Django Views and Urls - python

This is a bit long so please bear with me.....
I am in the middle of building an android application. I have built the client app, now I am working on the server.
I have decided to use Django for the server. Though I have already decided on the data structures, currently I am stuck with how am I supposed to send different kinds of requests from the server and how the server is supposed to handle them differently.
For example:
A request could be registering a new user and storing his
credentials.
Another request could be when a user likes or dislikes a comment.
..... there could be few more
One way that I can think of is to first have separate "django views" for each kind of requests and then attach a "django url" to it. Now from the client app, a particular kind of request could be made at its specific url, and then once received at the server, "django" will automatically direct it to its view, which will then take the desired actions.
Please let me know if there are any better ways to do it.

Yes, that is exactly how to do it.
You probably want to look into Django REST framework for this.

Related

Getting data from some rest API on Django

So here's the deal:
I have some nodeJS/PHP rest API! And I need to build a Django app which feeds on that API. Everything will be done on the server-side! So I would not use Django's back-end structure.
Basically I would GET some JSONs and POST it back so the server, which in turn would process that data. How should I proceed? I've been looking for tutorials for a while now.
However everywhere I look, people are using django-rest or something "django friendly". I tried to start using python-requests but it is still kind of cloudy, am I letting my front-end unprotected using direct GET/POST calls to the server (using requests)!?
Any guidance would be much appreciate!

How to get a standalone python script to get data from my django app?

I am currently learning how to use django. I have a standalone python script that I want to communicate with my django app. However, I have no clue how to go about doing this. My django app has a login function and a database with usernames and passwords. I want my python script to talk to my app and verify the persons user name and password and also get some account info like the person's name. How do I go about doing this? I am very new to web apps and I am not really sure where to begin.
Some Clarifications: My standalone python program is so that the user can access some information about their account. I am not trying to use the script for login functionality. My django app already handles this. I am just trying to find a way to verify that they have said account.
For example: If you have a flashcards web app and you want the user to have a program locally on their computer to access their flashcards, they need to login and download the cards from the web app. So wouldn't the standalone program need to communicate with the app to get login information and access to the cards on that account somehow? That's what I am trying to accomplish.
If I understand you correctly, you're looking to have an external program communicate with your server. To do this, the server needs to expose an API (Application Interface) that communicates with the external program. That interface will receive a message and return a response.
The request will need to have two things:
identifying information for the user - usually a secret key - so that other people can't access the user's data.
a query of some sort indicating what kind of information to return.
The server will get the request, validate the user's secret key, process the query, and return the result.
It's pretty easy to do in Django. Set up a url like /api/cards and a view. Have the view process the request and return the response. Often, these days, these back and forth messages are encoded in JSON - an easy way to encapsulate and send data. Google around with the terms django, api, and json and you'll find a lot of what you need.

How can I call an endpoint in my appengine instance without doing oAuth? (Mirror API)

I am trying to create some Glassware with the Mirror API. I am new to using AppEngine and Jinja2. I have python experience but never with a web framework before. So basically I am very new at this.
I have modified the Python quickstart for the mirror API to include many of my endpoints and designs. Basically I want to be able to be able to POST data from a constrained device to Glass. I have an endpoint all setup which works to accept and parse out the data and send the timeline item.
My problem is that the device itself is acting all on it's own and cannot provide input, therefore when I call my app from it e.g. https://foo.appspot.com?operation=deviceData the app presents the auth page and then nothing happens. I can see in the logs that the auth page is being sent, but the device has no idea what to do with this.
Basically, I need a way where I can hardcode credentials and get around having to do oauth everytime. What is the recommended way to do this? Another app which doesn't require auth which passes the data along? This would be fine as I only need to set this up with one user right now, it is for an internal demo only.
Is it possible to set my credentials in a header and auth automatically without handling any return, more like how basic auth works?
There are also the "Simple API access" keys. Would these work in this situation, I tried creating browser and server keys and tried them on the device and in the browser by doinghttps://foo.appspot.com?operation=deviceData&key=KEY_HERE but in both cases I was still prompted to login. Is this what simple access keys are for? Do they not work with the mirror API?
Basically my question is, what's the easiest way to allow access to my apps endpoints without having to oAuth or having a hard coded user which auto-auths?
Here is the project that I started with: https://github.com/googleglass/mirror-quickstart-python

How to "run" a "Paypal Subscriptions Service" inside Google App Engine?

before anything, I wanna you to Know that I'm a Complete Newbie
in these things about developing "paid" webapps. I have been reading some posts
about how to integrate Paypal's IPN with Google App Engine, and I have some questions
about the topic, the thing is like this:
I want to use a paypal's Subscribe button in my webapp (wich is developed with GAE's Python base)
so the users can subscribe to the premium version if they don't want to use the free one anymore...
I was reading that paypal can help me to manage this thing about the users control via IPN but
I have to setup that in my GAE App and I don't know how... For example:
Where the notification URL has to point to in paypal's profile configuration?
I believe it has to point to a python script in my app but I'm not sure... If
that is true, What does this python script has to have?
Then, after that's finished, How can I make paypal create
usernames and passwords for my users in order to keep non premium users out of the
"premium features"?? I don't want links to something, I need explanations on how
to implement a "Paypal Subscriptions service" inside a Python based app on GAE
in order to offer a "premium service" and a free one,
Thanks, hope you can help
To make a short answer (as I'm not exactly sure what's the scope of your question).
It's not paypal's job to maintain your data model. You need to create a database entry with your users.
For an example of that, look Google's documentation at
http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/gettingstarted/usingusers.html
and, more importantly, http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/gettingstarted/usingdatastore.html
So you could create, for example, data model of this sort:
class Users(db.Model):
gae_user_object = db.UserProperty()
premium_member = db.BooleanProperty(default=False)
(of course, since you want to track subscriptions, this would be way too limited but you can get the idea).
and make the script called by Paypal trigger a function to change the value of *premium_member*...
Yes, paypal instant payment notification will call your app (you can specify somewhere in Paypal interface what uri, so you can choose what to map it to, preferably using your https appspot subdomain). Your app will need to store what paypal just sent and, before officializing anything, call Paypal servers back with the parameters that were just sent to know if the first was truly made by Paypal and not someone else.
To see a working example of that, check http://blog.awarelabs.com/2008/paypal-ipn-python-code/ and http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine-python/browse_thread/thread/d76701e774e308be, even if both these example sucks (it will probably work, but don't use them as is in production as you'll notably end up with real bad error management).

Restful authentication between two GAE apps

I am trying to write a RESTful Google app engine application (Python) that accepts requests only from another GAE that I wrote. I dont like any of the ways that I thought of getting this done, please advise if you know of something better than:
Get SSL setup, and simply add the credentials on the request that my consuming app will send. I dont like it cause SSL will slow things down.
Security by obsecurity. Add a random number in my request that is in Xmod0, where X is a secret number that both applications know. I just don't like this.
Check the HTTP header to see where is the request coming from. This option is the one that I hate the least, not alot of processing, and spoofing an HTTP request is not really worth it, for my application's data.
Is there any other clean solution for this?
Use an HMAC. Embed the same secret in each app, and sign requests and responses using the HMAC. Don't forget to include nonces and timestamps to prevent replay attacks!

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