FastAPI MySQL Backend — Railway Template

A production-ready FastAPI backend API with MySQL, derived from the official Full Stack FastAPI Template (frontend removed, PostgreSQL replaced by MySQL) and packaged for one-click deployment on Railway.

What you get

⚡ FastAPI with automatic interactive docs (/docs) and an OpenAPI schema (/api/v1/openapi.json).
🔐 JWT authentication (OAuth2 password flow), secure Argon2 password hashing, email-based password recovery.
🗄️ MySQL 8 provisioned as a Railway database service, accessed through SQLModel + PyMySQL.
🧱 SQLModel ORM models for User and Item (UUID primary keys), with typed CRUD utilities.
🧳 Alembic migrations plus automatic first-superuser seeding, run on every deploy by the container start command.
📧 Email sending via SMTP with Jinja2 HTML templates (Mailpit for local development).
🩺 A redirect-free GET /health endpoint used by Railway's healthcheck.
🧪 A full Pytest suite covering auth, users, and items CRUD.

Deploying

Click the deploy button above. The deploy form has no required variables — just deploy.
Railway provisions two services from the template: MySQL and the backend app, and creates a public domain for the backend automatically.
The backend's DATABASE_URL is a live reference to the MySQL service (private hostname + per-deployment generated root password), and SECRET_KEY is generated fresh for each deployment via a Railway secret() expression — nothing to configure.
On boot the container creates the database, runs alembic upgrade head, and seeds the first superuser — no manual migration step.
The admin account starts with placeholder credentials (admin@example.com / ChangeMeBeforeDeploy1). For a real deployment, set FIRST_SUPERUSER and FIRST_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD before the first deploy (or reset the seeded user afterwards) — seeding only runs on an empty database.
FRONTEND_HOST (the CORS allowed origin) defaults to the backend's own generated domain via ${{RAILWAY_PUBLIC_DOMAIN}}; PROJECT_NAME defaults to a placeholder. Both are editable on the service after deploy.

Never set FASTAPI_ENV on Railway: the config only allows development or unset, and any other value crash-loops the container.

Deploy and Host

Deploy a FastAPI REST API with a managed MySQL database on Railway in one click. The template provisions two services: a MySQL database and a Dockerized FastAPI backend that runs its own Alembic migrations and superuser seeding on every boot, then serves the API on Railway's dynamically assigned PORT with a /health healthcheck.

About Hosting

Hosting this template gives you a self-contained JSON/REST API: JWT auth with Argon2 password hashing, users and items CRUD backed by MySQL through SQLModel, Alembic schema migrations, and SMTP email with Jinja2 templates for password recovery. The backend listens on $PORT, is healthchecked at /health, and restarts on failure (ON_FAILURE, up to 10 retries). Migrations and the initial superuser seed (from the FIRST_SUPERUSER / FIRST_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD variables) run automatically inside the container start command, so every fresh deploy comes up ready to serve authenticated requests. After the first deploy, generate a public domain and set it as FRONTEND_HOST (the CORS origin) if you will call the API from a browser.

Why Deploy

The upstream template assumes a full-stack repo with React, a Bun workspace, PostgreSQL, and docker-compose + Traefik for self-hosting — none of which fits a platform like Railway. This template removes all of that for you: it ships a backend-only API, swaps the database layer to MySQL (MySQLDsn parsing, mysql+pymysql driver, CHAR(32) UUID columns, a squashed MySQL-safe migration), bakes migrations into the container start command because Railway ignores preDeployCommand, binds to Railway's PORT, and exposes a redirect-free /health endpoint so healthchecks pass first try. Deploying this instead of hand-porting the official template saves you every one of those integration failures.

Common Use Cases

A standalone REST API backend for a separately hosted web or mobile frontend.
Internal tools and admin APIs needing ready-made JWT auth, superuser roles, and user management endpoints.
Prototyping a SaaS API with database migrations and seeding already wired up.
A reference implementation of FastAPI + SQLModel + MySQL on Railway, with a test suite to build on.

Dependencies for

Deployment Dependencies

MySQL — provisioned by the template as a Railway database plugin service with a per-deployment generated root password (secret() expression); the backend creates its own database on boot and connects via a composed DATABASE_URL reference, so no database credentials are hardcoded or prompted.
Backend variables — none are required at deploy time. SECRET_KEY is auto-generated per deployment; FRONTEND_HOST defaults to the generated domain (${{RAILWAY_PUBLIC_DOMAIN}}); PROJECT_NAME, FIRST_SUPERUSER, and FIRST_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD fall back to documented placeholders (FastAPI MySQL Backend, admin@example.com, ChangeMeBeforeDeploy1) — override them (ideally before the first deploy) for real use. Optional: SENTRY_DSN, SMTP_HOST / SMTP_USER / SMTP_PASSWORD / EMAILS_FROM_EMAIL for password-recovery emails. Do not set FASTAPI_ENV.
Dockerfile + railway.json — the repo root contains the Dockerfile Railway builds from and railway.json with the builder, start command, and healthcheck configuration, so GitHub-triggered and CLI deploys behave identically.