This repo contains code for an example RESTful web API with create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) operations and data persistence. It is scalable and intended to serve as a foundation for developing more complex database interfaces in Python using Object-Relational Mapping.
The sample data models represent fictional people and Covid-19 test results, which have a one-to-many relationship. Each person's Covid status is updated automatically based on their most recent test result.
- Google App Engine and Google Cloud SQL for cloud deployment
- Flask web framework
- PostgreSQL for RDBMS
- SQLAlchemy for ORM
- marshmallow for data object serialization
- Swagger for API design and documentation (OpenAPI Specification)
The app requires a PostgreSQL database connection to run. To set this up, add a file to the base directory called "postgres_uri.txt" containing the URI for the database that you would like to use.
For a local connection, the URI will look something like this:
postgresql://<db_user>:<db_password>@localhost/<db_name>
The example API requires basic authorization for operations that modify the database. To set this up, add a file to the base directory called "auth.txt" containing credentials to be used for authorization, formatted as a dictionary, e.g.
{"<user_1>": "<password_1>", "<user_2>": "<password_2>"}
NOTE: this authorization method is used for testing purposes only and should not be considered secure for use with a production database.
Once the database URI and authorization credentials are configured, the app can be tested locally by running "main.py". When the app is run, Swagger will automatically build documentation and a browser interface, which can be used to explore and test the API:
