Get One Post By Id

In this guide, we'll enhance our CRUD application by introducing the functionality to retrieve a single post using its ID. Previously, we implemented features to create a new post and to retrieve all posts. Now, we'll add a function that returns one specific post based on an ID provided as a path parameter in the URL.

Below is the code snippet for creating a post. When a new post is created, it is assigned a random ID before being appended to our list of posts.

@app.post("/posts")
def create_posts(post: Post):
    post_dict = post.dict()
    post_dict['id'] = randrange(0, 100000)
    my_posts.append(post_dict)
    return {"data": post_dict}

Retrieving an Individual Post

We'll implement a function called get_post for retrieving a single post. The endpoint will have the following structure: /posts/{id}, where {id} is a path parameter representing the post's ID requested by the user. FastAPI automatically extracts this parameter and makes it available to the function.

Initially, you might define the endpoint like this:

@app.get("/posts/{id}")
def get_post():

To access the provided ID, simply include it as a parameter in the function. For testing purposes, we can print the ID and return a hard-coded response:

@app.get("/posts/{id}")
def get_post(id):
    print(id)
    return {"post_detail": f"Here is post {id}"}

When a GET request is made to a URL such as /posts/1, FastAPI extracts the value 1 as a string and passes it to the function. Such a parameter embedded in the URL is known as a path parameter.

Using a Helper Function to Locate a Post

Our application stores posts in a list called my_posts. To find a post by its specific ID, we can define a helper function, find_post, which iterates through the list and returns the matching post:

def find_post(id):
    for p in my_posts:
        if p["id"] == id:
            return p

Consider the following sample data structure and helper function:

class Post(BaseModel):
    title: str
    content: str
    published: bool = True
    rating: Optional[int] = None

my_posts = [
    {"title": "title of post 1", "content": "content of post 1", "id": 1},
    {"title": "favorite foods", "content": "I like pizza", "id": 2}
]

Now, update the get_post function to utilize the find_post helper function and return the located post:

@app.get("/posts/{id}")
def get_post(id):
    post = find_post(id)
    return {"post_detail": post}

Handling Type Conversions

Keep in mind that path parameters are received as strings by default. For instance, when the URL /posts/2 is accessed, the id inside the function will be the string "2", not the integer 2. This mismatch could cause the equality check to fail when comparing with integers stored in my_posts.

To address this, convert the id to an integer before using it in find_post:

@app.get("/posts/{id}")
def get_post(id):
    post = find_post(int(id))
    print(post)
    return {"post_detail": post}

Leveraging FastAPI’s Validation

FastAPI simplifies parameter types by validating and converting them automatically. By declaring the id parameter as an int in the function signature, FastAPI converts the parameter before the function is executed. If the conversion fails, FastAPI provides a clear and informative error message.

Update the function signature accordingly:

@app.get("/posts/{id}")
def get_post(id: int):
    post = find_post(id)
    print(post)
    return {"post_detail": post}

Now, if a user sends a request with a non-numeric id, FastAPI responds with a validation error similar to the following:

{
  "detail": [
    {
      "loc": ["path", "id"],
      "msg": "value is not a valid integer",
      "type": "type_error.integer"
    }
  ]
}

In contrast, any numeric input is seamlessly converted into an integer before processing.

Final Function Example

Below is the complete version of our individual post retrieval implementation, including the helper function and the supporting code:

from fastapi import FastAPI
from fastapi.params import Body
from pydantic import BaseModel
from random import randrange
from typing import Optional

app = FastAPI()

class Post(BaseModel):
    title: str
    content: str
    published: bool = True
    rating: Optional[int] = None

my_posts = [
    {"title": "title of post 1", "content": "content of post 1", "id": 1},
    {"title": "favorite foods", "content": "I like pizza", "id": 2}
]

def find_post(id):
    for p in my_posts:
        if p["id"] == id:
            return p

@app.get("/")
def root():
    return {"message": "Hello World"}

@app.get("/posts")
def get_posts():
    return {"data": my_posts}

@app.post("/posts")
def create_posts(post: Post):
    post_dict = post.dict()
    post_dict['id'] = randrange(0, 100000)
    my_posts.append(post_dict)
    return {"data": post_dict}

@app.get("/posts/{id}")
def get_post(id: int):
    post = find_post(id)
    print(post)
    return {"post_detail": post}