Django REST framework 3

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tomchristie/django-rest-framework-3

by tomchristie • 12 years ago

310 72 12 years ago

kickstarter.com

gtaylor4• 12 years ago

Wish this wouldn't have been yanked off the front page!

dang4• 12 years ago

"Yanked" suggests human intervention. That's not what happened. It set off the voting ring detector.

Edit: we turned the penalty off.

andybak2• 12 years ago

I wonder in this case whether it was a false positive. Lots of people want to support a project like this and it's fairly natural to email people and tell them that the link has been posted.

The only reason I don't do that any more is that someone told me about the voting ring detector.

gtaylor4• 12 years ago

I wasn't making a statement about human intervention at all. One minute it was doing well on the front page, the next minute it was gone. I noticed that something disappeared/yanked/punted/hid it.

I guess this sort of protection can be helpful, but I hope that it doesn't keep other high quality but less known content out. DRF is popular enough to overcome this false positive, but I wonder if some other lesser-known (but interesting) stuff would be.

falcolas• 12 years ago

How does this compare to, say, Tastypie?

mamcx2• 12 years ago

In my personal experience django rest is far easier & clear how do things. Also, the REST admin is nice.

I think is the closest in python to the (IMHO) best API-framework thing that I have used (http://www.remobjects.com).

porker• 12 years ago

to the (IMHO) best API-framework thing that I have used (http://www.remobjects.com).

I've had a look on their site and can see a number of different products; which is the API framework as it's not obvious to me?

pjam• 12 years ago

I used both for almost a year and while I really enjoyed working with tastypie, I found Django Rest Framework to be even better.

- I think Rest Framework's documentation is way better than tastypie's.

- I found tastypie's source code to be overly complicated, while DRF was a little bit better

- The browsable API is really nice

- I love DRF's API, such a Class Based Views, it felt like the continuation of Django, instead of a complete new thing.

kyllo2• 12 years ago

It also (correctly IMO) uses headers to specify format rather than the client needing to append stuff like ?format=json to the URL.

lumpypua3• 12 years ago

Having used both extensively, I vastly prefer DRF.

Tastypie is nice if you want to bang out a rest interface directly to your models quickly.

I prefer DRF for pretty much anything else. Two reasons:

1. There's more tools in the toolbox for simple but arbitrary problems. Need a one-off endpoint that takes a POST and returns json and is throttled? The @api_view decorator and company make it easy: http://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/views#functio...

2. DRF is a lot more easily extensible, and that extensibility is well documented. Tastypie's documentation is pretty good, but DRF's is great. I often found myself digging around in tastypie's source figuring how exactly to punch holes and make it do what I want.

eli• 12 years ago

Tastypie is great if the way it works out of the box is exactly how you want your API to work. (And for some people, that's probably true.) If not, it's kind of a pain to hack in customizations.

junkmob• 12 years ago

I've never understood why people like this framework so much. It's not that flexible. If you want to customize your API in specific ways ( ordering, nested resources, validation ), then you will undoubtedly just write your own CBV(s).

After writing your own CBV(s) for awhile, you will either love that solution or hate it and look for something more flexible and out-of-the-box.

For many of the things that Django REST framework version 3 is attempting to solve there is already an awesome alternative to it and TastyPie called Conduit. I highly recommend people give it a shot, since it's pretty modular. It also presents a different alternative to Function and Class-Based views:

http://django-conduit.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

Buetol• 12 years ago

I also recommend restless(from the author of Tastypie): https://github.com/toastdriven/restless

Really dead-simple to use and just plain fun.

scrollaway2• 12 years ago

Looks interesting, might port one of my tastypie projects to it.

However I'm very concerned about the author's inactivity. Tastypie has gone unmaintained several times for a long time. It looks like restless is headed that way as well. Concerning.

findjashua• 12 years ago

Flask-Restless has quickly become my favorite REST framework: http://flask-restless.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

Spiritus• 12 years ago

Not really applicable to Django, is it?

mpdehaan2• 12 years ago

Django Rest Framework for us - http://ansible.com - was easier to customize and also easier to graft in custom auth. One of the major tastiepie problems we had - that maybe everybody doesn't have, was how to be able to make collections hang off REST resources.

The greatest feature by far is the API browser, which in DJRF 2 (I have no sense of what's in the 3rd version) is pretty amazing and a great way for people to learn about an API.

