Setting Up DRF

What is Django REST Framework (DRF)?

Before we install anything, it's crucial to understand what DRF is and why we use it. You already know Django can handle HTTP requests and return responses. So why add another library?

DRF is a powerful and flexible toolkit that builds on top of Django. It's not a replacement for Django but an extension specifically designed for building Web APIs. It simplifies many common tasks, such as:

• Serialization: Converting complex data types, like Django model instances, into formats like JSON.
• Authentication & Permissions: Providing API-specific authentication methods (like token-based authentication) and fine-grained permission controls.
• Browsable API: Automatically generating a user-friendly HTML interface for your API, which is invaluable for development and testing.

The following video provides an excellent explanation of what DRF is and how it complements Django.

Step 1: Installation

With a clear understanding of DRF's purpose, let's get it installed. As with any Python project, we will manage our dependencies within a virtual environment. Make sure your project's virtual environment is activated before proceeding.

The installation process involves using pip to install a few packages. The main package is djangorestframework, but we'll also install markdown and django-filter, which are highly recommended dependencies that enable features in DRF's browsable API.

The video below walks through the complete setup process, but we'll focus on the installation commands first.

In your terminal, run the following commands:

# Install the core framework
pip install djangorestframework

# Install packages for markdown support in the browsable API
pip install markdown

# Install for filtering support in the browsable API
pip install django-filter

Step 2: Add DRF to INSTALLED_APPS

Just like any other Django app, DRF needs to be registered with our project. We do this by adding it to the INSTALLED_APPS list in our project's settings.py file. This tells Django to recognize DRF and make its features available.

The following video segment explains this step and provides a good refresher on the purpose of the INSTALLED_APPS setting.

Your settings.py should look something like this:

# settings.py

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',

    # Third-party apps
    'rest_framework',

    # Your local apps
    # 'my_app.apps.MyAppConfig',
]

Step 3: Configure Project URLs for the Browsable API

One of the best features of DRF is its browsable API, which provides a web-based interface to view and interact with your API. To enable the login and logout functionality for this interface, we need to add some URL patterns provided by DRF to our project's main urls.py file.

This process will use the include() function, which you should be familiar with from when we organized URLs for our own apps in Module 2.

Open your project's root urls.py file (e.g., myproject/urls.py) and add the path for DRF's auth URLs.

# myproject/urls.py
from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path, include # Make sure to import include

urlpatterns = [
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
    # Add this line
    path('api-auth/', include('rest_framework.urls')),
]

The path 'api-auth/' can be customized, but this is a common convention. This tells Django that any request to /api-auth/... should be handled by the URL patterns defined within Django REST Framework.

Step 4: Verify the Installation

We're done with the setup! The final step is to run the development server and verify that everything is working correctly. A successful installation will be evident when you can access the DRF login page.

If you see a page titled "Django REST framework" with a login form, congratulations! You have successfully installed and configured DRF in your project. You won't be able to log in yet because we haven't created any API-accessible users, but the presence of this page confirms that the framework is correctly integrated.

For a quick textual reference of the core installation steps, you can also consult the official DRF tutorial.

Conclusion

In this lesson, we made the pivotal transition from traditional Django development to the world of APIs. You successfully integrated Django REST Framework, the industry-standard tool for this task.

Key Takeaways:

• Django REST Framework (DRF) is a specialized toolkit that builds on top of Django to simplify the creation of REST APIs.
• Installation requires installing the djangorestframework package via pip.
• Configuration is a two-step process:
  1. Add 'rest_framework' to the INSTALLED_APPS list in settings.py.
  2. Optionally, include rest_framework.urls in your project's urls.py to enable the browsable API's login features.
• Verification is done by running the server and navigating to the DRF login URL.

Preview of the Next Lesson:
With DRF installed, we are now ready to tackle its most fundamental concept: Serialization. In the next lesson, you will learn what serializers are and create your first Serializer to convert simple data types into JSON, the language of web APIs.