Full-Stack FastAPI Template
As part of the FastAPI team, I've been contributing to the template since late 2023. I built the current React frontend from scratch, replacing the old Vue one, led its migrations to Chakra UI v3 and then shadcn/ui with Tailwind, set up the end-to-end tests with Playwright, and moved package management to Bun and uv workspaces.
Here’s a walkthrough of the parts I’ve worked on! But first, this is what the template looks like today, in light and dark mode:
Building the new frontend
The template used to ship a Vue frontend. I set up the new one from scratch with Vite, TypeScript and React, along with its Docker config, and then built it out piece by piece.
From there came private/public routing, form validation, a Not Found page, dark mode, password reset, the ability to delete your own account, and the migration to TanStack Query and TanStack Router. Once it was ready, I moved new-frontend into frontend and the old one was retired.
Migrations
I’ve led several migrations of the frontend, including:
- Chakra UI v3: A full migration of the component layer.
- shadcn/ui + Tailwind: Migrating the frontend to shadcn, which is what the template uses today.
- Client generation: Moving from
openapi-typescript-codegento@hey-api/openapi-ts, and later making the client auto-generate in CI. - Linting and formatting: First Prettier and ESLint, then replacing them with Biome, plus pre-commit hooks.
- npm → Bun: Switching the package manager, after setting up the Node monorepo and uv workspaces on the Python side.
- MJML → React Email: Migrated the email templates from MJML to React Email.
- Mailcatcher → Mailpit: Migrated the local email testing setup from Mailcatcher to Mailpit.
The items screen, one of the views rebuilt with shadcn/ui:
End-to-end testing
I added the initial Playwright setup and then wrote the suites for several features, wired the config, and documented all of it.
Backend and API
I’ve also refactored the Users API and dependencies, added delete_user and delete_user_me, moved models to cascade delete relationships, added a created_at field to users and items, restricted the admin route to superusers, refactored the email templates and added an endpoint to preview password recovery emails, and fixed a handful of bugs along the way.
Keeping things running
The less exciting but still important work includes: Dependabot configuration and grouping, dependency upgrades (React, TanStack, Biome, Playwright, uv), GitHub issue and discussion templates, the security policy, the labeler and issue-manager workflows, the Mailcatcher setup for local email testing, CI tweaks for client generation and coverage, and several docs updates.