Django REST framework

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

Author: Tom Christie. Follow me on Twitter.

Support: REST framework group, or #restframework on freenode IRC.

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

Overview

Django REST framework is a powerful and flexible toolkit that makes it easy to build Web APIs.

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.

Below: Screenshot from the browseable API

Requirements

Python (2.6.5+, 2.7, 3.2, 3.3)
Django (1.3, 1.4, 1.5)

Installation

Install using pip...

pip install djangorestframework

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.

Example

Let's take a look at a quick example of using REST framework to build a simple model-backed API.

We'll create a read-write API for accessing users and groups.

Here's our project's root urls.py module:

from django.conf.urls.defaults import url, patterns, include
from django.contrib.auth.models import User, Group
from rest_framework import viewsets, routers

# ViewSets define the view behavior.
class UserViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    model = User

class GroupViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    model = Group


# Routers provide an easy way of automatically determining the URL conf
router = routers.DefaultRouter()
router.register(r'users', views.UserViewSet, name='user')
router.register(r'groups', views.GroupViewSet, name='group')


# Wire up our API using automatic URL routing.
# Additionally, we include login URLs for the browseable API.
urlpatterns = patterns('',
    url(r'^', include(router.urls)),
    url(r'^api-auth/', include('rest_framework.urls', namespace='rest_framework'))
)

Documentation

The full documentation for the project is available at http://django-rest-framework.org.

License

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.

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