How to Create a basic API using Django Rest Framework ? (original) (raw)

Last Updated : 25 Apr, 2025

Django REST Framework is a wrapper over the default Django Framework, basically used to create APIs of various kinds. There are three stages before creating an API through the REST framework, Converting a Model’s data to JSON/XML format (Serialization), Rendering this data to the view, and Creating a URL for mapping to the views.
This article revolves around how to create a basic API using the Django REST Framework. It assumes you are familiar with Django basics – Django tutorial—also, installation of Django REST Framework. Assuming you have created a project named **geeksforgeeks with Django, let’s initiate Django REST Framework.

Steps

Creating API in Django using Django Rest Framework

Add rest_framework to INSTALLED_APPS

To initialize REST Framework in your project, go to settings.py, and in INSTALLED_APPS add **‘rest_framework’ at the bottom to create api in python django.

Python3

INSTALLED_APPS = [

`` 'django.contrib.admin' ,

`` 'django.contrib.auth' ,

`` 'django.contrib.contenttypes' ,

`` 'django.contrib.sessions' ,

`` 'django.contrib.messages' ,

`` 'django.contrib.staticfiles' ,

`` 'rest_framework' ,

]

Create a app and model

Now, let’s create a app using command,

**python manage.py startapp apis

A folder with name apis would have been registered by now. let’s add this app to **INSTALLED_APPS and urls.py also.
In, settings.py.

Python3

INSTALLED_APPS = [

`` 'django.contrib.admin' ,

`` 'django.contrib.auth' ,

`` 'django.contrib.contenttypes' ,

`` 'django.contrib.sessions' ,

`` 'django.contrib.messages' ,

`` 'django.contrib.staticfiles' ,

`` 'rest_framework' ,

`` 'apis' ,

]

Now, add APIs urls in urls.py. In **geeksforgeeks.urls.py.

Python3

from django.contrib import admin

from django.urls import path, include

urlpatterns = [

`` path( 'admin/' , admin.site.urls),

`` path('', include( "apis.urls" ))

]

**Create a model

To demonstrate, create api in python django and using an API, let’s create a model named “GeeksModel”. In apis/models.py

Python3

from django.db import models

class GeeksModel(models.Model):

`` title = models.CharField(max_length = 200 )

`` description = models.TextField()

`` def __str__( self ):

`` return self .title

now our app is ready, let’s serialize the data and create views from the same.

Serializing Django objects

Serializers 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. Let’s start creating a serializer, in file apis/serializers.py,

Python3

from rest_framework import serializers

from .models import GeeksModel

class GeeksSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):

`` class Meta:

`` model = GeeksModel

`` fields = ( 'title' , 'description' )

Creating a viewset

To render data into frontend, and handle requests from user, we need to create a view. In Django REST Framework, we call these as viewsets, so let’s create a view in apis/views.py,

Python3

from rest_framework import viewsets

from .serializers import GeeksSerializer

from .models import GeeksModel

class GeeksViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):

`` queryset = GeeksModel.objects. all ()

`` serializer_class = GeeksSerializer

Define URLs of API

Now create api in python django and Specify the url path of APIs to be accessed, In apis/urls.py,

Python3

from django.urls import include, path

from rest_framework import routers

from .views import *

router = routers.DefaultRouter()

router.register(r 'geeks' , GeeksViewSet)

urlpatterns = [

`` path('', include(router.urls)),

`` path( 'api-auth/' , include( 'rest_framework.urls' ))

]

After everything is successfully ready, let’s run some commands to activate the server.

Run server and check API

Run following commands to create the database, and then run server,

python manage.py makemigrations python manage.py migrate python manage.py runserver

Now visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/geeks/,

Create-a-basic-API-with-Django-REST-Framework