Django REST Framework (DRF) is a powerful toolkit for building APIs with Django. In this tutorial, we'll go through the process of building a REST API using DRF.
Prerequisites
Python installed on your system
Basic knowledge of Django
Step 1: Setting up a new Django project
First, we need to create a new Django project. Open up your terminal and run the following command:
ruby
$ django-admin startproject myproject
This will create a new directory called myproject with the following structure:
markdown
myproject/
manage.py
myproject/
__init__.py
settings.py
urls.py
asgi.py
wsgi.py
Step 2: Creating a new Django app
Next, we need to create a new Django app to contain our API. Run the following command in your terminal:
ruby
$ python manage.py startapp api
This will create a new directory called api with the following structure:
markdown
api/
migrations/
__init__.py
__init__.py
admin.py
apps.py
models.py
serializers.py
tests.py
views.py
Step 3: Installing Django REST Framework
We need to install DRF to use its functionality. Run the following command in your terminal:
ruby
$ pip install djangorestframework
Step 4: Creating a new Django model
We need to create a new Django model to represent the data we want to expose through our API. In this tutorial, we'll create a simple Book model with the following fields:
python
class Book(models.Model):
title = models.CharField(max_length=200)
author = models.CharField(max_length=200)
published_date = models.DateField()
Step 5: Creating a new Django serializer
We need to create a serializer to translate our Book model to JSON format. In our serializers.py file, we'll create a new serializer for our Book model:
python
from rest_framework import serializers
from .models import Book
class BookSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = Book
fields = '__all__'
This serializer will include all fields of our Book model.
Step 6: Creating a new Django view
We need to create a view to handle HTTP requests for our API. In our views.py file, we'll create a new view that returns a list of all books:
python
from rest_framework import generics
from .models import Book
from .serializers import BookSerializer
class BookList(generics.ListCreateAPIView):
queryset = Book.objects.all()
serializer_class = BookSerializer
This view inherits from generics.ListCreateAPIView, which provides GET and POST methods for our API.
Step 7: Creating a new Django URL
We need to create a URL to map HTTP requests to our view. In our urls.py file, we'll create a new URL for our BookList view:
python
from django.urls import path
from .views import BookList
urlpatterns = [
path('books/', BookList.as_view(), name='book-list'),
]
This URL will map HTTP requests to /books/ to our BookList view.
Step 8: Testing our API
We can now test our API by running our Django development server:
ruby
$ python manage.py runserver
Open up your web browser and navigate to http://localhost:8000/books/. You should see a list of all books in JSON format.
Conclusion
In this tutorial, we went through the process of building a simple REST API using Django REST Framework. We created a new Django project and app, installed DRF, created a new Django model, serializer, view, and URL, and tested our API using the Django development server.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to building REST APIs with DRF. DRF offers a wide range of functionality, including authentication, pagination, filtering, and more. With DRF, you can easily build powerful APIs that follow RESTful design principles.
Happy coding!
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