Requests

If you're doing REST-based web service stuff ... you should ignore request.POST.

— Malcom Tredinnick, Django developers group

REST framework's Request class extends the standard HttpRequest, adding support for parsing multiple content types, allowing browser-based PUT, DELETE and other methods, and adding flexible per-request authentication.

.method

request.method returns the uppercased string representation of the request's HTTP method.

Browser-based PUT, DELETE and other requests are supported, and can be made by using a hidden form field named _method in a regular POST form.

.content_type

request.content, returns a string object representing the mimetype of the HTTP request's body, if one exists.

.DATA

request.DATA returns the parsed content of the request body. This is similar to the standard HttpRequest.POST attribute except that:

It supports parsing the content of HTTP methods other than POST, meaning that you can access the content of PUT and PATCH requests.
It supports parsing multiple content types, rather than just form data. For example you can handle incoming json data in the same way that you handle incoming form data.

.FILES

request.FILES returns any uploaded files that may be present in the content of the request body. This is the same as the standard HttpRequest behavior, except that the same flexible request parsing that is used for request.DATA.

This allows you to support file uploads from multiple content-types. For example you can write a parser that supports POSTing the raw content of a file, instead of using form-encoded file uploads.

.user

request.user returns a django.contrib.auth.models.User instance.

.auth

request.auth returns any additional authentication context that may not be contained in request.user. The exact behavior of request.auth depends on what authentication has been set in request.authentication. For many types of authentication this will simply be None, but it may also be an object representing a permission scope, an expiry time, or any other information that might be contained in a token-based authentication scheme.

.parsers

request.parsers should be set to a list of Parser instances that can be used to parse the content of the request body.

request.parsers may no longer be altered once request.DATA, request.FILES or request.POST have been accessed.

If you're using the djangorestframework.views.View class... [TODO]

.stream

request.stream returns a stream representing the content of the request body.

You will not typically need to access request.stream, unless you're writing a Parser class.

.authentication

request.authentication should be set to a list of Authentication instances that can be used to authenticate the request.

request.authentication may no longer be altered once request.user or request.auth have been accessed.