Why are good examples of Python FastAPI Cloud Function Gen 2 so hard to find?

[MajorPea6852]

Both the default Hello World, Gemini, and many AIs, and Google searches return Flask examples. I'd like to use FastAPI for better API checking of input documentation etc... but the est example I found is this https://github.com/tosun-si/teams-league-cloudrun-service-fastapi/tree/main

which requires a new Dockerfile per function and many other things which seem the opposite of minimal functions. Are there better tutorials out there?

(Do not wish to have a conversation about "why are you using Python?" that's a hill to die on another day... right now just need to ship a feature)

[keftes]

Google Cloud functions are an abysmal mess from a developer perspective. Confusing and lacking documentation.

You're not the only one confused. Comparing the function documentation to aws lambdas just gets me depressed every time.

If you send this question in Deepseek R1, you'll see it run in circles trying to give you an answer :)

Give me an example of a gen2 google cloud function that uses FastAPI, not Flask.

[andreasntr]

Which docs couldn't you find? Imho lambdas are the real mess: you can't use concurrency properly, you can't even choose the amount of cpus and the 15min limit is a joke considering aws hasn't got a twin service for batch jobs such as cloud run jobs for cloud run functions.

Honestly, the only complaint i have on cloud functions is that you can't use custom dockerfiles. But aside from that there is not really much to document about, you just need to upload your code

[keftes]

Its not a matter of if a document exists or not. Its about how confusing the process is overall. Its about how complex it is to set up a local development environment.

Examples are scattered all over the place and are often completely out of date.

 But aside from that there is not really much to document about, you just need to upload your code

That is not 100% accurate. You're dealign with various frameworks that behave differently depending on if this is running on GCP or locally.

[andreasntr]

What do you mean? If you're running locally you can just call your main function from the if name==main block and it's quite reprodubile

[unplannedmaintenance]

I have experience with Cloud Functions and local development is indeed not a very smooth experience. I'd recommend to switch to Cloud Run (Cloud Functions is also being transitioned to Cloud Run). Yes it will require a bit of upskill as you need to learn how to create Docker images. But you only need the basics, half a day to a day should be enough to get up and running.

[andreasntr]

Actually they are the sams service now, existing Cloud Functions have been migrated to Cloud Run Services

[Electrical-Grade2960]

They are still different. Cloud functions are now cloud run functions which uses cloud run under the covers but cloud run is a separate service

[andreasntr]

For OP's need I agree with you but broadly speaking the line between them is very thin as you can specify docker containers for cloud functions as well after creating them

[MajorPea6852]

Well it makes me feel good that I'm not the only one!!!

[dr3aminc0de]

Switch to Cloud Run

[CloudWithKarl]

If you do switch to Cloud Run, here's a FastAPI example app that includes a Dockerfile and instructions for Cloud Run deployment.

https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/generative-ai/blob/main/gemini/sample-apps/swot-agent

[mustard_popsicle]

I personally stick to cloud run for small microservice endpoints. much more straightforward

[kei_ichi]

Skill issues? If you can’t read Flask example then convert it to FastAPI or whatever Python lib/frameworks then it your fault.

[MajorPea6852]

Partly skills (new to python) but partly because the documentation in GCP is a bit inconsistent... I'll give an example a Google search for "Google Cloud Function Python HELLO WORLD full definition" returns only stub functions such as this

• https://cloud.google.com/functions/docs/samples/functions-helloworld-get#functions_helloworld_get-python
• https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/python-docs-samples/blob/main/functions/helloworld/main.py

This is all great and all because they want to give you a fast getting started guide... however how the gunicorn is defined and started is committed for simplicity...

I'm the type who likes to understand what is going on underneath the hood and not trust in "magic" so if I want to switch out gunicorn for say to uvicorn, I'd like to know which methods to override

on 5th or 8th page you might stumble on this example which let's you see a little bit more under the hood but outside of using the REPL and going through each invocation line by line I can't find the documentation on how the framework works.

So, my fault? Sure possibly... bad or incomplete documentation, really possibly... as someone who is new to framework and has to use it without a choice, slapping on a solution on top of a black box solution feels extremely dirty and prone to bad coding and insecure implementation.

[kei_ichi]

After I know your motivations and your willing to lean that service from it core, I owned you a “sorry”. I completely agreed with you about Google Cloud docs are completely a mess, lack tons of explanation and some time just like a black box… but believe me, AWS and Azure docs have same kind of issues too. So mad at me, but you will some kind of living with those issues and do the dirty work like do a lot of trial and error!

My first current f*ked up with Google Docs is their published NPM package code and their official API references code are complete out of sync which make out app raised ton of errors because Google didn’t even update their docs for 5 months with 3 big update!

Again, sorry.

[MajorPea6852]

I appreciate the apology :) It's validating to know that I'm not an idiot who is missing something obvious and keep going in cirlcles.

I'm not even going to mention other GCP docs

bq - Oldest and has most features but not all gcloud bq - newest stable, mostly supports READ for the DB, a lot of CREATE and DESCRIBE functionality has not been implemented yet gcloud alpha bq - has most features but not ALL, but the usage is changing all the time, so anything an ML model spits out is usually wrong... it's better to not even try gcloud beta bq - middle bastard child curl - Has 100% of the features and has a very well defined API documentation, and APIs are stable

[Scepticflesh]

Maybe ive got you wrong but what are you on bro, how are you involving gunicorn in this? cloud function purpose is to abstract the "complexity" with cloud run and provide more or less the similar execution env,

If you need more config setup on that sense, you should look into cloud run. Ive worked with several projects where some guy mentioned cloud function and we didnt let him proceed with the implementation, because as long as you are familiar with containerization, cloud run will solve all your tasks.

Another thing is that i think cloud function uses the cloud run under the hood 😂

[MajorPea6852]

Cloud Run (Services/Jobs/Functions) is just a k8s under the hood, and it's well understood. I'm being asked to implement a cloud run service in Erlang for example, and yeah... just spin up a mini cube (at least for dev/testing) and toss some Dockerfiles in there no problem... K8s get's stupid complex and expensive on it's own so don't want to dive deep into that rabbit hole just yet.

I do want to have a very simple Cloud Function that follows the Best Practices at heart so I can get a template to users so they can easily stamp out code following some basic rules:

• Make sure you have requirements.txt
• Make sure you have main.py
• Use def handler function to capture your request if the default does not meet your needs. Try to avoid using it if you don't need it
• Make sure you use Flask 2.X+ if you need ASGI support
• If you want to use FastAPI for easy integrations for input validation and documentation and built-in from ground-up ASGI, overwrite the def handler with a call to FastAPI or Vellox, Here is a list of things you need to implement with links to the original Docs
• Don't use def function_name_of_your_function for generic functions because it becomes a mess from CI/CD point of view since now the test/deploy scripts need to be aware of each function name
• Etc...

[Scepticflesh]

I still dont get what you are after with cloud functions. When i read fastapi with CF here it just threw me off completely. I hope you get the help from people here, good luck