FastAPI Academy

After building Express Academy for Node, I wanted the same muscle-building workout for Python's web stack — and I wanted it to cover the thing most web courses skip past: databases, done properly, from raw SQL upward.

Same philosophy as its sibling: no passive tutorials. A grading server runs real requests against your FastAPI app and tells you exactly what failed.

The platform is a FastAPI grader that boots each submission in an isolated child process under uvicorn, paired with a React + TypeScript client that fetches exercise specs straight from the grader. A single npm run setup creates the Python virtualenv and installs everything; the whole course runs offline.

It deliberately shares no code with Express Academy — the grader specs, runner, and client were rebuilt Python-first — but the two run side by side on different ports, so you can work through both stacks in parallel.

The distinctive part of this course is a multi-day data arc: raw SQL on a real sqlite3 database — including an exercise where the grader actively attempts SQL injection against your endpoint and fails you if it succeeds — then SQLAlchemy (with the StaticPool gotcha that bites everyone testing against in-memory SQLite), transactions and atomicity, and MongoDB via an in-process fake driver.

Real database engines where it matters (SQLite is genuinely embedded, so injection and transaction semantics are real), simulated services where setup friction would kill momentum (no one should need a Mongo cluster to learn query syntax).

Every lesson carries Django comparison notes — I was working near Django at my day job at the time, so each FastAPI concept is anchored to its Django equivalent. Learning two frameworks' shapes at once turned out to be cheaper than learning them separately.

The course ends with a Docker day and ships a working Dockerfile and docker-compose (Postgres + Redis) so the exit ramp from 'course' to 'real project' is already paved.

18 days, 116 grader tests, all passing via a single npm run check quality gate. Together with Express Academy and Learn Agentic AI, it forms a self-graded curriculum that took me from React developer to working across the backend.