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Django RESTful Web Services

By : Gaston C. Hillar

3.1 (8)

Buy this Book

Django RESTful Web Services

3.1 (8)

By: Gaston C. Hillar

Buy this Book

Overview of this book

Django is a Python web framework that makes the web development process very easy. It reduces the amount of trivial code, which simplifies the creation of web applications and results in faster development. It is very powerful and a great choice for creating RESTful web services. If you are a Python developer and want to efficiently create RESTful web services with Django for your apps, then this is the right book for you. The book starts off by showing you how to install and configure the environment, required software, and tools to create RESTful web services with Django and the Django REST framework. We then move on to working with advanced serialization and migrations to interact with SQLite and non-SQL data sources. We will use the features included in the Django REST framework to improve our simple web service. Further, we will create API views to process diverse HTTP requests on objects, go through relationships and hyperlinked API management, and then discover the necessary steps to include security and permissions related to data models and APIs. We will also apply throttling rules and run tests to check that versioning works as expected. Next we will run automated tests to improve code coverage. By the end of the book, you will be able to build RESTful web services with Django.

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

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Installing the Required Software and Tools

Creating a virtual environment with Python 3.x and PEP 405

Installing Django and Django REST frameworks in an isolated environment

Creating an app with Django

Installing tools

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Summary

Working with Models, Migrations, Serialization, and Deserialization

Defining the requirements for our first RESTful Web Service

Creating our first model

Running our initial migration

Analyzing the database

Controlling, serialization, and deserialization

Working with the Django shell and diving deeply into serialization and deserialization

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Summary

Creating API Views

Creating Django views combined with serializer classes

Understanding CRUD operations with Django views and the request methods

Routing URLs to Django views and functions

Launching Django's development server

Making HTTP POST requests with Postman

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Summary

Using Generalized Behavior from the APIView Class

Taking advantage of model serializers

Understanding accepted and returned content types

Making unsupported HTTP OPTIONS requests with command-line tools

Understanding decorators that work as wrappers

Using decorators to enable different parsers and renderers

Taking advantage of content negotiation classes

Making supported HTTP OPTIONS requests with command-line tools

Working with different content types

Sending HTTP requests with unsupported HTTP verbs

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Summary

Understanding and Customizing the Browsable API Feature

Understanding the possibility of rendering text/HTML content

Using a web browser to work with our web service

Making HTTP GET requests with the browsable API

Making HTTP POST requests with the browsable API

Making HTTP PUT requests with the browsable API

Making HTTP OPTIONS requests with the browsable API

Making HTTP DELETE requests with the browsable API

Test your knowledge

Summary

Working with Advanced Relationships and Serialization

Defining the requirements for a complex RESTful Web Service

Creating a new app with Django

Configuring a new web service

Defining many-to-one relationships with models.ForeignKey

Installing PostgreSQL

Running migrations that generate relationships

Analyzing the database

Configuring serialization and deserialization with relationships

Defining hyperlinks with serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer

Working with class-based views

Taking advantage of generic classes and viewsets

Generalizing and mixing behavior

Working with routing and endpoints

Making requests that interact with resources that have relationships

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Summary

Using Constraints, Filtering, Searching, Ordering, and Pagination

Browsing the API with resources and relationships

Defining unique constraints

Working with unique constraints

Understanding pagination

Configuring pagination classes

Making requests that paginate results

Working with customized pagination classes

Making requests that use customized paginated results

Configuring filter backend classes

Adding filtering, searching, and ordering

Working with different types of Django filters

Making requests that filter results

Composing requests that filter and order results

Making requests that perform starts with searches

Using the browsable API to test pagination, filtering, searching, and ordering

Test your knowledge

Summary

Securing the API with Authentication and Permissions

Understanding authentication and permissions in Django, the Django REST framework, and RESTful Web Services

Learning about the authentication classes

Including security and permissions-related data to models

Working with object-level permissions via customized permission classes

Saving information about users that make requests

Setting permission policies

Creating the superuser for Django

Creating a user for Django

Making authenticated requests

Making authenticated HTTP PATCH requests with Postman

Browsing the secured API with the required authentication

Working with token-based authentication

Generating and using tokens

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Summary

Applying Throttling Rules and Versioning Management

Understanding the importance of throttling rules

Learning the purpose of the different throttling classes in the Django REST framework

Configuring throttling policies in the Django REST framework

Running tests to check that throttling policies work as expected

Understanding versioning classes

Configuring a versioning scheme

Running tests to check that versioning works as expected

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Summary

Automating Tests

Getting ready for unit testing with pytest

Writing unit tests for a RESTful Web Service

Discovering and running unit tests with pytest

Writing new unit tests to improve the tests' code coverage

Running unit tests again with pytest

Test your knowledge

Summary

Solutions

Chapter 1: Installing the Required Software and Tools

Chapter 2: Working with Models, Migrations, Serialization, and Deserialization

Chapter 3: Creating API Views

Chapter 4: Using Generalized Behavior from the APIView Class

Chapter 5: Understanding and Customizing the Browsable API Feature

Chapter 6: Working with Advanced Relationships and Serialization

Chapter 7: Using Constraints, Filtering, Searching, Ordering, and Pagination

Chapter 8: Securing the API with Authentication and Permissions

Chapter 9: Applying Throttling Rules and Versioning Management

Chapter 10: Automating Tests

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Using a web browser to work with our web service

Let's start browsing our RESTful Web Service. Open a web browser and enter http://localhost:8000/toys/. The browser will compose and send a GET request to http://localhost:8000/toys/ with text/html as the desired content type and the returned HTML web page will be rendered.

Under the hood, the web service will compose and send an HTTP GET request to http://localhost:8000/toys/ with application/json as the content type and the headers, and the JSON returned by this request will be rendered as part of the content of the web page. The following screenshot shows the rendered web page with the resource collection description, Toy List:

When we work with the browsable API, Django uses the information about the allowed methods for a resource or resource collection to render the appropriate buttons to allow us to execute the...

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