Django REST framework

A toolkit for building well-connected, self-describing web APIs.

Author: Tom Christie. Follow me on Twitter.

Support: REST framework discussion group.

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Full documentation for REST framework is available on http://django-rest-framework.org.

Note that this is the 2.0 version of REST framework. If you are looking for earlier versions please see the 0.4.x branch on GitHub.

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Overview

Django REST framework is a lightweight library that makes it easy to build Web APIs. It is designed as a modular and easy to customize architecture, based on Django's class based views.

Web APIs built using REST framework are fully self-describing and web browseable - a huge useability win for your developers. It also supports a wide range of media types, authentication and permission policies out of the box.

If you are considering using REST framework for your API, we recommend reading the REST framework 2 announcment which gives a good overview of the framework and it's capabilities.

There is also a sandbox API you can use for testing purposes, available here.

Requirements

• Python (2.6, 2.7, 3.2, 3.3)
• Django (1.3, 1.4, 1.5)

Optional:

• Markdown - Markdown support for the self describing API.
• PyYAML - YAML content type support.
• django-filter - Filtering support.

Installation

Install using pip, including any optional packages you want...

pip install djangorestframework
pip install markdown  # Markdown support for the browseable API.
pip install pyyaml    # YAML content-type support.
pip install django-filter  # Filtering support

...or clone the project from github.

git clone git@github.com:tomchristie/django-rest-framework.git
cd django-rest-framework
pip install -r requirements.txt
pip install -r optionals.txt

Add 'rest_framework' to your INSTALLED_APPS setting.

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'rest_framework',        
)

If you're intending to use the browseable API you'll probably also want to add REST framework's login and logout views. Add the following to your root urls.py file.

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    ...
    url(r'^api-auth/', include('rest_framework.urls', namespace='rest_framework'))
)

Note that the URL path can be whatever you want, but you must include 'rest_framework.urls' with the 'rest_framework' namespace.

Development

To build the docs.

./mkdocs.py

To run the tests.

./rest_framework/runtests/runtests.py

Changelog

2.1.17

Date: 26th Jan 2013

• Support proper 401 Unauthorized responses where appropriate, instead of always using 403 Forbidden.
• Support json encoding of timedelta objects.
• format_suffix_patterns() now supports include style URL patterns.
• Bugfix: Fix issues with custom pagination serializers.
• Bugfix: Nested serializers now accept source='*' argument.
• Bugfix: Return proper validation errors when incorrect types supplied for relational fields.
• Bugfix: Support nullable FKs with SlugRelatedField.
• Bugfix: Don't call custom validation methods if the field has an error.

Note: If the primary authentication class is TokenAuthentication or BasicAuthentication, a view will now correctly return 401 responses to unauthenticated access, with an appropriate WWW-Authenticate header, instead of 403 responses.

2.1.16

Date: 14th Jan 2013

• Deprecate django.utils.simplejson in favor of Python 2.6's built-in json module.
• Bugfix: auto_now, auto_now_add and other editable=False fields now default to read-only.
• Bugfix: PK fields now only default to read-only if they are an AutoField or if editable=False.
• Bugfix: Validation errors instead of exceptions when serializers receive incorrect types.
• Bugfix: Validation errors instead of exceptions when related fields receive incorrect types.
• Bugfix: Handle ObjectDoesNotExist exception when serializing null reverse one-to-one

2.1.15

Date: 3rd Jan 2013

• Added PATCH support.
• Added RetrieveUpdateAPIView.
• Relation changes are now persisted in .save instead of in .restore_object.
• Remove unused internal save_m2m flag on ModelSerializer.save().
• Tweak behavior of hyperlinked fields with an explicit format suffix.
• Bugfix: Fix issue with FileField raising exception instead of validation error when files=None.
• Bugfix: Partial updates should not set default values if field is not included.

2.1.14

Date: 31st Dec 2012

• Bugfix: ModelSerializers now include reverse FK fields on creation.
• Bugfix: Model fields with blank=True are now required=False by default.
• Bugfix: Nested serializers now support nullable relationships.

Note: From 2.1.14 onwards, relational fields move out of the fields.py module and into the new relations.py module, in order to seperate them from regular data type fields, such as CharField and IntegerField.

