Django REST Framework: API in a few minutes in Python

In this tutorial, I will show you a quickstart to have your first API up and running in minutes.

The Django REST Framework is a powerful toolkit for building APIs on top of the Django Framework.

I’m going to use Django Framework 3 and assume you have the latest version of Python 3 installed. I did this tutorial with Python 3.8.1.

Environment

On a terminal, create a folder with your project name enter in it.

mkdir myproject
cd myproject

Create a virtual environment to work on.

python3 -m venv venv

Activate the virtual environment.

. venv/bin/activate

Check for the (venv) at the beginning of the command line, it indicates the virtual environment started successfully.

Install Django Framework

Use pip to install the Django Framework.

pip install django

Your output should be similar to this.

Start your first project with the django-admin cli.

Mind the . to create the structure in the current directory.

django-admin startproject myfirstapi .

Then use the manage.py to create the database with the migrate parameter.

python manage.py migrate

Your output should be similar to this.

Create a super user to use the admin panel.

python manage.py createsuperuser

User admin and password 123, it\’s going to complain about the password being too simple, just agree.

Finally, run the server.

python manage.py runserver

If everything was alright, your output should be similar to this.

Check http://localhost:8000 in a browser.

Enter http://localhost:8000/admin in a browser.

Great! Now you have Django up and running.

Install Django Rest Framework

CTRL-C on the terminal to shutdown the server.

Use pip to install the Django Rest Framework

pip install djangorestframework

The output of the installation should be similar to this.

## Create the app

Create your first app named person.

manage.py startapp person

Open myproject folder in some editor, I use VSCode.

settings.py

In settings.py, at the end of INSTALLED_APPS, add:

    'person',
    'rest_framework',

Like so:

models.py

Inside the person folder, openmodels.py and create a Person class:

from django.db import models

class Person(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    surname = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    address = models.CharField(max_length=200)

    def __str__(self):
        return self.name

serializers.py

In the same level of models.py create a serializers.py with the following content:

from rest_framework import serializers
from .models import Person

class PersonSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = Person
        fields = ['id', 'name', 'surname', 'address']

views.py

In views.py, write the following code:

from rest_framework import viewsets
from .models import Person
from .serializers import PersonSerializer

class PersonViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    queryset = Person.objects.all()
    serializer_class = PersonSerializer

admin.py

In admin.py, register our class to appear in the admin panel.

from django.contrib import admin
from .models import Person

admin.site.register(Person)

urls.py

In urls.py, create the routing for our API in the /persons:

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path, include
from rest_framework import routers
from person.views import PersonViewSet

router = routers.DefaultRouter()
router.register(r'persons', PersonViewSet)

urlpatterns = [
    path('', include(router.urls)),
    path('api-auth/', include('rest_framework.urls', namespace='rest_framework')),
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
]