# Custom Request and APIRoute class

In some cases, you may want to override the logic used by the `Request` and `APIRoute` classes.

In particular, this may be a good alternative to logic in a middleware.

For example, if you want to read or manipulate the request body before it is processed by your application.

:::callout{intent="danger"}
This is an "advanced" feature.

If you are just starting with **FastAPI** you might want to skip this section.
:::

## Use cases

Some use cases include:

- Converting non-JSON request bodies to JSON (e.g. [`msgpack`](https://msgpack.org/index.html)).
- Decompressing gzip-compressed request bodies.
- Automatically logging all request bodies.

## Handling custom request body encodings

Let's see how to make use of a custom `Request` subclass to decompress gzip requests.

And an `APIRoute` subclass to use that custom request class.

### Create a custom `GzipRequest` class

:::callout{intent="tip"}
This is a toy example to demonstrate how it works, if you need Gzip support, you can use the provided [`GzipMiddleware`](/guides/advanced-user-guide-middleware#gzipmiddleware).
:::

First, we create a `GzipRequest` class, which will overwrite the `Request.body()` method to decompress the body in the presence of an appropriate header.

If there's no `gzip` in the header, it will not try to decompress the body.

That way, the same route class can handle gzip compressed or uncompressed requests.

```python
import gzip
from collections.abc import Callable
from typing import Annotated

from fastapi import Body, FastAPI, Request, Response
from fastapi.routing import APIRoute


class GzipRequest(Request):
    async def body(self) -> bytes:
        if not hasattr(self, "_body"):
            body = await super().body()
            if "gzip" in self.headers.getlist("Content-Encoding"):
                body = gzip.decompress(body)
            self._body = body
        return self._body


class GzipRoute(APIRoute):
    def get_route_handler(self) -> Callable:
        original_route_handler = super().get_route_handler()

        async def custom_route_handler(request: Request) -> Response:
            request = GzipRequest(request.scope, request.receive)
            return await original_route_handler(request)

        return custom_route_handler


app = FastAPI()
app.router.route_class = GzipRoute


@app.post("/sum")
async def sum_numbers(numbers: Annotated[list[int], Body()]):
    return {"sum": sum(numbers)}
```

### Create a custom `GzipRoute` class

Next, we create a custom subclass of `fastapi.routing.APIRoute` that will make use of the `GzipRequest`.

This time, it will overwrite the method `APIRoute.get_route_handler()`.

This method returns a function. And that function is what will receive a request and return a response.

Here we use it to create a `GzipRequest` from the original request.

```python
import gzip
from collections.abc import Callable
from typing import Annotated

from fastapi import Body, FastAPI, Request, Response
from fastapi.routing import APIRoute


class GzipRequest(Request):
    async def body(self) -> bytes:
        if not hasattr(self, "_body"):
            body = await super().body()
            if "gzip" in self.headers.getlist("Content-Encoding"):
                body = gzip.decompress(body)
            self._body = body
        return self._body


class GzipRoute(APIRoute):
    def get_route_handler(self) -> Callable:
        original_route_handler = super().get_route_handler()

        async def custom_route_handler(request: Request) -> Response:
            request = GzipRequest(request.scope, request.receive)
            return await original_route_handler(request)

        return custom_route_handler


app = FastAPI()
app.router.route_class = GzipRoute


@app.post("/sum")
async def sum_numbers(numbers: Annotated[list[int], Body()]):
    return {"sum": sum(numbers)}
```

:::callout{intent="note" title="Technical Details"}
A `Request` has a `request.scope` attribute, that's just a Python `dict` containing the metadata related to the request.

A `Request` also has a `request.receive`, that's a function to "receive" the body of the request.

The `scope` `dict` and `receive` function are both part of the ASGI specification.

And those two things, `scope` and `receive`, are what is needed to create a new `Request` instance.

To learn more about the `Request` check [Starlette's docs about Requests](https://starlette.dev/requests/).
:::

The only thing the function returned by `GzipRequest.get_route_handler` does differently is convert the `Request` to a `GzipRequest`.

Doing this, our `GzipRequest` will take care of decompressing the data (if necessary) before passing it to our _path operations_.

After that, all of the processing logic is the same.

But because of our changes in `GzipRequest.body`, the request body will be automatically decompressed when it is loaded by **FastAPI** when needed.

