I Got Tired of Setting Up FastAPI Projects Manually — So I Built a CLI to Do It For Me

Kashish — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 11:59:29 +0000

I'm a third year engineering student still learning FastAPI.
I came across this problem while building a project — had to create
all these files manually and thought there has to be a better way.

Here's what that painful setup looks like every single time:

Create the folder structure
Write models.py
Wire up the routes
Set up the database config
Write main.py
Install dependencies

I literally did all of this manually for one of my projects — typing
every file, every folder, every import from scratch in the terminal.
And halfway through I thought... why am I doing this again?

So over two nights I built a CLI that does all of it for me.

How it works

You define your models in a simple JSON file:

{
  "models": {
    "User": { "id": "int", "name": "str", "email": "str" },
    "Item": { "id": "int", "name": "str", "price": "float" }
  },
  "routes": ["User", "Item"]
}

Then run one command:

python -m generator.cli myapp --json schema.json --db --install --run

And you get a fully working FastAPI backend — SQLAlchemy models,
CRUD routes, database setup, everything — live at /docs in seconds.

No more copy pasting. No more manual setup.

What it generates

SQLAlchemy ORM models
Full CRUD routes for every model
Database configuration
FastAPI app entry point
requirements.txt

What I learned

Honestly building this taught me more about how FastAPI and SQLAlchemy
actually work under the hood than any tutorial did. When you're
generating the code yourself, you really have to understand every
single line of it.

Try it out

GitHub: https://github.com/CrestXcode/API-BOILERPLATE-GENERATOR

It's my first open source project and I'd love feedback — what's
missing, what could be better, would you actually use this? Drop
a comment! 🙏

And if it saved you even 10 minutes — that's enough for me!

DEV Community: Kashish

I Got Tired of Setting Up FastAPI Projects Manually — So I Built a CLI to Do It For Me

How it works

What it generates

What I learned

Try it out