I would like to know if it is possible to build a REST Api using only Django (without Django REST).
I have following code in my views.py my Django (no REST Django)
from django.http import HttpResponse, JsonResponse
def get_something(request, object = None):
dummyDict = {'Debug':object}
return JsonResponse(dummyDict)
ulrs.py
url(r'^(?P<object>\w{1,50})$', views.get-something, name = "get-something"),
Can this work as REST API?
I tried testing using curl and I get following answer from my django server:
HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Date:
Server:
X-Frame-Options:
Content-Type: application/json
{"Debug": daodoaw}
You may do that though you'll have to add a lot of things to make an API RESTfull.
Your example is already missing proper response code for PUT / POST / PATCH / DELETE and doesn't respond correctly to OPTIONS
Ofcourse you can do these things with Django, but the advantage of django rest is that it is specifically created to handle api creation and management, Thus using django rest will be much more effective. When you look at the documentation of django rest, you could see that viewsets like ModelViewSet, GenericViewSet which are capable of handling any type of requests(POST, PUT, PATCH, etc...) in a two or three line code. Meanwhile while you using django you have to specify each and every case. Its just a case where DRF is more preferred).
What I try to say is, DRF is more handy in the case of API Creation and has a very good documentation in their official website
If you have to know about any specific part, please comment below
Thanks
Using Django is not a crime! We are given the liberty to use either DRFor Django.
Here are some of the situations when you can think of using DRF:
Let's imagine, you have developed a web application with django. What would happen if your client or you want a mobile version (android/iOS version) of your application? As multi-platform development is becoming the norm, using DRF can become crucial to reuse the same backend for both a mobile app and a web app.
Another comprehensive reason to use DRF is its super easy serialization facility.
If you want to segregate your front-end from Django provided templates, you are free to use modern javascript frameworks such as Vue, React or Angular for better design and to be dynamic as much as possible with your REST APIs.
When you use DRF, you are given ready-made view classes (ApiView, GenericAPIView, Viewsets) that are only a few lines of coding and able to handle all sorts of requests such as (POST, PUT, PATCH, etc...).
NOTE: Definitely, you can use Django depending on the project you are handling. In the case of building a web application that doesn't need to be accessed from other platforms, I would not use DRF. It entirely depends on the requirements.
Related
Currently i have a Django blog website. (Fully functional)
This blogwebsite is something like a social media website...
I have read that django rest framework helps you to serialize your data.
Could I just check about the DRF:
Is serializing data important? Meaning to say what huge benefits would I get by having an additional django rest framework, and also any possible disadvantages?
Would it be very difficult to "add" the framework into my project. Eg does it require me to download a lot of things and change a lot of my codes?
Where does DRF stand, is it in the backend of frontend or is it more of like in the middle. How does it integrate into my current IT architecture: with django as backend, htmlcssjs as frontend and postgresql as database
Thank you!
Also if anyone is kind enough to share resources about DRF/ open to a short zoom sharing session on DRF, please feel free to contact at kimjoowon777#gmail.com
The idea of Django Rest Framework (DRF) is to simplify and cut down a lot of code from your Backend (aka API).
Django (standalone Django, not DRF) is a framework that allows you to build Backend (and also Frontend).
DRF is a cool library that allows you to create a backend with Django but a lot easier.
DRF allows you to create endpoints that allow you to manipulate the Data (ie. models) very quickly and with very little code.
The "Serialization part" of DRF just automatically (also magically) transforms your models data into a response (usually json) for the client and vice versa.
It does take some learning and coding to transform your current backend into DRF. but in my opinion unless you backend is really special, DRF can allow you to create an awesome API with very little code
I have an application which uses flask and flask-security-too in the rest layer. Since flask-security contains some nice, out-of-the-box solutions for user signup, registration etc. including some override-able views. I would really like to use it if possible.
However, I would instead like to plug in a react frontend to get the SPA things going. I read in the documentation for flask-security that the views are indeed possible to override but not sure if/how I would manage to get this working for a built react app?
To summarize my question: Can I use React.js still benefit from flask-security features?
Please read:
https://flask-security-too.readthedocs.io/en/stable/spa.html
basically - you will be using the JSON api rather than forms.
