I want to create a webservice in a django project.
What i mean by webservice is a route which will talk with json structures instead of html.
I am wondering if a show put the webservice code in views.py or if i should create a separate file (like api.py ?). It will work on both cases, i juste want to know which is the cleanest way
I hope you want to build a web API for your application.
There are two dominant third party plugins for django
Django Rest Framework. - http://www.django-rest-framework.org/
Tastypi - http://tastypieapi.org/
Both have there pros and cons. Do some research and choose the one that best suites for your need.
Related
I want to use Django Rest Framework as an API and am looking for a way to "couple" the frontend / HTML/CSS/JS to it.
To put it in perspective, I am used to the way Django "usually" does it, by naming HTML templates and 'rendering' them when going to a particular URL.
Now, with DRF, it appears that this functionality has fallen away and everywhere I look it's just "react.js or vue.js" as the answers to consume the API.
What are my options for the front end? Can I not just do it all within the 'usual' Django framework, simply, as it was done before. And why do no resources talk about this?
Thanks, let me know if you require further info.
DRF is just additional layer for Django which help to implement API. You can use Django for render html on server side and serve it to browser. You don't need use DRF for it. But if you assume that you frontend app will be interactive, dynamic and complicated then it is not best way to solve it.
More popular approach suggest to separate it on frontend application (react or vue) and backend with REST API for interact with. It allow move all things related with UI on frontend app and only keep state on server.
By the way Django was developed for generate html on server and for site like this https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/ but world changing. Resources talk just about popular things
Hello I am tasked with translating a current Excel tool to a web application. I decided to use Python and Django. Lately I studied the Django REST framework. I have the following related questions.
Is it for such an application a good idea to first write a web REST API so that I
firstly only need to focus on the backbone of the web application. I.e. implement the PUT, POST, GET and DELETE methods and the Django models.
The second step would be to implement the user interface... But if this is a valid method how can I reuse the REST views??? I followed the REST tutorials, but they don't show how to build a nice slick user-interface on top of the REST API.
Since REST views inherit from Django, I think it's maybe not such a good idea to write a Django view which inherits from a REST Apiview? Or can I directly use an API endpoint in a template. If so where can I get some nice examples?
Writing the back-end separately using Django REST Framework is a great idea.
There is a strong architecture based on the idea of decoupling the back-end from the front-end. After you finish the project's backbone, as you are calling it, you can start creating you front-end but your don't have to use Django template rendering in that case.
You can take the pros of using REST APIs and you can use one of the good front-end frameworks or libraries as Angular and React.js.
Another advantage of this that the same API can work with mobile development and so on.
So you develop one back-end and multiple front-ends depends on your need.
Also you can read a discussion about your question on Quora: https://www.quora.com/Why-does-it-make-sense-to-separate-front-end-from-back-end
I have read a couple of articles about using new JS frameworks like Backbone.js or Ember.js
I have come up to this statement:
If I use a JS framework like Backbone.js/Ember.js, I then move the logic from the back-end (Django) to the front-end.
Therefore, will Django actually be used only for its Models?
Does that mean that Django Views and Django Template are not needed anymore and the Django back-end is kinda turn into a "basic" REST API that will be consumed by the front end.
Do you agree? Is it then the purpose of Django in this case?
Is turning the django backend into a REST API one of the most suitable use case when using a framework like Backbone.js/Ember.js for the front-end?
Thanks.
Django is perfectly fine to be used this way, you still get the admin, the models, the orm and all the third-party plugins. However, it isn't blazingly fast, so if you're doing simple document level, non-relational REST mapping, you might wan't to look into node.js and mongoDB for instance.
If you're sticking with django (like we are, we like the structure it gives us), you can use one of the REST plugins:
Django Rest Framework A perfect match since DRF 2.0, under very active development!
Django Tastypie (checkout backbone-tastypie.js for integration)
Django Piston (might be a bit stale or has development picked up lately?)
