Django REST framework¶

Django REST framework¶

Introduction¶

Django REST framework is a lightweight REST framework for Django, that aims to make it easy to build well-connected, self-describing RESTful Web APIs.

Browse example APIs created with Django REST framework: The Sandbox

Features:¶

Automatically provides an awesome Django admin style browse-able self-documenting API.
Clean, simple, views for Resources, using Django’s new class based views.
Support for ModelResources with out-of-the-box default implementations and input validation.
Pluggable parsers, renderers, authentication and permissions - Easy to customise.
Content type negotiation using HTTP Accept headers.
Optional support for forms as input validation.
Modular architecture - MixIn classes can be used without requiring the Resource or ModelResource classes.

Resources¶

Project hosting: GitHub.

The djangorestframework package is available on PyPI.
We have an active discussion group.
Bug reports are handled on the issue tracker.
There is a Jenkins CI server which tracks test status and coverage reporting. (Thanks Marko!)
Any and all questions, thoughts, bug reports and contributions are hugely appreciated.

Requirements¶

Python (2.5, 2.6, 2.7 supported)
Django (1.2, 1.3, 1.4 supported)
django.contrib.staticfiles (or django-staticfiles for Django 1.2)
URLObject >= 2.0.0
Markdown >= 2.1.0 (Optional)
PyYAML >= 3.10 (Optional)

Installation¶

You can install Django REST framework using pip or easy_install:

pip install djangorestframework

Or get the latest development version using git:

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

Setup¶

To add Django REST framework to a Django project:

Ensure that the djangorestframework directory is on your PYTHONPATH.
Add djangorestframework to your INSTALLED_APPS.
For more information on settings take a look at the Setup section.

Getting Started¶

Using Django REST framework can be as simple as adding a few lines to your urlconf.

The following example exposes your MyModel model through an api. It will provide two views:

A view which lists your model instances and simultaniously allows creation of instances
from that view.
Another view which lets you view, update or delete your model instances individually.

from django.conf.urls.defaults import patterns, url
from djangorestframework.resources import ModelResource
from djangorestframework.views import ListOrCreateModelView, InstanceModelView
from myapp.models import MyModel

class MyResource(ModelResource):
model = MyModel

urlpatterns = patterns('',
url(r'^