This chapter introduces FastAPI, a modern Python web framework designed for building APIs. We will look at its core features and explain why it is a strong choice for deploying machine learning models.

You will learn the fundamentals of web APIs, including REST principles and common HTTP methods like GET and POST. We will also touch upon the basics of asynchronous programming in Python using async and await, concepts that FastAPI utilizes for performance.

The chapter guides you through setting up your development environment, including installing necessary tools like FastAPI and Uvicorn. You will then build and run your first simple FastAPI application to understand the basic request and response flow. Finally, practical exercises will help you create basic API endpoints.