🐝 Django REST Framework 🐝

Posted on Jul 15th, 2021

Today’s Topics

Today we are going to dive into the Django REST Framework.

🎯 Project

🎯 Option 1: Add an API to Habit Tracker

Add a new app to your existing Habit Tracker project and call it api. Your app should provide CRUD endpoints that return JSON responses.

By Friday afternoon, you should be able to list, create, update, and delete habits via the API.

By Monday, you should be able to complete all CRUD tasks through the API:

list habits
create a new habit
view a habit
update a habit
delete a habit
list records for a habit (this should be on the habit detail API endpoint)
create a record for a habit
update a record for a habit
delete a record from a habit

Write up a list of endpoints you think you will need before you start doing this!

You should develop and test your endpoints using Insomnia. (You can also use the browsable API that DRF gives you in the browser, but you should be comfortable using Insomnia.)

🎯 Option 2: Django Library API

Link to assignment invitation. Note, this is an empty repo, so you won’t have to delete a README to start.

Create a new API-only application that lets users keep track of their books, including important information like title, author, publication date, a field that marks it as “featured”, and maybe other fields like “genre” if you want. Books should be unique by title and author (that is, you can’t have two books with the same title and author; two books with the same title is fine as long as the authors are different).

Anyone can add a new book as long as the same book is not already in the library. Only admin users can update book details and delete books.

You’ll also need a book tracking model so that users can mark a book as “want to read”, “reading”, or “read/done”. Users can also write reviews on books, which should be viewable to all users. Optionally users can take private notes on books.

You should not make forms or templates for this app, just models, urls, views, and serializers. Your views should return JSON responses.

Your app should allow users to:

list all books
list all featured books
create a book
retrieve details about a book
mark a book as want to read, reading, or read
retrieve all reviews for a book
post a review for a book
edit their own review (not delete it)

Admin users can:

update a book
mark a book as featured
delete a book
delete reviews

🚀 Whichever option you choose, the application should be deployed to Heroku.

📖 Read | 📺 Watch | 🎧 Listen

📖 DRF class-based views This talks about APIView.
📖 Class-based vs. function-based views This is about Django views in general, not specific to DRF.
📺 What You Should Know About DRF, Lacey Williams Henschel, PyCascades 2021