This may be an opinionated question but sorry I am too curious.
I learned to develop Django Model-View-Template websites ( multi page websites) and Django Rest Framework.
From the same Django Model can I create Rest API's and MVC templates together ?
I wanted to develop a Blog website that use session authentication and based on MVC architecture. The same server should create API's because the Mobile app for the Blog may consume the API's and use Token Authentication (using Djoser).
If I use same User model for session and token authentication, Can mobile blog app users use their username and password to access website version ?
Django REST Framework is just a collection of helpers to easily create HTTP endpoints that conform to REST behaviour, which mostly means conventions around GET, POST, PUT and DELETE. You could code all this behaviour by hand using default Django, DRF just makes it a lot easier. The end result are simply specific routes which accept input and return output in specific formats to/from models.
Of course you can use that in addition to normal Django Views. It's just a different interface to your models and other business logic. Authentication can be the same, but typically you use some sort of token authentication for the API; that ultimately depends on how the API is supposed to be used exactly.
I'm building an app with a Django backend, Angular frontend, and a REST API using Django REST Framework for Angular to consume. When I was still working out backend stuff with a vanilla frontend, I used the provided Django authentication to handle user auth- but now that I'm creating a REST based app, I'm not sure how to approach authentication.
Since all user data will be either retrieved or submitted via the API, should API authentication be enough? If so, do I need to remove the existing Django authentication middleware?
Right now, when I try to hit API endpoints on an early version of the app, I'm directed to what looks like the normal Django login form. If I enter a valid username and password, it doesn't work- just prompts to login again. Would removing the basic Django authentication prevent this? I want to be prompted to login, however I'm not sure how to handle that with these technologies.
The package django-rest-auth seems useful, and the same group makes an Angular module- but the docs don't go much past installation and the provided endpoints. Ultimately, I think the core of this question is: how do I entirely switch authentication away from what's provided by Django to something like django-rest-auth or one of the other 3rd party packages recommended by DRF?
edit: I made this comment below, but I realized that I need to figure out how combined auth will work. I'm not building a single page app, so individual basic pages will be served from Django, but each page will hit various API endpoints to retrieve the data it needs. Is there a way to have something like django-rest-auth handle all authentication?
To anyone that stumbles onto this question, I couldn't figure out how to make the hybrid approach work. Having Django serve pages that each contained API calls seemed OK, but I never saw any requests made to the API- I believe due to some other security issues. I'm sure it's possible, but I decided to go for the single page app implementation after all to make things simpler.
I'm writing a set of REST services for a Django project. I've been using django-rest-framework for a while. Because of its limited functionality I had to switch to django-piston which I quite enjoy.
However, django-rest-framework had one really nice feature - it was able to display an admin-like interface for testing the created services from the browser. It's just terrific for debugging purposes. It's very simple: one form is displayed for each HTTP method like "GET", "POST", etc. Along with that a drop-down list of available content types and a text field for putting in the data to be sent.
As I view it, this isn't really a feature in any way directly connected with a particular REST framework. It isn't even necessarily about Django. It could all be achieved just using HTML + JS, or an external website.
My question is: What do you use for manual testing / debugging web services? Could you point me to some HTML snippet or a Django app that would do the described thing?
This may seem obvious, but:
Why not just use Django's testing client (django.test.client.Client)? then instead of manually 'debugging' in your browser, you can write unit tests with expectations and get leverage out of those further down the track.
e.g.
from django.test.client import Client
client = Client()
resp = client.put('/employee/2/', data={'email': 'here#there.com'}, follow=True)
#... etc
As the author of django-rest-framework it'd be great to pick your brains about which bits of functionality could do with fleshing out. :) (obv i've got some thoughts of my own and areas I'm planning to work on, but be really good to get some user perspective)
Your absolutely right about the API browser not being limited to any particular framework. To me that's the big deal with DRF and I'd love to see more API frameworks take a similar approach. One of the supposed benefits of RESTful APIs is that they should be self-describing, and it seems counter-intuitive to me that so many of the Web APIs we build today are not Web browseable.
Oh, and totally agree with jsw re. testing Web APIs in django, I wouldn't use the framework's browsable API to replace automated tests.
I had the same problem and that was eaily solved by logging out of admin page in that project.