REST framework is suitable for returning both API style responses, and regular HTML pages. Additionally, serializers can be used as HTML forms and rendered in templates.
## Rendering HTML
In order to return HTML responses you'll need to use either `TemplateHTMLRenderer`, or `StaticHTMLRenderer`.
The `TemplateHTMLRenderer` class expects the response to contain a dictionary of context data, and renders an HTML page based on a template that must be specified either in the view or on the response.
The `StaticHTMLRender` class expects the response to contain a string of the pre-rendered HTML content.
Because static HTML pages typically have different behavior from API responses you'll probably need to write any HTML views explicitly, rather than relying on the built-in generic views.
Here's an example of a view that returns a list of "Profile" instances, rendered in an HTML template:
**views.py**:
from my_project.example.models import Profile
from rest_framework.renderers import TemplateHTMLRenderer
from rest_framework.response import Response
from rest_framework.views import APIView
class ProfileList(APIView):
renderer_classes = [TemplateHTMLRenderer]
template_name = 'profile_list.html'
def get(self, request):
queryset = Profile.objects.all()
return Response({'profiles': queryset})
**profile_list.html**:
<html><body>
<h1>Profiles</h1>
<ul>
{% for profile in profiles %}
<li>{{ profile.name }}</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
</body></html>
## Rendering Forms
Serializers may be rendered as forms by using the `render_form` template tag, and including the serializer instance as context to the template.
The following view demonstrates an example of using a serializer in a template for viewing and updating a model instance:
**views.py**:
from django.shortcuts import get_object_or_404
from my_project.example.models import Profile
from rest_framework.renderers import TemplateHTMLRenderer
The `render_form` tag takes an optional `template_pack` argument, that specifies which template directory should be used for rendering the form and form fields.
REST framework includes three built-in template packs, all based on Bootstrap 3. The built-in styles are `horizontal`, `vertical`, and `inline`. The default style is `horizontal`. To use any of these template packs you'll want to also include the Bootstrap 3 CSS.
The following HTML will link to a CDN hosted version of the Bootstrap 3 CSS:
Third party packages may include alternate template packs, by bundling a template directory containing the necessary form and field templates.
Let's take a look at how to render each of the three available template packs. For these examples we'll use a single serializer class to present a "Login" form.
Serializer fields can have their rendering style customized by using the `style` keyword argument. This argument is a dictionary of options that control the template and layout used.
The most common way to customize the field style is to use the `base_template` style keyword argument to select which template in the template pack should be use.
For example, to render a `CharField` as an HTML textarea rather than the default HTML input, you would use something like this:
details = serializers.CharField(
max_length=1000,
style={'base_template': 'textarea.html'}
)
If you instead want a field to be rendered using a custom template that is *not part of an included template pack*, you can instead use the `template` style option, to fully specify a template name:
Field templates can also use additional style properties, depending on their type. For example, the `textarea.html` template also accepts a `rows` property that can be used to affect the sizing of the control.
