fastapi-repl¶

Django's shell_plus, for FastAPI and every other ASGI framework.

fastapi-repl opens an interactive Python shell with your project already loaded: every model, your database engine and a ready-to-use session, the helpers you always import, and anything else you ask for. Top-level await works in every supported shell, on a single event loop that owns your async connection pool.

$ fastapi-repl
In [1]: await session.scalar(select(func.count(User.id)))
Out[1]: 1284

Why¶

FastAPI deliberately has no management commands, so there is no manage.py shell. Most teams end up with a scripts/shell.py that imports a few things and calls asyncio.run() on every query. It breaks with async drivers, forgets new models and is copied from project to project. fastapi-repl is that script, done properly.

Highlights¶

ORM agnostic. Built-in adapters for SQLAlchemy (sync and async), SQLModel and Tortoise ORM, plus a small plugin API for anything else.
Top-level await in IPython, ptpython, ptipython and plain Python, all on one shared event loop.
Auto-imports: models, ORM helpers, your own imports and objects, with collision handling and aliases.
Runs your app's lifespan on request, so startup code is live in the shell.
Everything shell_plus does: --print-sql, -c, stdin, scripts, Jupyter, dont_load, pre/post imports and more. See Migrating from Django.
Great ergonomics: init writes your config, config shows where each value came from, doctor finds problems, imports lists every name.

Where next¶

Getting started: install, configure and run your first query.
Configuration: every setting, with env vars and flags.
CLI reference: every command and option.
Recipes: common setups and tricks.

Note

fastapi-repl is an independent project and is not affiliated with FastAPI.