We **support**, **encourage** and **strongly favor** the creation of Third Party Packages to encapsulate new behavior rather than adding additional functionality directly to Django REST Framework.
We aim to make creating third party packages as easy as possible, whilst keeping a **simple** and **well maintained** core API. By promoting third party packages we ensure that the responsibility for a package remains with its author. If a package proves suitably popular it can always be considered for inclusion into the core REST framework.
If you have an idea for a new feature please consider how it may be packaged as a Third Party Package. We're always happy to discuss ideas on the [Mailing List][discussion-group].
You can use [this cookiecutter template][cookiecutter] for creating reusable Django REST Framework packages quickly. Cookiecutter creates projects from project templates. While optional, this cookiecutter template includes best practices from Django REST framework and other packages, as well as a Travis CI configuration, Tox configuration, and a sane setup.py for easy PyPI registration/distribution.
You'll be prompted for some questions, answer them, then it'll create your Python package in the current working directory based on those values.
full_name (default is "Your full name here")? Johnny Appleseed
email (default is "you@example.com")? jappleseed@example.com
github_username (default is "yourname")? jappleseed
pypi_project_name (default is "dj-package")? djangorestframework-custom-auth
repo_name (default is "dj-package")? django-rest-framework-custom-auth
app_name (default is "djpackage")? custom_auth
project_short_description (default is "Your project description goes here")?
year (default is "2014")?
version (default is "0.1.0")?
#### Getting it onto GitHub
To put your project up on GitHub, you'll need a repository for it to live in. You can create a new repository [here][new-repo]. If you need help, check out the [Create A Repo][create-a-repo] article on GitHub.
#### Adding to Travis CI
We recommend using [Travis CI][travis-ci], a hosted continuous integration service which integrates well with GitHub and is free for public repositories.
To get started with Travis CI, [sign in][travis-ci] with your GitHub account. Once you're signed in, go to your [profile page][travis-profile] and enable the service hook for the repository you want.
If you use the cookiecutter template, your project will already contain a `.travis.yml` file which Travis CI will use to build your project and run tests. By default, builds are triggered every time you push to your repository or create Pull Request.
Once you've got at least a prototype working and tests running, you should publish it on PyPI to allow others to install it via `pip`.
You must [register][pypi-register] an account before publishing to PyPI.
To register your package on PyPI run the following command.
$ python setup.py register
If this is the first time publishing to PyPI, you'll be prompted to login.
Note: Before publishing you'll need to make sure you have the latest pip that supports `wheel` as well as install the `wheel` package.
$ pip install --upgrade pip
$ pip install wheel
After this, every time you want to release a new version on PyPI just run the following command.
$ python setup.py publish
You probably want to also tag the version now:
git tag -a {0} -m 'version 0.1.0'
git push --tags
After releasing a new version to PyPI, it's always a good idea to tag the version and make available as a GitHub Release.
We recommend to follow [Semantic Versioning][semver] for your package's versions.
### Development
#### Version requirements
The cookiecutter template assumes a set of supported versions will be provided for Python and Django. Make sure you correctly update your requirements, docs, `tox.ini`, `.travis.yml`, and `setup.py` to match the set of versions you wish to support.
#### Tests
The cookiecutter template includes a `runtests.py` which uses the `pytest` package as a test runner.
Before running, you'll need to install a couple test requirements.
Run the tests using a more concise output style, no coverage, no flake8.
$ ./runtests.py --fast
Don't run the flake8 code linting.
$ ./runtests.py --nolint
Only run the flake8 code linting, don't run the tests.
$ ./runtests.py --lintonly
Run the tests for a given test case.
$ ./runtests.py MyTestCase
Run the tests for a given test method.
$ ./runtests.py MyTestCase.test_this_method
Shorter form to run the tests for a given test method.
$ ./runtests.py test_this_method
To run your tests against multiple versions of Python as different versions of requirements such as Django we recommend using `tox`. [Tox][tox-docs] is a generic virtualenv management and test command line tool.
First, install `tox` globally.
$ pip install tox
To run `tox`, just simply run:
$ tox
To run a particular `tox` environment:
$ tox -e envlist
`envlist` is a comma-separated value to that specifies the environments to run tests against. To view a list of all possible test environments, run:
$ tox -l
#### Version compatibility
Sometimes, in order to ensure your code works on various different versions of Django, Python or third party libraries, you'll need to run slightly different code depending on the environment. Any code that branches in this way should be isolated into a `compat.py` module, and should provide a single common interface that the rest of the codebase can use.
Check out Django REST framework's [compat.py][drf-compat] for an example.
### Once your package is available
Once your package is decently documented and available on PyPI, you might want share it with others that might find it useful.
