Setting up a Django Rest API

What is Django?

Django is an open source python web framework. Django is foremost a backend framework and works well to create a site.

What is a rest API?

Most websites use some sort of a rest API. If you are looking to integrate react or another framework with Django you would most likely use a rest framework.

A rest framework displays data in a server on the web. typically in a JSON format. A frontend of a site will typically make an API call to the site and the server will send back the data.

Skip the setup

I have created a Django API template that is configured for easy deployment with heroku. The template includes React with Typescript configuration with webpack.

Find the template here then skip to Models Below https://github.com/NikSchaefer/Django-React-Typescript-Template

Setting up a Rest API

You need to create an app in Django for the framework. install Django https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.1/topics/install/

First create the project in terminal

django-admin startproject mysite

Then create the app

python manage.py startapp api

This creates another app in the project

while we are in terminal lets install the rest framework

pip install rest_framework

To start your app

python manage.py runserver

in settings.py under installed apps add the api

INSTALLED_APPS = [
 ...
 'api',
 'rest_framework'
]

in urls.py in the primary folder make sure to include api.urls like this

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

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

Models

In the API folder in models.py create a model to fit your data you want to display.

class Article(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=30, default='')
    body = models.TextField(default='')
    date = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    author = models.CharField(max_length=30, default='')

 def __str__(self):
     return self.title

Serializers

In the rest framework in order to display the data you need to create a serializers for your models. This basically selects the fields of the model you want to display

here we are selecting all the fields

If there is no serializer file in your api folder create the file

from rest_framework import serializers
from .models import Article

class ArticleSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
 class Meta:
        model = Article
        fields = '__all__'

This selects all the fields, we will import the serialzer in views.py

Views

in views.py or where your views are

this creates the render for the model

from rest_framework import generics
from .models import Article
from .serializers import ArticleSerializer

class ArticleView(generics.ListAPIView):
    queryset = Article.objects.all()
    serializer_class = ArticleSerializer

URLs

in the urls.py file you need to reference your views to display them

from .views import ArticeView
from django.urls import path

urlpatterns = [
    path("article", ArticeView),
]

Now your API is complete, if you run the server you can find the article at

127.0.0.1:8000/api/article

if 127.0.0.1:8000 is the server port

to return as JSON add a ?format=json

127.0.0.1:8000/api/article?format=json

Now add to your models and retrieve your data by calling to that server!