Adding REST to Django
PythonDjangoApacheRestPython Problem Overview
I've got a Django application that works nicely. I'm adding REST services. I'm looking for some additional input on my REST strategy.
Here are some examples of things I'm wringing my hands over.
- Right now, I'm using the Django-REST API with a pile of patches.
- I'm thinking of falling back to simply writing view functions in Django that return JSON results.
- I can also see filtering the REST requests in Apache and routing them to a separate, non-Django server instance.
Please nominate one approach per answer so we can vote them up or down.
Python Solutions
Solution 1 - Python
> I'm thinking of falling back to simply > writing view functions in Django that > return JSON results.
- Explicit
- Portable to other frameworks
- Doesn't require patching Django
Solution 2 - Python
Please note that REST does not just mean JSON results. REST essentially means exposing a resource-oriented API over native but full-fledged HTTP. I am not an expert on REST, but here are a few of the things Rails is doing.
- URLs should be good, simple names for resources
- Use the right HTTP methods
- HEAD, GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE
- Optionally with an override (form parameter '_method' will override HTTP request-method)
- Support content-type negotiation via Accept request-header
- Optionally with an override (filename extension in the URL will override MIME-type in the Accept request-header)
- Available content types should include XML, XHTML, HTML, JSON, YAML, and many others as appropriate
For example, to get the native HTTP support going, the server should respond to
GET /account/profile HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
Accept: application/json
as it would respond to
GET /account/profile.json HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
And it should respond to
PUT /account/profile HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
var=value
as it would respond to
POST /account/profile HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
_method=PUT&var=value
Solution 3 - Python
For anyone else looking for a very decent, pluggable API application for Django, make sure you checkout jespern's django-piston which is used internally at BitBucket.
It's well maintained, has a great following and some cool forks which do things like add support for pagination and other authentication methods (OAuth is supported out of the box).
Updated to reflect that django-piston is no longer maintained.
Solution 4 - Python
Tastypie is also a newly emerging REST framework for Django. It has the same mindset as pistons, and removes a lot of boilerplate coding.
Solution 5 - Python
My answer to the same question here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2488325/framework-for-implementing-rest-web-service-in-django/6535255#6535255
The short version is, have a look at https://github.com/jgorset/django-respite/ a REST framework in its early days, but we use it every day on client projects.
Solution 6 - Python
Scrap the Django REST api and come up with your own open source project that others can contribute to. I would be willing to contribute. I have some code that is based on the forms api to do REST.
Solution 7 - Python
> I'm thinking of falling back to simply > writing view functions in Django that > return JSON results.
I would go with that ..
Ali A summed it pretty well.
The main point for me is beign explicit. I would avoid using a function that automatically converts an object into json, what if the object has a reference to a user and somehow the password (even if it's hashed) go into the json snippit?
Solution 8 - Python
I ended up going with my own REST API framework for Django (that I'd love to get rid of if I can find a workable alternative), with a few custom views thrown in for corner cases I didn't want to deal with. It's worked out ok.
So a combination of 1 and 2; without some form of framework you'll end up writing the same boilerplate for the common cases.
I've also done a few stand-alone APIs. I like having them as stand-alone services, but the very fact that they stand alone from the rest of the code leads to them getting neglected. No technical reason; simply out-of-sight, out-of-mind.
What I'd really like to see is an approach that unifies Django forms and REST APIs, as they often share a lot of logic. Conceptually if your app exposes something in HTML it likely wants to expose it programmatically as well.
Solution 9 - Python
You could take look at django-dynamicresponse, which is a lightweight framework for adding REST API with JSON to your Django applications.
It requires minimal changes to add API support to existing Django apps, and makes it straight-forward to build-in API from the start in new projects.
Basically, it includes middleware support for parsing JSON into request.POST, in addition to serializing the returned context to JSON or rendering a template/redirecting conditionally based on the request type.
Solution 10 - Python
you could try making a generic functions that process the data (like parand mentioned) which you can call from the views that generate the web pages, as well as those that generate the json/xml/whatever
Solution 11 - Python
TastyPie looks quite interesting and promising. It goes well with Django.