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Python / FastAPI Interview Questions

What are the key production deployment considerations for a FastAPI application?

Production FastAPI deployments involve several layers beyond just running the app — a reverse proxy, TLS termination, process management, health checks, and observability.

Production checklist
ConcernSolution
Multiple CPU coresGunicorn + UvicornWorker, or multiple containers
HTTPS / TLSNginx or Traefik as reverse proxy with Let's Encrypt
Environment secretsEnvironment variables / secrets manager (Vault, AWS Secrets Manager)
Health checks/health endpoint + Docker/Kubernetes probes
LoggingStructured JSON logs (structlog), forward to Datadog/Loki
MetricsPrometheus + Grafana, or OpenTelemetry
Zero-downtime deploysRolling updates in Kubernetes, or blue/green
Database migrationsRun alembic upgrade head as an init container
Rate limitingNginx rate limiting or slowapi middleware
# Health check endpoint
from fastapi import FastAPI
from sqlalchemy import text

app = FastAPI()

@app.get("/health")
async def health(db: DBDep):
    try:
        await db.execute(text("SELECT 1"))
        db_ok = True
    except Exception:
        db_ok = False
    return {
        "status": "healthy" if db_ok else "degraded",
        "database": "ok" if db_ok else "error",
    }

# Nginx config snippet for reverse proxy
# server {
#     listen 443 ssl;
#     server_name api.example.com;
#     location / {
#         proxy_pass http://localhost:8000;
#         proxy_set_header Host $host;
#         proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
#     }
# }
# slowapi — rate limiting middleware
# pip install slowapi
from slowapi import Limiter, _rate_limit_exceeded_handler
from slowapi.util import get_remote_address
from slowapi.errors import RateLimitExceeded

limiter = Limiter(key_func=get_remote_address)
app.state.limiter = limiter
app.add_exception_handler(RateLimitExceeded, _rate_limit_exceeded_handler)

@app.get("/limited")
@limiter.limit("10/minute")
async def limited_route(request: Request):
    return {"message": "ok"}
What is the recommended way to handle TLS/HTTPS for a FastAPI app in production?
When should database migrations (alembic upgrade head) run in a containerised deployment?

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