How to create an REST API using Django rest framework, with example

Jan. 5, 2023

4 min read

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In this article we will see how to create an API.

what is rest API?

REST (Representational State Transfer) API is a software architectural style that defines a set of constraints to be used for creating Web APIs. It is based on the following principles:

Client-server architecture: The client and server are separated, allowing them to evolve independently.
Statelessness: The server does not store any state about the client sessions in the form of cookies, sessions, or similar mechanisms.
Cacheability: The server indicates to the client whether a response can be cached or not, allowing the client to use a cached copy of the response if available.
Layered system: The server can be composed of multiple layers (e.g., load balancers, caches, application servers) without the client being aware of it.
Code on demand (optional): The server can include executable code in its responses, which the client can execute.

REST APIs are typically built using HTTP, and support the following HTTP methods:

GET: Used to retrieve a resource.
POST: Used to create a new resource.
PUT: Used to update an existing resource.
DELETE: Used to delete a resource.

REST APIs are used in modern web and mobile applications to communicate with servers, retrieve data, and perform various operations. They are a convenient and flexible way to expose the functionality of a backend system to the client, and are typically implemented using a framework such as Django Rest Framework (DRF) or Flask-RESTful.

How you can create an API using Django Rest Framework (DRF):

Install Django and DRF:

$ pip install django
$ pip install djangorestframework

Create a new Django project
```
$ django-admin startproject myproject
```
Create a new Django app:
```
$ python manage.py startapp myapp
```
Add 'rest_framework' to INSTALLED_APPS in your project's settings.py file:
```
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'rest_framework',
]
```

Define your model in models.py. For example:

from django.db import models

class Person(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=128)
    email = models.EmailField()
    phone = models.CharField(max_length=16)

Run the following command to create the database tables for your models:
```
$ python manage.py makemigrations
$ python manage.py migrate
```

Create a serializer class in serializers.py to convert your model instances into JSON format:

from rest_framework import serializers
from .models import Person

class PersonSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = Person
        fields = ['id', 'name', 'email', 'phone']

Create a view in views.py to handle HTTP requests:

from django.shortcuts import render
from rest_framework import viewsets
from .models import Person
from .serializers import PersonSerializer

class PersonViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    queryset = Person.objects.all()
    serializer_class = PersonSerializer

Define the URL patterns in urls.py:

from django.urls import include, path
from rest_framework import routers
from . import views

router = routers.DefaultRouter()
router.register(r'persons', views.PersonViewSet)

urlpatterns = [
    path('', include(router.urls)),
]

Start the development server:
```
$ python manage.py runserver
```

Now you can use HTTP requests to interact with your API at http://127.0.0.1:8000/persons/.

For example, you can use the following command to send a GET request to retrieve a list of all persons:

$ curl -X GET http://127.0.0.1:8000/persons/

You can also use the following command to send a POST request to create a new person:

$ curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"name": "John Smith", "email": "john@example.com", "phone": "555-555-5555"}' http://127.0.0.1:8000/persons/

You can use postman for testing this API

You can check this course also Building APIs with Django and Dajngo rest framework

I hope this helps! If you have any problems you can comments

Appreciate you stopping by my post! 😊

Zehra Ahmad

Dian Alphabet