## Accessing the request body in an exception handler

:::callout{intent="tip"}
To solve this same problem, it's probably a lot easier to use the `body` in a custom handler for `RequestValidationError` ([Handling Errors](/guides/tutorial-user-guide-handling-errors#use-the-requestvalidationerror-body)).

But this example is still valid and it shows how to interact with the internal components.
:::

We can also use this same approach to access the request body in an exception handler.

All we need to do is handle the request inside a `try`/`except` block:

```python
from collections.abc import Callable
from typing import Annotated

from fastapi import Body, FastAPI, HTTPException, Request, Response
from fastapi.exceptions import RequestValidationError
from fastapi.routing import APIRoute


class ValidationErrorLoggingRoute(APIRoute):
    def get_route_handler(self) -> Callable:
        original_route_handler = super().get_route_handler()

        async def custom_route_handler(request: Request) -> Response:
            try:
                return await original_route_handler(request)
            except RequestValidationError as exc:
                body = await request.body()
                detail = {"errors": exc.errors(), "body": body.decode()}
                raise HTTPException(status_code=422, detail=detail)

        return custom_route_handler


app = FastAPI()
app.router.route_class = ValidationErrorLoggingRoute


@app.post("/")
async def sum_numbers(numbers: Annotated[list[int], Body()]):
    return sum(numbers)
```

If an exception occurs, the `Request` instance will still be in scope, so we can read and make use of the request body when handling the error:

```python
from collections.abc import Callable
from typing import Annotated

from fastapi import Body, FastAPI, HTTPException, Request, Response
from fastapi.exceptions import RequestValidationError
from fastapi.routing import APIRoute


class ValidationErrorLoggingRoute(APIRoute):
    def get_route_handler(self) -> Callable:
        original_route_handler = super().get_route_handler()

        async def custom_route_handler(request: Request) -> Response:
            try:
                return await original_route_handler(request)
            except RequestValidationError as exc:
                body = await request.body()
                detail = {"errors": exc.errors(), "body": body.decode()}
                raise HTTPException(status_code=422, detail=detail)

        return custom_route_handler


app = FastAPI()
app.router.route_class = ValidationErrorLoggingRoute


@app.post("/")
async def sum_numbers(numbers: Annotated[list[int], Body()]):
    return sum(numbers)
```

## Custom `APIRoute` class in a router

You can also set the `route_class` parameter of an `APIRouter`:

```python
import time
from collections.abc import Callable

from fastapi import APIRouter, FastAPI, Request, Response
from fastapi.routing import APIRoute


class TimedRoute(APIRoute):
    def get_route_handler(self) -> Callable:
        original_route_handler = super().get_route_handler()

        async def custom_route_handler(request: Request) -> Response:
            before = time.time()
            response: Response = await original_route_handler(request)
            duration = time.time() - before
            response.headers["X-Response-Time"] = str(duration)
            print(f"route duration: {duration}")
            print(f"route response: {response}")
            print(f"route response headers: {response.headers}")
            return response

        return custom_route_handler


app = FastAPI()
router = APIRouter(route_class=TimedRoute)


@app.get("/")
async def not_timed():
    return {"message": "Not timed"}


@router.get("/timed")
async def timed():
    return {"message": "It's the time of my life"}


app.include_router(router)
```

In this example, the _path operations_ under the `router` will use the custom `TimedRoute` class, and will have an extra `X-Response-Time` header in the response with the time it took to generate the response:

```python
import time
from collections.abc import Callable

from fastapi import APIRouter, FastAPI, Request, Response
from fastapi.routing import APIRoute


class TimedRoute(APIRoute):
    def get_route_handler(self) -> Callable:
        original_route_handler = super().get_route_handler()

        async def custom_route_handler(request: Request) -> Response:
            before = time.time()
            response: Response = await original_route_handler(request)
            duration = time.time() - before
            response.headers["X-Response-Time"] = str(duration)
            print(f"route duration: {duration}")
            print(f"route response: {response}")
            print(f"route response headers: {response.headers}")
            return response

        return custom_route_handler


app = FastAPI()
router = APIRouter(route_class=TimedRoute)


@app.get("/")
async def not_timed():
    return {"message": "Not timed"}


@router.get("/timed")
async def timed():
    return {"message": "It's the time of my life"}


app.include_router(router)
```

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