# Views > Django's class based views are a welcome departure from the old-style views. > > — [Reinout van Rees][cite] REST framework provides a simple `APIView` class, built on Django's `django.generics.views.View`. The `APIView` class ensures five main things: 1. Any requests inside the view will become `Request` instances. 2. `Request` instances will have their `renderers` and `authentication` attributes automatically set. 3. `Response` instances will have their `parsers` and `serializer` attributes automatically set. 4. `APIException` exceptions will be caught and return appropriate responses. 5. Any permissions provided will be checked prior to passing the request to a handler method. Additionally there are a some minor extras, such as providing a default `options` handler, setting some common headers on the response prior to return, and providing the useful `initial()` and `final()` hooks. ## APIView ## Method handlers Describe that APIView handles regular .get(), .post(), .put(), .delete() etc... ## .initial(request, *args, **kwargs) ## .final(request, response, *args, **kwargs) ## .parsers ## .renderers ## .serializer ## .authentication ## .permissions ## .headers [cite]: http://reinout.vanrees.org/weblog/2011/08/24/class-based-views-usage.html