#### Adding to the Django REST framework grid
We suggest adding your package to the [REST Framework][rest-framework-grid] grid on Django Packages.
Create a [Pull Request][drf-create-pr] or [Issue][drf-create-issue] on GitHub, and we'll add a link to it from the main REST framework documentation. You can add your package under **Third party packages** of the API Guide section that best applies, like [Authentication][authentication] or [Permissions][permissions]. You can also link your package under the [Third Party Packages][third-party-packages] section.
* [django-rest-auth][django-rest-auth] - Provides a set of REST API endpoints for registration, authentication (including social media authentication), password reset, retrieve and update user details, etc.
* [django-rest-framework-mongoengine][django-rest-framework-mongoengine] - Serializer class that supports using MongoDB as the storage layer for Django REST framework.
* [djangorestframework-hstore][djangorestframework-hstore] - Serializer class to support django-hstore DictionaryField model field and its schema-mode feature.
* [djangorestframework-jsonapi][djangorestframework-jsonapi] - Provides a parser, renderer, serializers, and other tools to help build an API that is compliant with the jsonapi.org spec.
* [djangorestframework-queryfields][djangorestframework-queryfields] - Serializer mixin allowing clients to control which fields will be sent in the API response.
* [drf-action-serializer][drf-action-serializer] - Serializer providing per-action fields config for use with ViewSets to prevent having to write multiple serializers.
* [djangorestframework-dataclasses][djangorestframework-dataclasses] - Serializer providing automatic field generation for Python dataclasses, like the built-in ModelSerializer does for models.
* [django-restql][django-restql] - Turn your REST API into a GraphQL like API(It allows clients to control which fields will be sent in a response, uses GraphQL like syntax, supports read and write on both flat and nested fields).
* [django-versatileimagefield][django-versatileimagefield] - Provides a drop-in replacement for Django's stock `ImageField` that makes it easy to serve images in multiple sizes/renditions from a single field. For DRF-specific implementation docs, [click here][django-versatileimagefield-drf-docs].
* [django-rest-multiple-models][django-rest-multiple-models] - Provides a generic view (and mixin) for sending multiple serialized models and/or querysets via a single API request.
* [djangorestframework-jsonapi][djangorestframework-jsonapi] - Provides a parser, renderer, serializers, and other tools to help build an API that is compliant with the jsonapi.org spec.
* [djangorestframework-jsonapi][djangorestframework-jsonapi] - Provides a parser, renderer, serializers, and other tools to help build an API that is compliant with the jsonapi.org spec.
* [django-url-filter][django-url-filter] - Allows a safe way to filter data via human-friendly URLs. It is a generic library which is not tied to DRF but it provides easy integration with DRF.
* [drf-url-filter][drf-url-filter] is a simple Django app to apply filters on drf `ModelViewSet`'s `Queryset` in a clean, simple and configurable way. It also supports validations on incoming query params and their values.
* [django-rest-framework-guardian][django-rest-framework-guardian] - Provides integration with django-guardian, including the `DjangoObjectPermissionsFilter` previously found in DRF.
* [cookiecutter-django-rest][cookiecutter-django-rest] - A cookiecutter template that takes care of the setup and configuration so you can focus on making your REST apis awesome.
* [djangorestrelationalhyperlink][djangorestrelationalhyperlink] - A hyperlinked serializer that can can be used to alter relationships via hyperlinks, but otherwise like a hyperlink model serializer.
* [django-versatileimagefield][django-versatileimagefield] - Provides a drop-in replacement for Django's stock `ImageField` that makes it easy to serve images in multiple sizes/renditions from a single field. For DRF-specific implementation docs, [click here][django-versatileimagefield-drf-docs].
* [django-rest-framework-braces][django-rest-framework-braces] - Collection of utilities for working with Django Rest Framework. The most notable ones are [FormSerializer](https://django-rest-framework-braces.readthedocs.io/en/latest/overview.html#formserializer) and [SerializerForm](https://django-rest-framework-braces.readthedocs.io/en/latest/overview.html#serializerform), which are adapters between DRF serializers and Django forms.
* [django-rest-framework-version-transforms][django-rest-framework-version-transforms] - Enables the use of delta transformations for versioning of DRF resource representations.
* [django-rest-messaging][django-rest-messaging], [django-rest-messaging-centrifugo][django-rest-messaging-centrifugo] and [django-rest-messaging-js][django-rest-messaging-js] - A real-time pluggable messaging service using DRM.
* [django-rest-witchcraft][django-rest-witchcraft] - Provides DRF integration with SQLAlchemy with SQLAlchemy model serializers/viewsets and a bunch of other goodies
