# Renderers
> Before a TemplateResponse instance can be returned to the client, it must be rendered. The rendering process takes the intermediate representation of template and context, and turns it into the final byte stream that can be served to the client.
>
> — [Django documentation][cite]
REST framework includes a number of built in Renderer classes, that allow you to return responses with various media types. There is also support for defining your own custom renderers, which gives you the flexibility to design your own media types.
## How the renderer is determined
The set of valid renderers for a view is always defined as a list of classes. When a view is entered REST framework will perform content negotiation on the incoming request, and determine the most appropriate renderer to satisfy the request.
The basic process of content negotiation involves examining the request's `Accept` header, to determine which media types it expects in the response. Optionally, format suffixes on the URL may be used to explicitly request a particular representation. For example the URL `http://example.com/api/users_count.json` might be an endpoint that always returns JSON data.
For more information see the documentation on [content negotiation][conneg].
## Setting the renderers
The default set of renderers may be set globally, using the `DEFAULT_RENDERER_CLASSES` setting. For example, the following settings would use `YAML` as the main media type and also include the self describing API.
REST_FRAMEWORK = {
'DEFAULT_RENDERER_CLASSES': (
'rest_framework.renderers.YAMLRenderer',
'rest_framework.renderers.BrowsableAPIRenderer',
)
}
You can also set the renderers used for an individual view, or viewset,
using the `APIView` class based views.
from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from rest_framework.renderers import JSONRenderer, YAMLRenderer
from rest_framework.response import Response
from rest_framework.views import APIView
class UserCountView(APIView):
"""
A view that returns the count of active users, in JSON or YAML.
"""
renderer_classes = (JSONRenderer, YAMLRenderer)
def get(self, request, format=None):
user_count = User.objects.filter(active=True).count()
content = {'user_count': user_count}
return Response(content)
Or, if you're using the `@api_view` decorator with function based views.
@api_view(['GET'])
@renderer_classes((JSONRenderer, JSONPRenderer))
def user_count_view(request, format=None):
"""
A view that returns the count of active users, in JSON or JSONp.
"""
user_count = User.objects.filter(active=True).count()
content = {'user_count': user_count}
return Response(content)
## Ordering of renderer classes
It's important when specifying the renderer classes for your API to think about what priority you want to assign to each media type. If a client underspecifies the representations it can accept, such as sending an `Accept: */*` header, or not including an `Accept` header at all, then REST framework will select the first renderer in the list to use for the response.
For example if your API serves JSON responses and the HTML browsable API, you might want to make `JSONRenderer` your default renderer, in order to send `JSON` responses to clients that do not specify an `Accept` header.
If your API includes views that can serve both regular webpages and API responses depending on the request, then you might consider making `TemplateHTMLRenderer` your default renderer, in order to play nicely with older browsers that send [broken accept headers][browser-accept-headers].
---
# API Reference
## JSONRenderer
Renders the request data into `JSON`, using utf-8 encoding.
Note that non-ascii characters will be rendered using JSON's `\uXXXX` character escape. For example:
{"unicode black star": "\u2605"}
The client may additionally include an `'indent'` media type parameter, in which case the returned `JSON` will be indented. For example `Accept: application/json; indent=4`.
{
"unicode black star": "\u2605"
}
**.media_type**: `application/json`
**.format**: `'.json'`
**.charset**: `None`
## UnicodeJSONRenderer
Renders the request data into `JSON`, using utf-8 encoding.
Note that non-ascii characters will not be character escaped. For example:
{"unicode black star": "★"}
The client may additionally include an `'indent'` media type parameter, in which case the returned `JSON` will be indented. For example `Accept: application/json; indent=4`.
{
"unicode black star": "★"
}
Both the `JSONRenderer` and `UnicodeJSONRenderer` styles conform to [RFC 4627][rfc4627], and are syntactically valid JSON.
