DEV Community: Ssali Jonathan

Msgspec - A Fast Pydantic Alternative That Supports YAML, TOML and MessagePack

Ssali Jonathan — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 07:59:51 +0000

Msgspec is a fast and modern alternative to Pydantic for handling data validation and serialization in Python. It’s built with performance in mind, making it a great choice when speed really matters, but it still keeps things simple and easy to use for developers.

One of the things that makes Msgspec stand out is its support for multiple data formats like JSON, YAML, TOML, and MessagePack. This makes it flexible enough to fit into different kinds of projects, whether you’re building APIs, working on data pipelines, or dealing with systems that process a lot of data quickly.

In this guide, we’ll take a closer look at how Msgspec works, how it compares to Pydantic, and why it might be a solid option if you’re looking to make your Python applications faster and more efficient.

DOCUMENTATION:
https://msgspec.dev/

Django Bolt - A Rust Powered API Django Framework that Feels Like FastAPI

Ssali Jonathan — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 11:31:27 +0000

What are some features from modern Python frameworks like FastAPI or Litestar that you'd love to see in Django?

For me, the list would include:

First-class support for async views
Support for fully async ORMs (already available in recent Django versions)
Better support for Python type hints
Automatic OpenAPI documentation with Swagger/ReDoc
Built-in WebSocket support
JWT authentication out of the box

The good news is that you don't necessarily have to leave Django behind.

Django Bolt brings many of these modern API development features to your Django projects, allowing you to keep Django's mature ecosystem, admin, ORM, and batteries-included philosophy while enjoying a more modern developer experience.

Advanced Alchemy - The Best Abstraction library for SQLAlchemy

Ssali Jonathan — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 06:43:07 +0000

This video is about Advanced Alchemy. Advanced Alchemy is a companion library built on top of SQLAlchemy that provides higher-level abstractions and common patterns that many backend developers end up writing themselves. It is maintained by the Litestar Organization team and is framework-agnostic, meaning it works with FastAPI, Flask, Starlette, Litestar, and other Python web frameworks.

FastAPI Cloud | A New, Fast and Easy Approach to Deploying your FastAPI Apps

Ssali Jonathan — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 10:30:49 +0000

In this video, I introduce the FastAPI Cloud , a new fast and easy approach to deploying your FastAPI apps to the cloud created by the FastAPI Labs team, the maintainers of the popular FastAPI framework.

Running FastAPI on Amazon EC2 Using Uvicorn And Nginx

Ssali Jonathan — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 14:54:05 +0000

In this video, I walk you through the exact steps I used to deploy a FastAPI application on a Linux server specifically Ubuntu running on Amazon EC2.

We start by setting up a modern Python project using UV, a fast and efficient tool for managing dependencies and environments. From there, we spin up an Ubuntu server on AWS, connect to it, and prepare it for deployment.

You’ll learn how to:

Set up and configure your Linux server
Install and manage your Python environment with UV
Deploy and run your FastAPI application on EC2
Expose your app so it’s accessible from the browser using Nginx

Building APIs with Django and Django REST Framework In 2026

Ssali Jonathan — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 15:39:19 +0000

I recently held a session on API development with Django using the Django REST Framework at a PyLadies meetup in my country. I made a video to share what I talked about. Here are the notes for the content.

The notes can be found Here.

Dependency Injection In Litestar | Building APIs with Litestar #7

Ssali Jonathan — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 21:03:57 +0000

In this video, I explain dependency injection in Litestar from the ground up.
You’ll learn how to define dependencies, register them at different layers of a Litestar application, and how dependency scopes work under the hood.

By the end, you’ll understand how to structure reusable, testable, and scalable Litestar applications using dependency injection.

Data Transfer Objects DTOs In Litestar | Building APIs with Litestar #6

Ssali Jonathan — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 09:38:27 +0000

Litestar DTOs (Data Transfer Objects) are a powerful feature in the Litestar framework.They act as an intelligent transformation layer between:

the raw data your API receives from clients (JSON payloads, form data, etc.)
your internal domain/business models (Pydantic models, dataclasses, msgspec structs, SQLAlchemy models, etc.)
and the responses you send back.

Instead of manually converting, filtering, renaming fields, or doing partial updates in every handler, you define rules once in a DTO and Litestar automatically handles validation, conversion, field exclusion/inclusion, renaming (e.g. snake_case ↔ camelCase), partial updates, and even OpenAPI schema generation.

Build A CRUD REST API With Litestar SQLAlchemy Models & Repositories | Build APIs with Litestar #4

Ssali Jonathan — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 17:40:09 +0000

In this video, we’re building a simple REST API using Litestar’s built-in SQLAlchemy support. Litestar gives you powerful, ready-to-use repositories that handle full CRUD operations for your models so you barely have to write any database code yourself!

You will learn how to:

Define SQLAlchemy repositories from your database models
provide the repositories as dependencies using Litestar's dependency injection system
Use your repositories to implement CRUD on your data

Routing with Controllers, Schemas & Auto Docs | Build APIs with Litestar #2.

Ssali Jonathan — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 13:09:27 +0000

In this video, we build our Litestar API to organize our routes with class-based Controllers for cleaner, more maintainable code. We'll define our data models using lightweight Python dataclasses (no heavy Pydantic dependency needed!) to create separate read and write schemas.

You'll learn how to:

Structure routes elegantly with Controllers
Use standard library dataclasses as models
Automatically generate beautiful interactive OpenAPI documentation with Swagger UI, Redoc, Elements and Rapidoc out of the box

Getting Started – Installation, Basic Server, Path & Query Parameters | Build APIs with Litestar #1

Ssali Jonathan — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 13:03:51 +0000

[Litestar](https://litestar.dev is a powerful, modern, and lightweight Python web framework that's perfect for building performant APIs and web applications. In this series, we kick off the series by getting everything set up and building our first endpoints.

In this video, you'll learn:

How to install Litestar and set up your project
Running your first simple "Hello World" web server
Creating basic routes
Working with path parameters
Handling query parameters

Easily Manage Database Migrations for your SQLAlchemy project With Alembic

Ssali Jonathan — Sun, 07 Dec 2025 17:07:19 +0000

Tired of manually updating your database schema every time your SQLAlchemy models change? In this step-by-step tutorial, you'll learn how to professionally manage database migrations using Alembic, the official migration tool for SQLAlchemy.