Django and Restful APIs

Question

I have been struggling with choosing a methodology for creating a RESTful API with Django. None of the approaches I've tried seem to be the "silver" bullet. WAPI from http://fi.am is probably the closest to what I would like to accomplish, however I am not sure if it is acceptable in a true RESTful API to have parameters that are resource identifiers be in the querystring instead of in a "clean" URL format. Any suggestions for modifying WAPIs RestBinding.PATTERN to "clean" up the URLs? Another option I've explored is Django-Rest-Interface. However this framework seems to violate one of the most important pieces I need, and that is to include the full resource URL for references to other resources (see http://jacobian.org/writing/rest-worst-practices/ Improper Use of Links). The final option is to use django-multiresponse and basically do it the long way.

Please offer me your best advice, especially people that have dealt with this decision.

Answer 1

Have a look at this RestifyDjango.

Somewhat related are Django XML-RPC and JSON-RPC.

Answer 2

Hi gsiegman,

I don't know if this project can be useful for you, but sending a link can hardly hurt. Take a look at django-apibuilder , available from http://opensource.washingtontimes.com/projects/django-apibuilder/ . Perhaps it can be useful?

/Jesper

Answer 3

Check out django-api.

Answer 4

I believe the recently released django-piston is now the best solution for creating a proper REST interface in Django. django-piston

Answer 5

You could take look at django-dynamicresponse, which is a lightweight framework for adding REST API with JSON to your Django applications.

It requires minimal changes to add API support to existing Django apps, and makes it straight-forward to build-in API from the start in new projects.

Basically, it includes middleware support for parsing JSON into request.POST, in addition to serializing the returned context to JSON or rendering a template/redirecting conditionally based on the request type.

This approach differs from other frameworks (such as django-piston) in that you do not need to create separate handlers for API requests. You can also reuse your existing view logic, and keep using form validation etc. like normal views.