Using Background Tasks for Email Sending

Sending emails can be a time-consuming operation. To avoid blocking the main thread of your FastAPI application, you can use background tasks to handle email sending asynchronously. This allows your application to continue processing other requests while the email is being sent.

Installing Required Libraries

Ensure you have the following libraries installed:

• fastapi
• uvicorn
• requests
• background_tasks

Creating a Background Task

Python

from fastapi import BackgroundTask

def send_email_async(recipient_email, subject, body):
    # ... (email sending logic)

@app.post("/send-email")
async def send_email_endpoint(recipient_email: str, subject: str, body: str):
    background_task = BackgroundTask(send_email_async, recipient_email, subject, body)
    await background_task()
    return {"message": "Email sent successfully"}

Explanation

• The send_email_async function is defined as an asynchronous function.
• The BackgroundTask class is used to create a background task that will be executed asynchronously.
• The await background_task() line schedules the background task to be executed.

Additional Considerations

• Error Handling: Implement appropriate error handling to catch exceptions that might occur during email sending.
• Task Queues: For more complex background task management, consider using task queues like Celery.
• Asynchronous Email Libraries: Explore asynchronous email libraries like aiogram or aiosmtplib for optimized performance.

By using background tasks for email sending, you can improve the responsiveness of your FastAPI application and avoid blocking the main thread. This is especially important for applications that handle a large number of concurrent requests.