**.media_type**: `application/json`
**.format**: `'.json'`
**.charset**: `None`
## JSONPRenderer
Renders the request data into `JSONP`. The `JSONP` media type provides a mechanism of allowing cross-domain AJAX requests, by wrapping a `JSON` response in a javascript callback.
The javascript callback function must be set by the client including a `callback` URL query parameter. For example `http://example.com/api/users?callback=jsonpCallback`. If the callback function is not explicitly set by the client it will default to `'callback'`.
---
**Warning**: If you require cross-domain AJAX requests, you should almost certainly be using the more modern approach of [CORS][cors] as an alternative to `JSONP`. See the [CORS documentation][cors-docs] for more details.
The `jsonp` approach is essentially a browser hack, and is [only appropriate for globally readable API endpoints][jsonp-security], where `GET` requests are unauthenticated and do not require any user permissions.
---
**.media_type**: `application/javascript`
**.format**: `'.jsonp'`
**.charset**: `utf-8`
## YAMLRenderer
Renders the request data into `YAML`.
Requires the `pyyaml` package to be installed.
**.media_type**: `application/yaml`
**.format**: `'.yaml'`
**.charset**: `utf-8`
## XMLRenderer
Renders REST framework's default style of `XML` response content.
Note that the `XML` markup language is used typically used as the base language for more strictly defined domain-specific languages, such as `RSS`, `Atom`, and `XHTML`.
If you are considering using `XML` for your API, you may want to consider implementing a custom renderer and parser for your specific requirements, and using an existing domain-specific media-type, or creating your own custom XML-based media-type.
**.media_type**: `application/xml`
**.format**: `'.xml'`
**.charset**: `utf-8`
## TemplateHTMLRenderer
Renders data to HTML, using Django's standard template rendering.
Unlike other renderers, the data passed to the `Response` does not need to be serialized. Also, unlike other renderers, you may want to include a `template_name` argument when creating the `Response`.
The TemplateHTMLRenderer will create a `RequestContext`, using the `response.data` as the context dict, and determine a template name to use to render the context.
The template name is determined by (in order of preference):
1. An explicit `template_name` argument passed to the response.
2. An explicit `.template_name` attribute set on this class.
3. The return result of calling `view.get_template_names()`.
An example of a view that uses `TemplateHTMLRenderer`:
class UserDetail(generics.RetrieveAPIView):
"""
A view that returns a templated HTML representations of a given user.
"""
queryset = User.objects.all()
renderer_classes = (TemplateHTMLRenderer,)
def get(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
self.object = self.get_object()
return Response({'user': self.object}, template_name='user_detail.html')
You can use `TemplateHTMLRenderer` either to return regular HTML pages using REST framework, or to return both HTML and API responses from a single endpoint.
If you're building websites that use `TemplateHTMLRenderer` along with other renderer classes, you should consider listing `TemplateHTMLRenderer` as the first class in the `renderer_classes` list, so that it will be prioritised first even for browsers that send poorly formed `ACCEPT:` headers.
**.media_type**: `text/html`
**.format**: `'.html'`
**.charset**: `utf-8`
See also: `StaticHTMLRenderer`
## StaticHTMLRenderer
A simple renderer that simply returns pre-rendered HTML. Unlike other renderers, the data passed to the response object should be a string representing the content to be returned.
An example of a view that uses `TemplateHTMLRenderer`:
@api_view(('GET',))
@renderer_classes((StaticHTMLRenderer,))
def simple_html_view(request):
data = 'Hello, world
'
return Response(data)
You can use `TemplateHTMLRenderer` either to return regular HTML pages using REST framework, or to return both HTML and API responses from a single endpoint.
**.media_type**: `text/html`
**.format**: `'.html'`
**.charset**: `utf-8`
See also: `TemplateHTMLRenderer`
## HTMLFormRenderer
Renders data returned by a serializer into an HTML form. The output of this renderer does not include the enclosing `