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'
]
}
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.