5. Developing RESTful APIs with Flask | Building RESTful Python Web Services

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Building RESTful Python Web Services

By : Gastón C. Hillar

4 (5)

Building RESTful Python Web Services

4 (5)

By: Gastón C. Hillar

Overview of this book

Python is the language of choice for millions of developers worldwide, due to its gentle learning curve as well as its vast applications in day-to-day programming. It serves the purpose of building great web services in the RESTful architecture. This book will show you the best tools you can use to build your own web services. Learn how to develop RESTful APIs using the popular Python frameworks and all the necessary stacks with Python, Django, Flask, and Tornado, combined with related libraries and tools. We will dive deep into each of these frameworks to build various web services, and will provide use cases and best practices on when to use a particular framework to get the best results. We will show you everything required to successfully develop RESTful APIs with the four frameworks such as request handling, URL mapping, serialization, validation, authentication, authorization, versioning, ORMs, databases, custom code for models and views, and asynchronous callbacks. At the end of each framework, we will add authentication and security to the RESTful APIs and prepare tests for it. By the end of the book, you will have a deep understanding of the stacks needed to build RESTful web services.

Preface

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

1. Developing RESTful APIs with Django

1. Developing RESTful APIs with Django

Designing a RESTful API to interact with a simple SQLite database

Understanding the tasks performed by each HTTP method

Working with lightweight virtual environments

Setting up the virtual environment with Django REST framework

Creating the models

Managing serialization and deserialization

Writing API views

Making HTTP requests to the API

Test your knowledge

Summary

2. Working with Class-Based Views and Hyperlinked APIs in Django

2. Working with Class-Based Views and Hyperlinked APIs in Django

Using model serializers to eliminate duplicate code

Working with wrappers to write API views

Using the default parsing and rendering options and move beyond JSON

Browsing the API

Designing a RESTful API to interact with a complex PostgreSQL database

Understanding the tasks performed by each HTTP method

Declaring relationships with the models

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

Creating and retrieving related resources

Test your knowledge

Summary

3. Improving and Adding Authentication to an API With Django

3. Improving and Adding Authentication to an API 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

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

4. Throttling, Filtering, Testing, and Deploying an API with Django

4. Throttling, Filtering, Testing, and Deploying an API with Django

Understanding throttling classes

Configuring throttling policies

Testing throttling policies

Understanding filtering, searching, and ordering classes

Configuring filtering, searching, and ordering for views

Testing filtering, searching, and ordering

Filtering, searching, and ordering in the Browsable API

Setting up unit tests

Writing a first round of unit tests

Running unit tests and checking testing coverage

Improving testing coverage

Understanding strategies for deployments and scalability

Test your knowledge

Summary

5. Developing RESTful APIs with Flask

5. Developing RESTful APIs with Flask

Designing a RESTful API to interact with a simple data source

Understanding the tasks performed by each HTTP method

Setting up a virtual environment with Flask and Flask-RESTful

Declaring status codes for the responses

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

6. Working with Models, SQLAlchemy, and Hyperlinked APIs in Flask

6. Working with Models, SQLAlchemy, and Hyperlinked APIs in Flask

Designing a RESTful API to interact with a PostgreSQL database

Understanding the tasks performed by each HTTP method

Installing packages to simplify our common tasks

Creating and configuring the database

Creating models with their relationships

Creating schemas to validate, serialize, and deserialize models

Combining blueprints with resourceful routing

Registering the blueprint and running migrations

Creating and retrieving related resources

Test your knowledge

Summary

7. Improving and Adding Authentication to an API with Flask

7. Improving and Adding Authentication to an API with Flask

Improving unique constraints in the models

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 a 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

8. Testing and Deploying an API with Flask

8. Testing and Deploying an API with Flask

Setting up unit tests

Writing a first round of unit tests

Running unit tests with nose2 and checking testing coverage

Improving testing coverage

Understanding strategies for deployments and scalability

Test your knowledge

Summary

9. Developing RESTful APIs with Tornado

9. Developing RESTful APIs with Tornado

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

Declaring status codes for the responses

Creating the 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

10. Working with Asynchronous Code, Testing, and Deploying an API with Tornado

10. 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

Writing a first round of unit tests

Running unit tests with nose2 and checking testing coverage

Improving testing coverage

Other Python Web frameworks for building RESTful APIs

Test your knowledge

Summary

11. Exercise Answers

Chapter 1, Developing RESTful APIs with Django

Chapter 2, Working with Class-Based Views and Hyperlinked APIs in Django

Chapter 3, Improving and Adding Authentication to an API With Django

Chapter 4, Throttling, Filtering, Testing, and Deploying an API with Django

Chapter 5, Developing RESTful APIs with Flask

Chapter 6, Working with Models, SQLAlchemy, and Hyperlinked APIs in Flask

Chapter 7, Improving and Adding Authentication to an API with Flask

Chapter 8, Testing and Deploying an API with Flask

Chapter 9, Developing RESTful APIs with Tornado

Chapter 10, Working with Asynchronous Code, Testing, and Deploying an API with Tornado

Test your knowledge

Flask-RESTful uses which of the following as the main building block for a RESTful API?
1. Resources built on top of Flask pluggable views
2. Statuses built on top of Flask resource views.
3. Resources built on top of Flask pluggable controllers.
In order to be able to process an HTTP POST request on a resource, we must declare a method with the following name in a subclass of flask_restful.Resource.
1. post_restful
2. post_method
3. post
In order to be able to process an HTTP GET request on a resource, we must declare a method with the following name in a subclass of flask_restful.Resource.
1. get_restful
2. get_method
3. get
A subclass of flask_restful.Resource represents:
1. A controller resource.
2. A RESTful resource.
3. A single RESTful HTTP verb.
If we use the @marshal_with decorator with message_fields as an argument, the decorator will:
1. Apply the field filtering and output formatting specified in message_fields to the appropriate instance.
2. Apply the field filtering specified in message_fields...

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