This change will not affect user code, so long as it's following the recommended import style of from rest_framework import serializers and refering to fields using the style serializers.PrimaryKeyRelatedField.

2.1.13

Date: 28th Dec 2012

• Support configurable STATICFILES_STORAGE storage.
• Bugfix: Related fields now respect the required flag, and may be required=False.

2.1.12

Date: 21st Dec 2012

• Bugfix: Fix bug that could occur using ChoiceField.
• Bugfix: Fix exception in browseable API on DELETE.
• Bugfix: Fix issue where pk was was being set to a string if set by URL kwarg.

2.1.11

Date: 17th Dec 2012

• Bugfix: Fix issue with M2M fields in browseable API.

2.1.10

Date: 17th Dec 2012

• Bugfix: Ensure read-only fields don't have model validation applied.
• Bugfix: Fix hyperlinked fields in paginated results.

2.1.9

Date: 11th Dec 2012

• Bugfix: Fix broken nested serialization.
• Bugfix: Fix Meta.fields only working as tuple not as list.
• Bugfix: Edge case if unnecessarily specifying required=False on read only field.

2.1.8

Date: 8th Dec 2012

• Fix for creating nullable Foreign Keys with '' as well as None.
• Added null=<bool> related field option.

2.1.7

Date: 7th Dec 2012

• Serializers now properly support nullable Foreign Keys.
• Serializer validation now includes model field validation, such as uniqueness constraints.
• Support 'true' and 'false' string values for BooleanField.
• Added pickle support for serialized data.
• Support source='dotted.notation' style for nested serializers.
• Make Request.user settable.
• Bugfix: Fix RegexField to work with BrowsableAPIRenderer

2.1.6

Date: 23rd Nov 2012

• Bugfix: Unfix DjangoModelPermissions. (I am a doofus.)

2.1.5

Date: 23rd Nov 2012

• Bugfix: Fix DjangoModelPermissions.

2.1.4

Date: 22nd Nov 2012

• Support for partial updates with serializers.
• Added RegexField.
• Added SerializerMethodField.
• Serializer performance improvements.
• Added obtain_token_view to get tokens when using TokenAuthentication.
• Bugfix: Django 1.5 configurable user support for TokenAuthentication.

2.1.3

Date: 16th Nov 2012

• Added FileField and ImageField. For use with MultiPartParser.
• Added URLField and SlugField.
• Support for read_only_fields on ModelSerializer classes.
• Support for clients overriding the pagination page sizes. Use the PAGINATE_BY_PARAM setting or set the paginate_by_param attribute on a generic view.
• 201 Responses now return a 'Location' header.
• Bugfix: Serializer fields now respect max_length.

2.1.2

Date: 9th Nov 2012

• Filtering support.
• Bugfix: Support creation of objects with reverse M2M relations.

2.1.1

Date: 7th Nov 2012

• Support use of HTML exception templates. Eg. 403.html
• Hyperlinked fields take optional slug_field, slug_url_kwarg and pk_url_kwarg arguments.
• Bugfix: Deal with optional trailing slashs properly when generating breadcrumbs.
• Bugfix: Make textareas same width as other fields in browsable API.
• Private API change: .get_serializer now uses same instance and data ordering as serializer initialization.

2.1.0

Date: 5th Nov 2012

Warning: Please read this thread regarding the instance and data keyword args before updating to 2.1.0.

• Serializer instance and data keyword args have their position swapped.
• queryset argument is now optional on writable model fields.
• Hyperlinked related fields optionally take slug_field and slug_field_kwarg arguments.
• Support Django's cache framework.
• Minor field improvements. (Don't stringify dicts, more robust many-pk fields.)
• Bugfixes (Support choice field in Browseable API)

2.0.2

Date: 2nd Nov 2012

• Fix issues with pk related fields in the browsable API.

2.0.1

Date: 1st Nov 2012

• Add support for relational fields in the browsable API.
• Added SlugRelatedField and ManySlugRelatedField.
• If PUT creates an instance return '201 Created', instead of '200 OK'.

2.0.0

Date: 30th Oct 2012

• Redesign of core components.
• Fix all of the things.

License

Copyright (c) 2011-2013, Tom Christie All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.