Less automagic made it much more flexible for us, while the API browser is just amazing in a end-user demo. It's my favorite feature, though I also like the serializer system.

http://www.django-rest-framework.org/topics/browsable-api

hyperliner• 12 years ago

I would say here that the balance is between having something fit-for-purpose vs. something that is more flexible.

Not familiar with Conduit though so can't compare.

alphonse23• 12 years ago

I calculated his basic salary, if he's asking for £4,378 for two days worth of work per week for 6 months, that means he make £xx,xxx per 6 months... Man, I wish he was making more period. This guy no doubt deserves more!

vially• 12 years ago

Actually for the base goal of £4,000 he's guaranteeing two days a week for 2 months. The £12,000 stretch goal has to be reached for two days a week for 6 months. But still, he definitely deserves more.

SEJeff2• 12 years ago

I'll be donating to this for sure when I get home. This software is hands down the cleanest, best structured, and nicest to use "framework" to build REST-ful services in python.

I've used piston, tastypie, and DRF. It is the best of all 3 hands down.

pizza_boy• 12 years ago

Absolutely agree. I just pledged. Thanks Tom.

HorizonXP2• 12 years ago

I'm going to as well. I wish there were still some £250 level rewards, as I'd love to donate at that level. £1000 is a little rich for me this month, maybe next! Might have to go in at the £100 level.

tomchristie• 12 years ago

Hiya, I've just removed the limits on the higher levels of backing. See the 'Day 1 - Funded!' update here... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tomchristie/django-rest... - There's been so much support that it just seems unnecessarily restrictive.

andrewgodwin• 12 years ago

"Best structured" is definitely true - part of the reason we can use it to power all the new Eventbrite APIs is because we can easily remove one or two pieces and swap in our own without breaking the rest. Makes my life a lot easier!

akoumjian• 12 years ago

Hey dude. If you get a chance, you should check out my project: https://github.com/akoumjian/django-conduit

I can't guarantee it, but you make like the approach.

SEJeff2• 12 years ago

Small world. Pretty sure I've merged some of your PRs into saltstack. I'll give it a shot :)

parham12• 12 years ago

Django isn't built to be the main backend for an API, I've previously used Tastypie and it's just not flexible enough, you should really consider using Flask if you're planning to go API first.

mrfusion• 12 years ago

Why do you think flask is better?

parham12• 12 years ago

Well Flask is just the "glue" the real thing I like is its flexibility, which allows you to use tools that fit your needs, which for handling data SQLAlchemy blows Django's ORM out of the water. Don't get me wrong I love Django and I do use it a lot for websites but for handling data... it's restrictive to say the least.

gtaylor4• 12 years ago

It can be used as the main backend for an API just fine. It's also very easy to override just about every piece of what DRF offers. This is pure, unsubstantiated, subjective FUD.

Use the tool that you are most comfortable with, change it up if/when you get big or busy enough to have to. There are some huge sites running Django/DRF successfully.

parham12• 12 years ago

Well it really depends on the data you have. It can easily be substantiated, it's like saying I want to compete in F1 let me put the biggest engine in this tanker truck, in other words do you need most of Django's layers for an API? That's why I said if you're "planning to go API first" (Note: I love Django for building sites not APIs)

msane• 12 years ago

I'll put $50 into this if a feature of version 3 is supporting an optional serializer / renderer that follows the "JSON API" spec (http://jsonapi.org/), to support output similar to rails' ActiveModelSerializers.

Anyone working with EmberJS would find this desirable because that is the default format of API it expects.

gomesnayagam• 12 years ago

we use cyclone based eco-system, it is completely at your hand, we love that extensibility.

rectangletangle2• 12 years ago

As someone who is almost done with a fairly large personal project that's built on top of the REST framework (~8,000 lines of Python). I gotta say it's an awesome library. Whenever I find bugs, someone on GitHub is always ahead of me. I've been using it with Python 3, and so far I've had no 3 specific issues or bugs. I especially like the way DRF handles permissions and throttling. It's quick and easy to switch out the permissions on any given view. Features like the built-in throttle classes, and search filters are very convenient. The thorough documentation, and browse-able API are also really nice. My only real suggestion would be to break up some of the larger code blocks, and add more hooks. This would make the framework even more flexible than it already is.

Django REST framework 3

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