Last updated on June 17, 2019
https://www.django-rest-framework.org/community/tutorials-and-resources/
This tutorial was used for 50%, the rest is my own demo:
https://tests4geeks.com/django-rest-framework-tutorial/
Set up django:
- mkvirtualenv dapi
- navigate to your folder, then mkdir dapi
- cd dapi, setprojectdir .
- pip install django
- django-admin startproject api_apps
Then you get the folder structure, run it:
- python manage.py runserver
- Go to http://localhost:8000/
The install worked successfully! Congratulations!
Then run the command:
- python manage.py migrate
Then we can start to create an app
- python manage.py startapp demo
Now we have default project for django
Lets make some models, the Bag and Item class, and also add the apps to settings.py “demo.apps.DemoConfig”, then run:
python manage.py makemigrations demo
If that has no errors then apply the migration.
python manage.py migrate
python manage.py runserver
We now need to register the models within django:
Run
- python manage.py makemigrations demo
- python manage.py migrate
Now we need to add a superuser to do CRUD operations.
- python manage.py createsuperuser
- python manage.py makemigrations demo
- python manage.py migrate
- python manage.py runserver
- Go to http://localhost:8000/ admin
(I changed the class model to include __str__ method, view picture)
Now we can add a bag and items:
Now we can install REST:
- pip install djangorestframework
- add to INSTALLED_APPS the line: “rest_framework”
To perform HTTP-based interaction we have to define rules to convert Django models (python objects) to the json strings and vice versa. This is a serialization/deserialization task. So, let’s define some model-based serializers:
from rest_framework import serializers
from .models import Bag, Item
class BagSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = Bag
fields = ‘__all__’
class ItemSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = Item
fields = ‘__all__’
A viewset is a set of views (controllers in traditional MVC terminology). If you take a look at the ModelViewSet code you’ll see that there’s a lot of functionality automatically added there. You are able to create, view, edit and delete objects in your system (and database). It’s a full CRUD set with http as the interface protocol. Let’s configure two viewsets for our classes:
Now we need to add the view to urls.py, so add the file urls.py to api_apps\demo\urls.py (create this), then change the api_apps\urls.py and add the code fields = ‘__all__’ to both serializer classes if it is not there, it will give an error for version lower then xxx.
- python manage.py runserver
- visit http://localhost:8000/admin/
- visit http://localhost:8000/api/
Now we can view the Nike bag and the caps item we added before from api
Here is the bag from the api, there is also a possibility to post data (the same goes for item):
Now lets post some new items to the bag:
Great, now lets get it in json format, use the get button or url:
- http://localhost:8000/api/item/?format=json
So to wrap this up.
- We install django and rest
- Then we make a model
- To perform HTTP-based interaction we have to define rules to convert Django models (python objects) to the json strings and vice versa. This is a serialization/deserialization task.
- The view uses the model and serializer to present the data
- We define the urls in our app
- We share the app urls with the project / outer world if you will, so we get to them by HTTP.
- We also tell the project what apps is available
- Then we vist the web to get our data
To not get an 404 if you browse http://localhost:8000/ , then add the code to project\urls.py
urlpatterns = [
path(”, admin.site.urls),
path(‘admin/’, admin.site.urls),
path(‘api/’, include(“demo.urls”)),
]
Then you get to the admin page….