Django rest_framework

Requirements

REST framework requires the following:

• Python (2.7, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6)
• Django (1.8, 1.9, 1.10, 1.11)

The following packages are optional:

• coreapi (1.32.0+) - Schema generation support.
• Markdown (2.1.0+) - Markdown support for the browsable API.
• django-filter (1.0.1+) - Filtering support.
• django-crispy-forms - Improved HTML display for filtering.
• django-guardian (1.1.1+) - Object level permissions support.

Installation

Install using pip, including any optional packages you want...

pip install djangorestframework
pip install markdown       # Markdown support for the browsable API.
pip install django-filter  # Filtering support

...or clone the project from github.

git clone git@github.com:encode/django-rest-framework.git

Add 'rest_framework' to your INSTALLED_APPS setting.

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'rest_framework',
)

 

If you're intending to use the browsable API you'll probably also want to add REST framework's login and logout views. Add the following to your root urls.py file.

urlpatterns = [
    ...
    url(r'^api-auth/', include('rest_framework.urls', namespace='rest_framework'))
]

 

Note that the URL path can be whatever you want, but you must include 'rest_framework.urls' with the 'rest_framework' namespace. You may leave out the namespace in Django 1.9+, and REST framework will set it for you.

Example

Let's take a look at a quick example of using REST framework to build a simple model-backed API.

We'll create a read-write API for accessing information on the users of our project.

Any global settings for a REST framework API are kept in a single configuration dictionary named REST_FRAMEWORK. Start off by adding the following to your settings.py module:

REST_FRAMEWORK = {
    # Use Django's standard `django.contrib.auth` permissions,
    # or allow read-only access for unauthenticated users.
    'DEFAULT_PERMISSION_CLASSES': [
        'rest_framework.permissions.DjangoModelPermissionsOrAnonReadOnly'
    ]
}

 

Don't forget to make sure you've also added rest_framework to your INSTALLED_APPS.

We're ready to create our API now. Here's our project's root urls.py module:

from django.conf.urls import url, include
from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from rest_framework import routers, serializers, viewsets

# Serializers define the API representation.
class UserSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = User
        fields = ('url', 'username', 'email', 'is_staff')

# ViewSets define the view behavior.
class UserViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    queryset = User.objects.all()
    serializer_class = UserSerializer

# Routers provide an easy way of automatically determining the URL conf.
router = routers.DefaultRouter()
router.register(r'users', UserViewSet)

# Wire up our API using automatic URL routing.
# Additionally, we include login URLs for the browsable API.
urlpatterns = [
    url(r'^', include(router.urls)),
    url(r'^api-auth/', include('rest_framework.urls', namespace='rest_framework'))
]

You can now open the API in your browser at http://127.0.0.1:8000/, and view your new 'users' API. If you use the login control in the top right corner you'll also be able to add, create and delete users from the system.