CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonjsondjangorestweb
waylonion
waylonion

Reputation: 6976

Python Django Rest Post API without storage

I would like to create a web api with Python and the Django Rest framework. The tutorials that I have read so far incorporate models and serializers to process and store data. I was wondering if there's a simpler way to process data that is post-ed to my api and then return a JSON response without storing any data.

Currently, this is my urls.py

from django.conf.urls import url
from rest_framework import routers
from core.views import StudentViewSet, UniversityViewSet, TestViewSet

router = routers.DefaultRouter()
router.register(r'students', StudentViewSet)
router.register(r'universities', UniversityViewSet)
router.register(r'other', TestViewSet,"other")

urlpatterns = router.urls

and this is my views.py

from rest_framework import viewsets
from rest_framework.decorators import api_view
from rest_framework.response import Response
from .models import University, Student
from .serializers import UniversitySerializer, StudentSerializer

import json
from django.http import HttpResponse

class StudentViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    queryset = Student.objects.all()
    serializer_class = StudentSerializer

class UniversityViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    queryset = University.objects.all()
    serializer_class = UniversitySerializer

class TestViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):    
    def retrieve(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
        return Response({'something': 'my custom JSON'})

The first two parts regarding Students and Universities were created after following a tutorial on Django setup. I don't need the functionality that it provides for creating, editing and removing objects. I tried playing around with the TestViewSet which I created.

I am currently stuck trying to receive JSON data that gets posted to the url ending with "other" and processing that JSON before responding with some custom JSON.

Edit

These two links were helpful in addition to the solution provided:

Django REST framework: non-model serializer

http://jsatt.com/blog/abusing-django-rest-framework-part-1-non-model-endpoints/

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1663

Answers (1)

Jens Astrup
Jens Astrup

Reputation: 2454

You can use their generic APIView class (which doesn't have any attachment to Models or Serializers) and then handle the request yourself based on the HTTP request type. For example:

class RetrieveMessages(APIView):
    def post(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
        posted_data = self.request.data
        city = posted_data['city']
        return_data = [
            {"echo": city}   
        ]
        return Response(status=200, data=return_data)

     def get....

Upvotes: 3

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