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.

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Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Title Page
Title Page
Dedication
Dedication
About Packt
About Packt
Contributors
Contributors
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Developing RESTful APIs and Microservices with Flask 1.0.2
Developing RESTful APIs and Microservices with Flask 1.0.2
Designing a RESTful API to interact with a simple data source
Understanding the tasks performed by each HTTP method
Understanding microservices
Working with lightweight virtual environments
Setting up a virtual environment with Flask and Flask-RESTful
Declaring status codes for the responses with an enumerable
Creating the model
Using a dictionary as a repository
Configuring output fields
Working with resourceful routing on top of Flask pluggable views
Configuring resource routing and endpoints
Making HTTP requests to the Flask API
Test your knowledge
Summary
2
Working with Models, SQLAlchemy, and Hyperlinked APIs in Flask
Working with Models, SQLAlchemy, and Hyperlinked APIs in Flask
Designing a RESTful API to interact with a PostgreSQL 10.5 database
Understanding the tasks performed by each HTTP method
Installing packages with the requirements.txt file to simplify our common tasks
Creating the database
Configuring the database
Creating models with their relationships
Creating schemas to validate, serialize, and deserialize models
Combining blueprints with resourceful routing
Understanding and configuring resourceful routing
Registering the blueprint and running migrations
Verifying the contents of the PostgreSQL database
Creating and retrieving related resources
Test your knowledge
Summary
3
Improving Our API and Adding Authentication to it with Flask
Improving Our API and Adding Authentication to it with Flask
Improving unique constraints in the models
Understanding the differences between the PUT and the PATCH methods
Updating fields for a resource with the PATCH method
Coding a generic pagination class
Adding pagination features
Understanding the steps to add authentication and permissions
Adding a user model
Creating schemas to validate, serialize, and deserialize users
Adding authentication to resources
Creating resource classes to handle users
Running migrations to generate the user table
Composing requests with the necessary authentication
Test your knowledge
Summary
4
Testing and Deploying an API in a Microservice with Flask
Testing and Deploying an API in a Microservice with Flask
Setting up unit tests with pytest
Creating a database for testing
Creating fixtures to perform setup and teardown tasks for running clean tests
Writing the first round of unit tests
Running unit tests with pytest and checking testing coverage
Improving testing coverage
Understanding strategies for deployments and scalability
Test your knowledge
Summary
5
Developing RESTful APIs with Django 2.1
Developing RESTful APIs with Django 2.1
Designing a RESTful API to interact with a simple SQLite database
Understanding the tasks performed by each HTTP method
Setting up the virtual environment with Django REST framework
Creating the models
Managing serialization and deserialization
Understanding status codes for the responses
Writing API views
Making HTTP requests to the Django API
Test your knowledge
Summary
6
Working with Class-Based Views and Hyperlinked APIs in Django 2.1
Working with Class-Based Views and Hyperlinked APIs in Django 2.1
Using model serializers to eliminate duplicate code
Working with wrappers to write API views
Using the default parsing and rendering options and moving beyond JSON
Browsing the API
Designing a RESTful API to interact with a complex PostgreSQL 10.5 database
Understanding the tasks performed by each HTTP method
Declaring relationships with the models
Installing packages with the requirements.txt file to work with PostgreSQL
Configuring the database
Running migrations
Verifying the contents of the PostgreSQL database
Managing serialization and deserialization with relationships and hyperlinks
Creating class-based views and using generic classes
Taking advantage of generic class-based views
Working with endpoints for the API
Browsing an API with relationships
Creating and retrieving related resources
Test your knowledge
Summary
7
Improving Our API and Adding Authentication to it with Django
Improving Our API and Adding Authentication to it with Django
Adding unique constraints to the models
Updating a single field for a resource with the PATCH method
Taking advantage of pagination
Customizing pagination classes
Understanding authentication, permissions, and throttling
Adding security-related data to the models
Creating a customized permission class for object-level permissions
Persisting the user that makes a request and configuring permission policies
Setting a default value for a new required field in migrations
Composing requests with the necessary authentication
Browsing the API with authentication credentials
Test your knowledge
Summary
8
Throttling, Filtering, Testing, and Deploying an API with Django 2.1
Throttling, Filtering, Testing, and Deploying an API with Django 2.1
Installing packages with the requirements.txt file to work with filters, throttling, and tests
Understanding filtering, searching, and ordering classes
Configuring filtering, searching, and ordering for views
Executing HTTP requests to test filtering, searching, and ordering
Filtering, searching and ordering in the Browsable API
Understanding throttling classes and goals
Configuring throttling policies
Executing HTTP requests to test throttling policies
Setting up unit tests with pytest
Writing the first round of unit tests
Running unit tests with pytest
Improving testing coverage
Running Django RESTful APIs on the cloud
Test your knowledge
Summary
9
Developing RESTful APIs with Pyramid 1.10
Developing RESTful APIs with Pyramid 1.10
Designing a RESTful API to interact with a simple data source
Setting up the virtual environment with Pyramid 1.10
Creating a new Pyramid project based on a template
Creating the model
Using a dictionary as a repository
Creating a Marshmallow schema to validate, serialize, and deserialize the model
Working with view callables and view configurations
Understanding and configuring view handlers
Making HTTP requests to the API with command-line tools
Test your knowledge
Summary
10
Developing RESTful APIs with Tornado 5.1.1
Developing RESTful APIs with Tornado 5.1.1
Designing a RESTful API to interact with slow sensors and actuators
Understanding the tasks performed by each HTTP method
Setting up a virtual environment with Tornado 5.1.1
Creating classes that represent a drone
Writing request handlers
Mapping URL patterns to request handlers
Making HTTP requests to the Tornado API
Test your knowledge
Summary
11
Working with Asynchronous Code, Testing, and Deploying an API with Tornado
Working with Asynchronous Code, Testing, and Deploying an API with Tornado
Understanding synchronous and asynchronous execution
Refactoring code to take advantage of asynchronous decorators
Mapping URL patterns to asynchronous request handlers
Making HTTP requests to the Tornado non-blocking API
Setting up unit tests with pytest
Writing the first round of unit tests
Running unit tests with pytest and checking testing coverage
Improving testing coverage
Understanding strategies for deploying Tornado APIs to the cloud
Test your knowledge
Summary
Assessment
Assessment
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Other Books You May Enjoy
Other Books You May Enjoy
Leave a review - let other readers know what you think
Index
Index

Summary

In this chapter, we designed a RESTful API to interact with a simple dictionary that acted as a data repository and performed CRUD operations with notifications, to be used as a baseline for a microservice. We defined the requirements for our API and understood the tasks performed by each HTTP method. We set up a virtual environment with Flask and Flask-RESTful. We followed best practices to generate a reproducible virtual environment.

We created a model to represent and persist notifications. We learned how to configure the serialization of notifications into JSON representations with the features included in Flask-RESTful. We wrote classes that represent resources and process the different HTTP requests, and we configured the URL patterns to route URLs to classes.

Finally, we started the Flask development server and we used command-line tools to compose and send HTTP requests to our RESTful API and analyzed how each HTTP requests was processed in our code. We also worked with many useful GUI tools to compose and send HTTP requests.

Now that we understand the basics of the combination of Flask and Flask-RESTful to create RESTful APIs that we can encapsulate in microservices, in the next chapter, we will expand the capabilities of the RESTful Web API by taking advantage of the advanced features included in Flask-RESTful and related ORMs.

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