Lesson 1: Turning the answer engine into a web service

Module 10 · Lesson 1 · About 45 minutes · Needs: Module 7 (the answer engine); basic HTTP (a URL, GET and POST, status codes)

The situation

Dev, BrightCart's backend engineer, has a request. The chat widget and his ticket system both want the Module 7 answer engine, and neither can import a notebook. They can send an HTTP request to a URL and read the JSON that comes back.

So the engine needs a front door: a web service. This lesson builds it with FastAPI, a Python web framework, and traces one question through it. Aisha Rahman asks about order 5521: "Can I still return my robot vacuum?" By the end, that question travels from a URL to the model and back as checked JSON.