res(ts): Auto-generate TypeScript models for Django projects

Note: this is an early prototype

rests generates TypeScript "models" and querysets, and corresponding Django URLs/Views. The TypeScript models and querysets are functionally similar to their Django equivalents.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Usage Example
• Full Example
• Requirements
• Basic Usage

Features

• Create/update/delete/filter/exclude Django models via TypeScript.
• The URLs/views for the functionality of the above are auto-generated.
• All queryset "lookup" keys are generated, allowing for type hints in TypeScript akin to what you would expect in an IDE with Django support.
• Filter relations.
• Automatic retrieval of foreign key relations (i.e on get).
• The generated TypeScript code is self-contained: there is no package to innstall.

Usage Example

In Python/Django:

from django.db import models


class Question(models.Model):
    question_text = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    pub_date = models.DateTimeField('date published')


class Choice(models.Model):
    question = models.ForeignKey(Question, on_delete=models.CASCADE, related_name='choices')
    choice_text = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    votes = models.IntegerField(default=0)

In TypeScript:

// Create a Question instance.
const newQuestion = await Question.objects.create({question_text: 'Question?'})

// Get a Question instance.
const question = await Question.objects.get(1)

// Get choices of question with more than 3 votes.
const choices = await question.choices({votes__gt: 3}).retrieve()

Full Example

A full example can be found in the example directory of this project. The Django project is found here and the corresponding (generated) TypeScript code is found here.

Requirements

Python

rests requires django version 2.0 or greater, and the Django REST framework.

TypeScript

The generated TypeScript requires experimentalDecorators set to true in tsconfig.json. No packages are required.

Basic Usage

Setup

Install rests via pip:

pip install git+https://github.com/peter-woyzbun/rests.git

Then add rests to INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
            'django.contrib.auth',
            ...
            'rests',
        )

Serializers

rests requires Django Rest Framework serializers. DRF permission check classes can also optionally be provided.

Interface Definition

In your django app, create a file, interface.py, with the following structure:

from rests import interface

from .serializers import ObjectSerializer


class Interface(interface.Interface):
    objects = interface.Type(ObjectSerializer)

Each class property of the Interface class should be an interface.Type instance with a Django Rest Framework serializer whose model you want exposed in your TypeScript code.

Queryset lookups and relations will only be generated for/between models contained in your interface definition.

Next, register your Interface's url patterns in urls.py:

from .interface import Interface

urlpatterns = Interface.urlpatterns()

Note: Interface.urlpatterns() returns a list of Django URL patterns, so you can use it in include(...).

In settings.py, add the following, replacing the appropriate values:

# Other settings...


RESTS = {
    'TRANSPILE_DEST': <path to transpile to>,
    'BASE_URL': '<base url of your interface, e.g: "http://localhost:5000/">',
    'INTERFACE_SRC': '<module.path.to.your.interface>',
}

The BASE_URL setting should reflect where you registered your Interface's url patterns. The TRANSPILE_DEST setting defines where to put the TypeScript generated for your Interface. The INTERFACE_SRC setting points to the python file containing your Interface class.

Transpile

Finally, to generate the TypeScript code, in your project directory (containing manage.py) use

python manage.py transpile