Docker + docker-compose	Containerized setup for reproducible environments

---

---

⚙️ Environment Configuration

The app reads configuration values using Pydantic Settings (from app/config.py), typically loaded from a .env file.

Required environment variables

Variable	Description
DATABASE_HOSTNAME	Hostname for the database (e.g., postgres)
DATABASE_PORT	Database port (default: 5432)
DATABASE_USERNAME	Database username
DATABASE_PASSWORD	Database password
DATABASE_NAME	Database name
SECRET_KEY	Secret key for JWT token signing
ALGORITHM	Algorithm used for JWT (e.g., HS256)
ACCESS_TOKEN_EXPIRE_MINUTES	JWT token expiry in minutes

---

Example .env (for local development)

⚠️ Do NOT commit this file. It should be listed in .gitignore.

DATABASE_HOSTNAME=postgres
DATABASE_PORT=5432
DATABASE_USERNAME=postgres
DATABASE_PASSWORD=password123
DATABASE_NAME=fastapi

SECRET_KEY=replace_with_real_secret_key
ALGORITHM=HS256
ACCESS_TOKEN_EXPIRE_MINUTES=30

🚀 Running the Project

Create and activate a virtual environment:

python -m venv venv
venv\Scripts\activate

Install dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

Set environment variables (or use a .env file in the project root).

Run the FastAPI app

uvicorn app.main:app --reload

App will be available at 👉 http://127.0.0.1:8000