vishal1201 / drf-tutorial

Just my learning of the DRF

Django REST Framework Tutorial

My take on the DRF tutorial

Steps to run

1. Once cloned, cd into the project root directory'
2. Create a virtual environment to isolate our package dependencies locally, using the following commands
   1. python3 -m venv env
   2. source env/bin/activate On windows, use env\Scripts\activate
   3. pip install django
   4. pip install djangorestframework
3. Now sync your database for the first time
   1. python manage.py migrate
4. We'll also create an initial user named <username> with a password <password>. We'll authenticate as that user later.
   1. python manage.py createsuperuser --email <email_id> --username <username>
5. Once done, we are ready to start the server with the following command
   • python manage.py runserver
6. Open a web-browser with the following url - http://127.0.0.1:8000/
   1. login with the credentials configured in step 4
7. You may now browse/test the apis

Reading / Understanding / TODO Points

• Change to PostgreSQL from SQLite
• Read about django.contrib.auth.models
  • Serves as a means to implement user authentication with groups, roles, perms.
  • Also, has a lot of helpful classes like - Group, AnonymousUser, UserManager, Validator, Permission to better manage authentication flow.
  • Helpful link - User Authentication in Django
• Understand the purpose of serializers
  • Serializers in DRF are used in-place of Models in Django. They help convert complex data objects in to Python native objects and vice-versa. Serializers can be extended, overridden for behavioral fine-tuning.
  • Validators can be used with Serializers to validate fields or do combined-field validations. Reusable custom validators can be created in a special inner-class -> Meta class. E.g. UniqueValidator.
  • Helpful link - DRF Serializers
  • Why HyperlinkedModelSerializer ?
    • Uses Hyper links instead of PKs to represent relationships. The url field will be represented using a HyperlinkedIdentityField serializer field, and any relationships on the model will be represented using a HyperlinkedRelatedField serializer field
• Primary key relationship could've been used instead of hyperlinking. But HyperLinking provides good RESTful design, why?
  • Google: API links vs keys: Why you should use links, not keys, to represent relationships in APIs
  • Microsoft: RESTful web API design
• Grouping together of common views together in viewsets. Read a bit on viewsets
  • Repeated logic can be combined into a single class. In the above example, we only need to specify the queryset once, and it'll be used across multiple views.
  • By using routers, we no longer need to deal with wiring up the URL conf ourselves.
  • Helpful link - Viewsets in DRF
• Permission_classes? DONE
  • Check User Authentication in Django link given above.
• Read about router classes
  • Link - DRF Routers
• auto-generation of urlconf due to usage of viewsets instead of views and registering those with a router class. Read a bit more
  • Answered in the link above - DRF Routers
• Read a bit about settings.py file - AUTH_PASSWORD_VALIDATORS, INSTALLED_APPS,
  • Link - DRF Settings
• PageNumberPagination options
  • Link - DRF Pagination