Can Django class base view handle REST API? - django

Question

I am using Django generic view. For some reasons, I am not allowed to use other Rest Framework (e.g. Tastypie) to handle rest API.
I would like to see if I can use the generic view that can deal with CRUD http method.
Can anyone point me to an example?
So far my url is like this:
url(r'^user/$', views.UserView.as_view(), name='user'),
I am not sure how can one url handle all CRUD methods.
Thanks.

Answer 1

Here is an example of how it can be done, it really depends on your requirements and as you have not supplied any I will just talk about my use case instead which is EXTJS.
Here is the url.py, the action is 'c' for create and 'd' for delete. objtype is the name of the model and app is the application in which the model can be found (you might not need that).
url(r'^model_json/(?P<action>[a-z]+)/(?P<objtype>[A-Za-z0-9-_]+)', 'jsonhelper.views.flatdata_cud', {'ext':True,'app':rhinomodels }, name = 'model_cud_json'),
The URL from EXTjs will look this this for creating a new User. Of cause the User details are posted as json data which is available in the HTTP POST.
127.0.0.1:8000/model_json/c/User
Here is my code. get_fk_model is an internal function that will return the associated model of a fk object or None if its not of a fk type.
import json
#login_required
#csrf_exempt
def flatdata_cud(request, objtype, action, id = None, idfield = None, follow_related = False, app = None):
""" Implements the Create Update and Delete functions for ExtJS data store porxy's """
djmodel = getattr(app, objtype)
if not djmodel:
return errorMsg("Model not found, %s"%(objtype))
if request.method != 'POST':
return errorMsg("Must be a post action, %s"%(request.method))
data = json.loads(request.body)
if type(data) == dict:
data = [data,]
kwargs = {}
id_list = []
def check_value(data):
for k in data:
fkmodel = get_fk_model(djmodel, k)
if fkmodel: # we have a ForeignKey, change value to be an object of this type
data[k] = fkmodel.objects.get(id = data[k] )
return data
for d in data:
d = check_value(d)
id = None
if action == 'c':
rec = djmodel()
if d.has_key('id'): d.pop('id')
else:
id = d.pop('id')
rec = djmodel.objects.get(id = id)
if action == 'd':
rec.delete()
else:
for i in d.keys():
setattr(rec, i, d[i])
rec.save()
id_list.append( id if id else rec.id )
kwargs['id__in'] = id_list
return flatdata(request, objtype, id = id, idfield = idfield, follow_related = follow_related, add_filter = kwargs, app = app)
As the last step I return flatdata which returns to EXTjs a new json object of how the object look after the update.