Book Image

Hands-On RESTful Python Web Services - Second Edition

By : Gaston C. Hillar
1 (1)
Book Image

Hands-On RESTful Python Web Services - Second Edition

1 (1)
By: Gaston C. Hillar

Overview of this book

Python is the language of choice for millions of developers worldwide that builds great web services in RESTful architecture. This second edition of Hands-On RESTful Python Web Services will cover the best tools you can use to build engaging web services. This book shows you how to develop RESTful APIs using the most popular Python frameworks and all the necessary stacks with Python, combined with related libraries and tools. You’ll learn to incorporate all new features of Python 3.7, Flask 1.0.2, Django 2.1, Tornado 5.1, and also a new framework, Pyramid. As you advance through the chapters, you will get to grips with each of these frameworks to build various web services, and be shown use cases and best practices covering when to use a particular framework. You’ll then successfully develop RESTful APIs with all frameworks and understand how each framework processes HTTP requests and routes URLs. You’ll also discover best practices for validation, serialization, and deserialization. In the concluding chapters, you will take advantage of specific features available in certain frameworks such as integrated ORMs, built-in authorization and authentication, and work with asynchronous code. At the end of each framework, you will write tests for RESTful APIs and improve code coverage. By the end of the book, you will have gained a deep understanding of the stacks needed to build RESTful web services.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Title Page
Dedication
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Index

Chapter 3. Improving Our API and Adding Authentication to it with Flask

In this chapter, we will improve the capabilities of the RESTful API that we started in the previous chapter and we will add authentication-related security to it. We will do the following:

  • Improve unique constraints in the models
  • Understand the differences between the PUT and the PATCH methods
  • Update fields for a resource with the PATCH method
  • Code a generic pagination class
  • Add pagination features to the API
  • Understand the steps to add authentication and permissions
  • Add a user model
  • Create a schema to validate, serialize, and deserialize users
  • Add authentication to resources
  • Create resource classes to handle users
  • Run migrations to generate the user table
  • Compose requests with the necessary authentication