Typical Project Setup

Now that you have installed the required software, it's time to create a basic FastAPI project. In this section, we'll guide you through creating a new project, configuring your development tools, and setting up a basic API structure.

Because FastAPI apps can be more complex (and Health Universe is primarily a deployment, not a development environment), it is best to have a local development environment that is linked to your GitHub repository.

Step 1: Create a GitHub Repository

Go to GitHub and create a new public repository. At this time, the repo must be public in order for Health Universe to be able to deploy your project.

Step 2: Clone Your Repository or Use Our Template

1. Clone Your Repository

   • git clone https://github.com/<your_account>/<your_repo_name>.git

2. Use Our Template

   • Start with our FastAPI Template, designed to work seamlessly with the Health Universe Navigator interface. It’s highly recommended, as it’s easy to customize and already optimized for deployment.

   • Click the green “Use this template” button (top right).

   • Select “Create a new repository”.

   • Give your new repository a name (e.g., tool-bmi-calculator).

   • Click “Create repository from template”.

   • Once it's created, clone your new repo to your local machine OR modify the script within Github.

Step 3: Set Up a Virtual Environment

Setting up a virtual environment for your Health Universe projects is required as it creates the requirements.txt file needed to specify your application's dependencies. To create a virtual environment, follow these steps:

1. Open a terminal and navigate to your desired project directory.

2. Create a new virtual environment with the following command:

   python -m venv .env

3. Activate the virtual environment:

   • Windows:

     .env\Scripts\activate

   • macOS and Linux:

     source .env/bin/activate

Once activated, your terminal should display the environment name, e.g., (venv).

Step 4: Install FastAPI, Uvicorn, etc.

FastAPI is a high-performance framework for building APIs. Uvicorn is the ASGI server used to run FastAPI apps.. To install them, run the following command in your terminal:

pip install fastapi uvicorn pydantic python-multipart httpx

Wait for the installation to complete. FastAPI, Uvicorn, etc is now installed on your system and ready for use in your Health Universe projects.

Step 5: Edit App.py

Let's build a simple "Hello, World!" style API with input validation using Pydantic.

Open main.py in your editor and add:

from fastapi import FastAPI
from pydantic import BaseModel

# Input schema using Pydantic
class GreetRequest(BaseModel):
    name: str

# Create the app
app = FastAPI()

@app.get("/")
def read_root():
    return {"message": "Welcome to Health Universe!"}

@app.post("/greet")
def greet_user(request: GreetRequest):
    return {"message": f"Hello, {request.name}!"}

Save the main.py file.

Step 6: Run the FastAPI App

To run your "Hello, World!" FastAPI app, open the terminal, navigate to your project directory, and run the following command:

uvicorn main:app --reload

Then open your browser and go to:

• http://127.0.0.1:8000 to view the root endpoint.
• http://127.0.0.1:8000/docs to test your API using Swagger UI.
• To stop the app, press Ctrl+C in the terminal.

Step 7: Run pip freeze

From your terminal, run:

pip freeze > requirements.txt

This command will save all your project's dependencies into a requirements.txt file. This file is read by the Health Universe cloud to know what libraries your app will require.

Step 8: Commit Your Code and Push to GitHub

Step 9: Deploy Your App on Health Universe