Setting Up a Dev Environment for FastAPI, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy & Alembic with Docker

In this video, I'll walk you through setting up a development environment for a FastAPI application using PostgreSQL as the database, SQLAlchemy as the ORM, and Alembic for handling migrations – all running inside Docker and Docker Compose.

What we cover step by step:

• Creating the project structure
• Writing a Dockerfile for FastAPI
• Setting up PostgreSQL with persistent data
• Configuring SQLAlchemy 2.0 style with async support
• Adding Alembic for database migrations
• Using Docker Compose to run everything together (app + db)
• Hot-reloading during development using Docker Compose Watch

By the end, you'll have a fully working development setup that's easy to share with teammates, works the same on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and is ready for adding tests, linting, or deploying later.