DRF | Django REST Framework

The de-facto standard for building REST APIs with Django. Also known as DRF.

Viewsets

• A viewset¹ is DRF’s version of a controller (Rails style)

Serializers

Definition

Serializers² allow complex data such as querysets and model instances to be converted to native Python datatypes that can then be easily rendered into JSON, XML or other content types. Serializers also provide deserialization, allowing parsed data to be converted back into complex types, after first validating the incoming data.

• Hyperlinked Fields² use a lookup_field attribute (found in Meta.extra_kwargs). It defaults to pk.
• The DRF docs advise that you leverage repr on the HyperlinkedModelSerializer class in the django shell.

Footnotes

1. Viewsets - Django REST Framework. https://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/viewsets/#viewsets. Accessed 31 May 2024. ↩

2. Serializers - Django REST Framework. https://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/serializers/. Accessed 31 May 2024. ↩ ↩²