Docker

In the last article we talked about making our pydantic documentation as robust as possible. In this part, we’ll focus on containerizing the Weather Forecast API using Docker. By the end of this tutorial, your API will be running inside a Docker container, alongside a PostgreSQL database, all orchestrated using Docker Compose. Why Dockerize? 🛠️ Docker simplifies application deployment by packaging your application and its dependencies into a portable container. With Docker: ...

In the first two parts of this series (previous article), we laid the foundation for our weather forecast API and explored how to handle forecasts and historical revisions efficiently. In this part, we’ll focus on optimizing our Pydantic models to make the API documentation more accessible to AI tools, such as those that scrape OpenAPI specs for training or dynamic usage. The Problem 🧠 While your API might work perfectly for humans, AI tools often need more context and structure to understand it effectively. For example: ...

In the first part of this series, we set up a FastAPI application with a PostgreSQL database to store weather forecasts. We also designed a robust schema that tracks changes over time using a composite primary key. If you missed it, check out Part 1. In this post, we’ll: Create query endpoints to fetch forecasts. Implement a type-2 SCD approach for tracking forecast revisions. Discuss strategies for filtering and pagination. The Challenge 🧠 Weather forecasts often change over time as meteorological data improves. To support historical analysis and ensure data consistency, we need to: ...

When I set out to create a weather forecast API, I wanted something scalable, efficient, and built on modern technology. What started as a simple project to integrate weather data from the weather.gov API quickly grew into a complex, yet rewarding system. To keep things manageable, I decided to break this journey into multiple parts. In this post, I’ll cover the foundational steps to get started: setting up FastAPI, creating the database, and handling weather data with a robust schema. ...

Next up on our data stack journey is the push notification server. I’ll be using multiple notification channels, hoping that I’ll pay attention to at least one when something critical goes down. Alerting is a key piece of analytics infrastructure for me—data should come to you, not the other way around. So, what are doing here? We’re bridging the gap between the data stack and the real world by setting up a notification system to deliver push notifications straight to my phone. Once my Airflow server is up and running, I’ll create a custom function to send alerts using this server. ...

Welcome to the second post in my data stack setup journey! 🎉 My goal is to hustle through setting up all the components so I can get to the good stuff: data and analytics engineering. But first, I need a documentation server, because, let’s be real—I’m already forgetting where I’ve documented things. 🙃 What is Bookstack? BookStack describes itself as a “simple, self-hosted, easy-to-use platform for organizing and storing information.” I like to think of it as: a wiki that’s easy to host, simple to back up, and doesn’t make you cry. ...