How to create a django backend server using django-rest-framework?

XAP Software · April 8, 2022

Python   Django

In case you need to use django to create only a backend server to use other front-end frameworks (next, nuxt) suggest django-rest-framework to create a rest-api.

What is django-rest-framework?

django-rest-framework is a powerful and flexible toolkit for building Web APIs. Django provides the opportunity to create custom api but django-rest-framework has a set of tools to create flexible api in a short period of time with access control, filters and parameters.

rest_framework.serializers and rest_framework.views

rest_framework.serializers includes some Abstruct class (Serializer, ModelSerializer) for serializing and deserializing the user_models instances into representations such as json.

rest_framewort.views includes APIView for create custom rest methods for client.

serializers.Serializer

Abstruct class is to provide a way of serializing and deserializing the json data to django models.

#In myapp/serializers.py
...
from rest_framework import serializers
...

class MySerializer(serializers.Serializer):
    #API description
    id = serializers.IntegerField(read_only=True)
    title = serializers.CharField(required=False, allow_blank=True, max_length=100)
    ...


    def create(self, validated_data):
        ...

    def update(setf, instance, validated_data):
        ...
        instance.title = validated_data.get('title', instance.title)
        ...
        instance.save()
        return instance

views.APIView

APIView based class designed to project data into the API.

#In myapp/views.py
from rest_framework import views
from .models import user_model
from .serializers import MySerializer
...

class MyAPIView(views.APIView):
    def get(self, request)
        obj_list = user_model.objects.all()
        serializer = MySerializer(obj_list)
        return(serializer.data)

In the end we need to create routes for our APIView

#In myapp/urls.py
from django.urls import path
from . import views

urlpatterns = [
    path('get/', views.MyAPIView.as_view()),
]

#In myproject/urls.py

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path, include

urlpatterns = [
    path("myapp/", include("myapp.urls")),
]

serializers.ModelSerializer

In case you need to serializing and deserializing simple model rather to use ModelSerializer class. It’s replicating a lot of information that’s also contained in the user_model model.

#In myapp/serializers.py
...
from rest_framework import serializers
...

class MyModelSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = user_model
        fields = ['field1', 'field2', 'field3', ...]

generics.[SomeAPIView]

rest_framework.generics provides a set of already mixed-in generic views that we can use to trim down our views.py module even more.

  • CreateAPIView - creating data on POST request

  • ListAPIView - read data on GET request

  • RetrieveAPIView - read record on GET request

  • DestroyAPIView - delete data(record) on DELETE request

  • UpdateAPIView - change record on POST or PATCH request

  • ListCreateAPIView - read on GET request and create list of data on POST request

  • RetrieveUpdateAPIView - read record on GET request and change record on PATCH request

  • RetrieveDestroyAPIView - read record on GET request and delete record on DELETE request

  • RetrieveUpdateDestroyAPIView - read, change and delete record on GET, PATCH and DELETE request

#In myapp/views.py
from rest_framework import generics
from .models import user_model
from .serializers import MyModelSerializer

class MyListAPIView(generics.ListAPIView):
    queryset = user_model.objects.all()
    serializer_class = MyModelSerializer


#In myapp/urls.py

from django.urls import path
from . import views

urlpatterns = [
    path('get/', views.MyListAPIView.as_view()),
]

It would be nice if we could keep our code a bit more concise.

Kirill Verbin

Twitter