From repetitive FastAPI setups to a modular CLI generator

Source: Dev.to

Problem Statement

I’ve been building FastAPI projects in production for a while, and I kept running into the same problem every time I started a new service:

• setting up database connections (PostgreSQL / MySQL / SQLite)
• implementing JWT authentication
• wiring up Redis for caching
• configuring Celery for background tasks
• writing Docker & Docker Compose configs
• setting up Alembic migrations
• configuring pytest (async, fixtures, etc.)

You know the drill.

Solution: Forge CLI

After doing this repeatedly, I extracted everything into a reusable, interactive CLI tool called Forge, which generates a FastAPI project based on the features you actually need.

pip install ningfastforge
forge init

The CLI walks you through a series of prompts, and based on your choices, it generates a complete project.

Features

• ✅ A clean, production‑oriented FastAPI project structure
• ✅ Database setup (PostgreSQL / MySQL / SQLite) using SQLModel or SQLAlchemy
• ✅ JWT authentication (basic or full flow with email verification)
• ✅ Redis integration for caching
• ✅ Celery configuration for background tasks
• ✅ Docker & Docker Compose ready to use
• ✅ Alembic migrations
• ✅ pytest setup with async support

The generator is modular:

• Don’t need Redis? Skip it.
• No authentication required? Skip it.
• Only want a simple API with a database? That’s fine too.

Forge only generates the files and configuration for the features you select, instead of forcing a one‑size‑fits‑all template.

Links

• GitHub: https://github.com/ning3739/forge
• PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/ningfastforge/
• Documentation: https://ningfastforge.readthedocs.io/

Feedback

I’d love to get feedback from other FastAPI users:

• How do you usually bootstrap new FastAPI projects?
• What parts do you find most annoying to set up repeatedly?
• Are there features you’d expect from a tool like this but don’t see yet?

Thanks for reading 🙌