fastapi/references/path-operations.md

Path Operations and Routing

Including Routers

When declaring routers, prefer to add router-level parameters like prefix, tags, and shared dependencies to the router itself instead of in include_router().

Do this:

from fastapi import APIRouter, FastAPI

app = FastAPI()

router = APIRouter(prefix="/items", tags=["items"])


@router.get("/")
async def list_items():
    return []


app.include_router(router)

Instead of:

# DO NOT DO THIS
from fastapi import APIRouter, FastAPI

app = FastAPI()

router = APIRouter()


@router.get("/")
async def list_items():
    return []


app.include_router(router, prefix="/items", tags=["items"])

There could be exceptions, but try to follow this convention.

Apply shared dependencies at the router level via dependencies=[Depends(...)].

Use one HTTP operation per function

Don't mix HTTP operations in a single function. Having one function per HTTP operation helps separate concerns and organize the code.

Do this:

from fastapi import FastAPI
from pydantic import BaseModel

app = FastAPI()


class Item(BaseModel):
    name: str


@app.get("/items/")
async def list_items():
    return []


@app.post("/items/")
async def create_item(item: Item):
    return item

Instead of:

# DO NOT DO THIS
from fastapi import FastAPI, Request
from pydantic import BaseModel

app = FastAPI()


class Item(BaseModel):
    name: str


@app.api_route("/items/", methods=["GET", "POST"])
async def handle_items(request: Request):
    if request.method == "GET":
        return []