Get Method in Django REST Framework

Django REST framework (DRF) is a powerful and flexible toolkit for building web APIs. In this tutorial, we’ll learn how to build a CRUD API in just 15 minutes using the Django REST framework.

To build our sample to-do list application, we’ll start by setting up the Django REST framework in a Django project, followed by a complete tutorial on how to create a CRUD REST API with the Django REST framework.

Use my previous article to know the installation

Serializers in Django Rest Framework

Create a Django project called drinks with the following command

django-admin startproject drinks

Then, cd into the new drinks folder and create a new app for your API

python manage.py startapp core

Run your initial migrations of the built-in user model:

python manage.py migrate

Next, add rest_framework and drinks to the INSTALLED_APPS inside the settings.py file:

# settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'rest_framework',
    'core'
]

Create a model in models.py file like

from django.db import models

# Create your models here.


class Drink(models.Model):
  name=models.CharField(max_length=200)
  description = models.CharField(max_length=500)


  def __str__(self):
    return self.name+" "+self.description

Then apply Commands and Create a SuperUser to Our project:

python manage.py makemigrations
python manage.py migrate
python manage.py createsuperuser

Model serializer

To convert the Model object to an API-appropriate format like JSON, Django REST framework uses the ModelSerializer class to convert any model to serialized JSON objects:

from rest_framework import serializers
from .models import Drink

class DrinkSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
  class Meta:
    model= Drink
    fields = '__all__'

Creating API views in Django

In this section, we’ll walk through how to create two API views, list view and detail view.

The first API view class deals with the core/api/ endpoint, in which it handles GET for listing all to-dos of a given requested user and POST for creating a new to-do. Notice that we’ve added permission_classes, which allows authenticated users only:

The GET() method first fetches all the objects from the model by filtering with the requested user ID. Then, it serializes from the model object to a JSON serialized object. Next, it returns the response with serialized data and status as 200_OK.

from .models import Drink
from .serializers import DrinkSerializer
from django.http import Http404
from rest_framework.views import APIView
from rest_framework.response import Response
from rest_framework import status


class drink_list(APIView):
    """
    List all snippets, or create a new snippet.
    """
    def get(self, request, format=None):
        drinks = Drink.objects.all()
        serializer = DrinkSerializer(drinks, many=True)
        return Response(serializer.data)

Detail view

Now that we’ve successfully created our first endpoint view, let’s create the second endpoint /<int:todo_id> API view.

In this API view class, we need to create three methods for handling the corresponding HTTP method, GET as discussed above:

from .models import Drink
from .serializers import DrinkSerializer
from django.http import Http404
from rest_framework.views import APIView
from rest_framework.response import Response
from rest_framework import status


class drink_list(APIView):
    """
    List all snippets, or create a new snippet.
    """
    def get(self, request, format=None):
        drinks = Drink.objects.all()
        serializer = DrinkSerializer(drinks, many=True)
        return Response(serializer.data)


class drink_detail(APIView):

  def get(self, request, id=None):
      drinks = Drink.objects.filter(id=id)
      serializer = DrinkSerializer(drinks, many=True)
      return Response(serializer.data)

Create urls.py file app core and register in main urls.py file

urls.py – main

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path,include

urlpatterns = [
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
    path('',include('core.urls')),
]

core/urls.py

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

urlpatterns = [
    path('',views.drink_list.as_view()),
    path('<int:id>/',views.drink_detail.as_view()),
]

Run the Django server:

python manage.py runserver

Now, we’re ready for the first test. Navigate to http://127.0.0.1:8000. Make sure you’re logged in with your superuser credentials:

and it will provide the output containing 3 different types of objects that the information we are entered through admin panel

Now, if you navigate to http://127.0.0.1:8000/<id>/, it will show the detail API view page. Notice that you correctly navigate to a valid ID. In the screenshot below, I used 1 as the ID:

Conclusion

Congratulations! You’ve successfully built your first fully functional CRUD Django REST API.

Building a RESTful API can be complicated, but Django REST framework handles complexity fairly well. I hope you have fun building new APIs using the Django REST framework, and be sure to leave a comment if you have any questions. Happy coding!