If you only want to work with frontend development, checkout the Backend-as-a-Service places like cloudmine.me or firebase.com that handle all backend stuff for you, for a price of course.
Django may seem unnecessary once you start thinking about single page solutions and Javascript applications, but if you want your site to be 'fail proof' it wouldn't be impossible to develop both a client side Javascript version of the site as well as a backend django side incase the user, or your site's javascript, fails at some level. Of course this requires creating your site twice, and probably isn't needed in the age of modern browsers, but such would be one of the few instances where you would mix the two for a complete solution.
Yes, that's about it. You can use it to manage authentication to resources and such and maybe use a main view for your application but you won't need to use the server side templating since these frameworks are made to work with json/xml response.
That's why a lot of people are moving to lighter backend/backbone or ember combo instead of a complete solution like django. You can also use your django for caching json response which makes your application appears faster.
We are doing that and use django-piston to make it easier on you.
Normally you make your entire website under Django and only one page will be a "single app page" using backbone.js, usually that page is a very interactive page, with lots of small updates that occur frequently and need to be shown very fast to the user. This page, because of the large number of changes and user interactions is constructed on the client-side so that you are using his PC resources and not the server's, the rest of the pages can use django because it offers you a very stable and secure framework for the server-side
According to the documentation, an app is a module which deals a well defined operation.
Is it correct to think about an app as a REST-based service? or is it mandatory to use some framework like piston or tastypie to create a RESTful web service around an app?
Generally, no. Django app is really just a python module, with some interfaces to django internals like models, urls, admin discovery etc.
To implement REST, you still have to manage network communications via views, and this is where you either write your own code or use the help of tastypie/piston/etc.
Please do have a look at django-rest-framework, I just stepped over from tastypie to this new framework, works great!
http://django-rest-framework.org/
Especially the class based views and the browsable api! and may other advantages (e..g. to upload images)
And to answer your question:
The rest-base service is an extra entry to your webapp.
I made some api's for some projects using the django-rest-framework, most project members were surprised they got a webapp as an extra, while it was actually the other way around. You make a django app (with views models and urls) and on top off that you make the api.
I would like to create an oauth (REST) API the same way Twitter or Foursquare does.
I found this website http://djangopackages.com/ which is really great and has several packages but I would like some opinions on which is the best package, etc...
I would like, for example, let people to allow permission to 3rd party apps to access their data (Using API Keys, etc...)
Thanks a lot!
Django is a wonderful web framework. It helpes you in many ways making rich web applications. It helps you starting in form handling and ending in templating.
However in your case if your intension is just to make an awesome API such as of Twitter or Foursquare, you have to ask yourself if you need all this help Django provides. For example, are you ever going to use any templates in the API or process a for submittions. The answer is probably not...
So if you need a very flexible framework to developer an API, I would highly recommend to take a look into Pyramid. It is very similar to Django, however does not have all this extra cludder which is not necessary for an API.
However if your application needs both a rich user interface and an API or you just want to use Django, like Ulusses suggested, then I think TastyPie is for you. It is a great library where you can have a running API in no time. I use it all the time and it is very flexible. ReadTheDocs uses tastypie.
Another API lib is piston. I haven't used it so can't judge if its better or worse then tastypie. Bitbucket however uses it.
You can check out https://github.com/toastdriven/django-tastypie or https://bitbucket.org/jespern/django-piston/wiki/Home.
You can achieve what you want with both, check out on the documentation the one that suits you best.
I use Django REST framework. It is awesome.
Piston is dead. Tastypie is awesone, but works with Django only. There are pros and cons with Django as well as Pyramid. If you need great ORM, sqlalchemy is only one, and there is no good example of using it with Django, so in this case you have Flask, Bottle or Pyramid. Django ORM is really not at that par.
If you choose Pyramid, you will have to write a lot of things, and the framework is just skinned boneless cat. You need to assemble and configure every block, seems frustrating to many including me.