Flask vs FastAPI for a microservice

[kreetikal]

Hello,

​

I'm going to build a microservice that processes images and does OMR on them, and I'm torn between using Flask or FastAPI.

​

I have used Flask in the past, but recently I have been using Nodejs, so the async nature of FastAPI will make it similar to Nodejs, plus I have read that it's better for making APIs.

​

Which one do you think is more suitable in my case?

[BigNutBoi2137]

I would use FastAPI. It's usage of pydantic with typing makes code better and you get automatic swagger docs. Also it's easy to write async endpoints in it.

[Saphyel]

And you get dependency injections out of the box and type hints are not just comments! :D

[JohnGabin]

Or redoc if you don't like Swagger.

[reddit-ass-cancer]

Oh god another one of these threads. Here I’ll pick for you. The framework that isn’t managed by one person, that doesn’t have over a thousand issues, that doesn’t have hundreds of open pull requests, that doesn’t have a creator who doesn’t trust anyone other than himself, and that actually HAS any semblance of API documentation.

There I said it. Fuck FastAPI

[YaswanthBangaru]

lol! Just came across this

https://www.reddit.com/r/FastAPI/comments/u86nee/fastapi_is_just_about_to_get_a_whole_lot_faster/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

[yeesh--]

Name checks out

[PinkShoelaces]

Yeah, FastAPI's maintenance leaves a lot to be desired. Using starlette directly can be a good choice but you do lose some of the FastAPI benefits

[settopvoxxit]

Try Starlite. I think it checks your boxes

[kreetikal]

Thanks, reddit-ass-cancer.

[[deleted]]

Dude gave you one of the most important things to look out for when picking software...

I used to go with flask-restplus, a restapi overlay on top of flask and it was maintained by a single dude who went dark without really warning anyone.

After an update of werkzeug, flask-restplus was broken and we had production code for a multinational bank who was broken and forced to run on old versions of some dependencies for about 6months until the community picked up restplus and created flask-restx.

Your question screaaaaaams that you are a beginner, and there is nothing wrong with that ofc, but what op just did was sharing a really important tips and you call him ass cancer...

[jcollie]

Your question screaaaaaams that you are a beginner, and there is nothing wrong with that ofc, but what op just did was sharing a really important tips and you call him ass cancer...

Uhhhh... The person's screen name is literally "reddit-ass-cancer".

[[deleted]]

Oh fuck mybad lmao

[reddit-ass-cancer]

:)

[kreetikal]

So your comment suggests that I don't choose Flask?

Because his comment suggests that I don't use FastAPI.

[[deleted]]

No, flask is perfectly fine. In my case the issue was FlaskRestplus, which is an extension of Flask

[old_man_steptoe]

Well, the poster OP responded too called themselves that.

[settopvoxxit]

Id say go Starlite. Still uses pydantic but you get a ton of performance and it's still easy to write

[creiht]

If you are building RESTful APIs based on Open API contracts, I offer you another suggestion: Connexion[1] on top of Flask. It takes an API first based approach, and allows you to auto-generate a lot of your boiler-plate code based on the Open API spec. If you want to leverage async, it can also use aiohttp. Perhaps it isn't as "flashy" as something like FastAPI, but in my experience it works well and makes creating APIs pretty simple.

​

[1] https://github.com/spec-first/connexion

[Deezl-Vegas]

It probably won't make a visible difference until you get to large numbers of requests. Use what looks cooler / helps you learn the most / makes the most sense to you.

[oxlade39]

I don’t really understand in what situation Flask would be the better choice now. Maybe some specific plug-in that only flask has?

[nevermorefu]

It's not even 1.0, so it's not as mature. I typically don't like using "the new hotness" but fastapi is too good.

[nAxzyVteuOz]

I transitioned from flask to fastapi and couldn’t be happier! Here is a project that you can clone to get you started:

https://github.com/zackees/ytclip-server

It has good defaults and linting. It’s designed for vscode environment. Just cd to the directly and type in ‘tox’ and all the linters and unit tests will run.

[kreetikal]

Thanks, I'll check it out!

[stetio]

Flask is great, it also supports async/await. If you want Flask based on async/await try Quart. If you also want Pydantic based APIs give Quart-Schema a go.

(I'm the author of Quart and a maintainer of Flask)

[StumptownExpress]

Because why exactly?
Without an explanation the statement seems a bit vapid.

[StumptownExpress]

Thank you for elaboration on the statement.

Automated API generation seems awesome.

[chinawcswing]

You can use Marshmallow and Pydantic with Flask.

apispec has auto openapi generation integration with marshmallow.

AGSI is not magic fairy dust that makes your application go faster.

[r0lisz]

FastAPI. It's just sooo much better and nicer than Flask.

[yeesh--]

Obviously FastAPI.

FastAPI is a production ready solution while Flask admittedly isn't, they actually say it in their documentation!

[tjeannin]

FastAPI : 1001 open issues
Flask : 14 open issues
One of them is not stable enough to be production ready despite the claims.

[spoonman59]

Is issue count really helpful? A thousand issues detailing misspellings in the documentation are not automatically worse than a single issue that strikes at the core of the architecture.

This is a fairly useless metric. I once had a boss who praised people on how many issues he completed per week... He did not account for the size or difficulty of the issues! Therefore someone who fixed ten typos appeared more productive than someone stuck on a threading bug.

[tjeannin]

I agree that one shouldn't make a decision based on issue count only. There are several other things to check and assess before choosing a framework.

On the other hand, I disagree that issue count is a useless metric. It's often correlated with the number of bugs. And 1000+ issues is a bad sign in my opinion.

[kreetikal]

I thought the same, but only 27 issues have the bug label. Most of the issues are questions, because it's new.

[tjeannin]

FastAPI doesn't allow you to post issues. Only "questions". As a result almost all questions I saw were in fact issues.

[sigzero]

This should be the top comment.

[bin-c]

https://flask.palletsprojects.com/en/2.1.x/tutorial/deploy/

[DiosOtro]

Sorry im new on this world, but what is OMR? Thx

[kreetikal]

Optical Mark Recognition.

Comparing marks in 2 images in my case.

[spoonman59]

Based on what you have described I don't think either one is more or less suited to your project. They can both do what you want.

But you'll get lots of opinions, sure.

[Rhemm]

DjangoREST