django-rest-framework/docs/api-guide/generic-views.md

Generic views

Django’s generic views... were developed as a shortcut for common usage patterns... They take certain common idioms and patterns found in view development and abstract them so that you can quickly write common views of data without having to repeat yourself.

— Django Documentation

One of the key benefits of class based views is the way they allow you to compose bits of reusable behaviour. REST framework takes advantage of this by providing a number of pre-built views that provide for commonly used patterns.

Example

...

---

API Reference

ListAPIView

Used for read-write endpoints to represent a collection of model instances.

Provides a get method handler.

ListCreateAPIView

Used for read-write endpoints to represent a collection of model instances.

Provides get and post method handlers.

RetrieveAPIView

Used for read-only endpoints to represent a single model instance.

Provides a get method handler.

RetrieveUpdateDestroyAPIView

Used for read-write endpoints to represent a single model instance.

Provides get, put and delete method handlers.

---

Base views

BaseAPIView

Extends REST framework's APIView class, adding support for serialization of model instances and model querysets.

MultipleObjectBaseAPIView

Provides a base view for acting on a single object, by combining REST framework's APIView, and Django's MultipleObjectMixin.

See also: ccbv.co.uk documentation for MultipleObjectMixin.

SingleObjectBaseAPIView

Provides a base view for acting on a single object, by combining REST framework's APIView, and Django's SingleObjectMixin.

See also: ccbv.co.uk documentation for SingleObjectMixin.

---

Mixins

The mixin classes provide the actions that are used

ListModelMixin

Provides a .list(request, *args, **kwargs) method, that implements listing a queryset.

CreateModelMixin

Provides a .create(request, *args, **kwargs) method, that implements creating and saving a new model instance.

RetrieveModelMixin

Provides a .retrieve(request, *args, **kwargs) method, that implements returning an existing model instance in a response.

UpdateModelMixin

Provides a .update(request, *args, **kwargs) method, that implements updating and saving an existing model instance.

DestroyModelMixin

Provides a .destroy(request, *args, **kwargs) method, that implements deletion of an existing model instance.

MetadataMixin

Provides a .metadata(request, *args, **kwargs) method, that returns a response containing metadata about the view.