Tastypie, non-orm endpoints - django

Question

I'm trying to figure out if it makes sense to create non-orm endpoints for my api. I've seen the "Using Tastypie With Non-ORM Data Sources" section of the Docs, but I'm thinking more about processing forms and such. For example: Passing data to an end point that would process and send email. Im not gonna save anything to the db, I just want to validate the form and send it. Am I missing something in the docs or am I just barking up the wrong tree?

Answer 1

I think you can just define a function in your views.py and handle the request without it really using tastypie:
Here's an example for registering a new user to to a Django webapp; you can probably repurpose it to send an e-mail instead by processing the form data from the request.
# In views.py:
...
from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.contrib.auth.models import User, Group
from django.contrib.auth import authenticate
from django.http import Http404
from django.utils import timezone
from models import *
from api import *
from django.utils import simplejson
...
# REST endpoint for user registration
# Enforces server-side mediation (input validation)
# On failure, raises Http404
# On success, redirects to registration success page
def register_user(request):
if request.method != 'POST':
raise Http404('Only POSTs are allowed')
# acquire params
username = request.POST['username']
password = request.POST['password']
repeatpw = request.POST['repeatpw']
first_name = request.POST['first_name']
last_name = request.POST['last_name']
# Server-side mediation to check for invalid input
if username == '' or username is None:
raise Http404('Server-side mediation: Invalid Username')
if len(username) > 30:
raise Http404('Server-side mediation: username must be 30 characters or fewer')
if len(first_name) > 30:
raise Http404('Server-side mediation: first name must be 30 characters or fewer')
if len(last_name) > 30:
raise Http404('Server-side mediation: last name msut be 30 characters or fewer')
if len(password) < 4:
raise Http404('Server-side mediation: Password too short')
if password != repeatpw:
raise Http404('Server-side mediation: Password Mismatch')
# This try-except block checks existence of username conflict
try:
test_user_exists = User.objects.get(username__exact=username)
if test_user_exists != None:
raise Http404('Server-side mediation: Username exists')
except User.DoesNotExist:
pass
# Input passes all tests, proceed with user creation
user = User.objects.create_user(username, 'default#nomail.com', password)
group = Group.objects.get(name='Standard')
user.first_name = first_name
user.last_name = last_name
user.groups.add(group)
user.is_staff = False
user.save()
# Build confirmation JSON
confirmation = {
'action': 'register_user',
'username': username,
'success': 'yes',
}
json_return = simplejson.dumps(confirmation)
# return JSON of the success confirmation
return HttpResponse(json_return, mimetype='application/json')