Using GraphQL in Django With Strawberry & Prototype Purgatory

The Real Python Podcast

How do you integrate GraphQL into your Python web development? How about quickly building graph-based APIs inside Django’s battery-included framework? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects.

Christopher shares a recent tutorial for building GraphQL APIs in Django using the Python library Strawberry. The tutorial digs into creating a project, defining models, and creating GraphQL queries and mutations using Strawberry.

We discuss a blog post from Nat Bennet titled “Why do prototypes suck?” We dig into the common pitfalls of building prototypes and the misconceptions between developers and end users.

We also share several other articles and projects from the Python community, including a news roundup, using HTMX with FastAPI, creating an unbelievably stupid airline Wi-Fi package, extracting wisdom from conference videos, writing pixel images to the terminal, and a macOS app for Jupyter Notebooks.

This episode is sponsored by Mailtrap.

Course Spotlight: Building a URL Shortener With FastAPI and Python

In this video course, you’ll build an app to create and manage shortened URLs. Your Python URL shortener can receive a full target URL and return a shortened URL. You’ll also use the automatically created documentation of FastAPI to try out your API endpoints.

Topics:

• 00:00:00 – Introduction
• 00:02:27 – Python 3.13.0 Beta 4 Released
• 00:03:15 – Using HTMX With FastAPI
• 00:09:51 – Free, Unbelievably Stupid Wi-Fi on Long-Haul Flights
• 00:13:37 – Sponsor: Mailtrap
• 00:14:13 – “Extracting Wisdom” From Conference Videos
• 00:22:34 – Developing GraphQL APIs in Django With Strawberry
• 00:30:01 – Video Course Spotlight
• 00:31:33 – Why do prototypes suck?
• 00:42:53 – Satyrn: macOS App for Jupyter Notebooks
• 00:46:41 – rich-pixels: A Rich-compatible library for writing pixel images
• 00:48:23 – Thanks and goodbye

News:

• Python 3.13.0 Beta 4 Released

Topics:

• Using HTMX With FastAPI – This tutorial looks at how use HTMX with FastAPI by creating a simple todo web app and deploying it on Render.
• Free, Unbelievably Stupid Wi-Fi on Long-Haul Flights – Deep in a need to procrastinate on a flight between London and San Francisco, Robert discovered that changing his name on an airline’s frequent flyer account was free over the plane’s WiFi. What’s a developer to do? Work on their tickets? No, create an entire TCP/IP protocol using this loophole. The result is the PySkyWiFi package.
• “Extracting Wisdom” From Conference Videos – There are so many conferences and so many videos, you can’t possibly watch them all. This post shows you how to extract information to summarize a talk so you can quickly decide what you want to watch.
• Developing GraphQL APIs in Django With Strawberry – This tutorial details how to integrate GraphQL with Django using Strawberry.

Discussion:

• Why do prototypes suck?

Project:

• Satyrn: macOS App for Jupyter Notebooks
• darrenburns/rich-pixels: A Rich-compatible library for writing pixel images and ASCII art to the terminal.

Additional Links:

• htmx - high power tools for html
• Using FastAPI to Build Python Web APIs – Real Python
• Ollama
• fabric: An open-source framework for augmenting humans using AI
• A modern GraphQL library for Python - 🍓 Strawberry GraphQL
• Satyrn Discord

Level up your Python skills with our expert-led courses:

• Sneaky REST APIs With Django Ninja
• Building a URL Shortener With FastAPI and Python
• Python REST APIs With FastAPI

Support the podcast & join our community of Pythonistas