SIMPLE CRUD API WITH DJANGO REST FRAMEWORK

Django REST framework is a powerful and flexible toolkit for building Web APIs.

Requirements

• Python 3.6
• Django (2.1)
• Django REST Framework
• Django Rest Auth

Installation

	pip install django
	pip install djangorestframework
	pip install django-rest-auth
	pip install django-allauth

Structure

In a RESTful API, endpoints (URLs) define the structure of the API and how end users access data from our application using the HTTP methods - GET, POST, PUT, DELETE. Endpoints should be logically organized around collections and elements, both of which are resources.

In our case, we have one single resource, movies, so we will use the following URLS - /movies/ and /movies/<id> for collections and elements, respectively:

Endpoint	HTTP Method	CRUD Method	Result
movies	GET	READ	Get all movies
movies/:id	GET	READ	Get a single movie
movies	POST	CREATE	Create a new movie
movies/:id	PUT	UPDATE	Update a movie
movies/:id	DELETE	DELETE	Delete a movie

Use

We can test the API using curl or httpie. Httpie is a user friendly http client that's written in Python. Let's install that.

You can install httpie using pip:

pip install httpie

First, we have to start up Django's development server.

	python manage.py runserver

Only authenticated users can use the API services, for that reason if we try this:

	http  http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/v1/movies/3

we get:

 {  "detail":  "You must be authenticated"  }

Instead, if we try to access with credentials:

	http http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/v1/movies/3 "Authorization: Token 7530ec9186a31a5b3dd8d03d84e34f80941391e3"

we get the movie with id = 3

{  "title":  "Avengers",  "genre":  "Superheroes",  "year":  2012,  "creator":  "admin"  }

Login and Tokens

To get a token first we have to login

	http http://127.0.0.1:8000/rest-auth/login/ username="admin" password="root1234"

after that, we get the token

{
    "key": "2d500db1e51153318e300860064e52c061e72016"
}

ALL request must be authenticated with a valid token, otherwise they will be invalid

We can create new users. (password1 and password2 must be equal)

http POST http://127.0.0.1:8000/rest-auth/registration/ username="USERNAME" password1="PASSWORD" password2="PASSWORD"

And we can logout, the token must be your actual token

http POST http://127.0.0.1:8000/rest-auth/logout/ "Authorization: Token <YOUR_TOKEN>" 

The API has some restrictions:

• The movies are always associated with a creator (user who created it).
• Only authenticated users may create and see movies.
• Only the creator of a movie may update or delete it.
• Unauthenticated requests shouldn't have access.

Commands

http http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/v1/movies/ "Authorization: Token <YOUR_TOKEN>"
http GET http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/v1/movies/3 "Authorization: Token <YOUR_TOKEN>"
http POST http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/v1/movies/ "Authorization: Token <YOUR_TOKEN>" title="Ant Man and The Wasp" genre="Action" year=2018
http PUT http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/v1/movies/3 "Authorization: Token <YOUR_TOKEN>" title="AntMan and The Wasp" genre="Action" year=2018
http DELETE http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/v1/movies/3 "Authorization: Token <YOUR_TOKEN>"

Pagination

The API supports pagination, by default responses have a page_size=10 but if you want change that you can pass through params page=size=X

http http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/v1/movies/?page=1 "Authorization: Token <YOUR_TOKEN>"
http http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/v1/movies/?page=3 "Authorization: Token <YOUR_TOKEN>"
http http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/v1/movies/?page=3&page_size=15 "Authorization: Token <YOUR_TOKEN>"

Finally, I provide a DB to make these tests.