CODEWITHSUNDEEP
marshmallowflask-restplus
Carmellose
Carmellose

Reputation: 5088

Marshmallow and Flask-RESTPlus, how should they be used along?

I'm using Flask-Restplus to marshal responses in a Flask server. I also began using this package to parse HTTP requests from the client, when I stumbled about this huge warning on their site:

Warning

The whole request parser part of Flask-RESTPlus is slated for removal and will be replaced by documentation on how to integrate with other packages that do the input/output stuff better (such as marshmallow).

I then switched to Marshmallow to validate/parse the HTTP client requests. Thus, the workflow in my server is:

Client request (HTTP GET/POST) ...
--> process request with Marshmallow and validate/format data
--> do stuff with DB (read, update, create)
--> Format output response with Flask RESTPLUS 
... Client response

So far this works well. However, is this the correct way to use Flask RESTPLUS and Marshmallow along? On the marshmallow website, there is no clear direction towards a specific use of this package. The documentation just says:

Marshmallow is an ORM/ODM/framework-agnostic library for converting complex datatypes, such as objects, to and from native Python datatypes.

I have seen examples in the web where people use Marshmallow to format the output response, and Flask to validate expected data (with @api.expect). Which approach is better?

Also, I wonder if this even makes sense to use Flask RESTPLUS at all? It seems the only interest of this library is to have the Swagger UI doc automatically generated. Other than that, Marshmallow can do everything that Flask RESTPLUS does. So maybe I missed out something, can anyone help or comment?

Thanks

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1099

Answers (1)

Loscil94
Loscil94

Reputation: 83

Take further notice of the warning displayed on the website:

Don’t worry, if you have code using that now and wish to continue doing so, it’s not going to go away any time too soon.

The developers will post documentation how to integrate best Marshmellow in the future.

So far this works well. However, is this the correct way to use Flask RESTPLUS and Marshmallow along? On the marshmallow website, there is no clear direction towards a specific use of this package

Flask is a microframework: what this means for you is that much of the implementation of your application is up to the programmer because it lacks most of the functionality which is common to expect in a full-fledged web application framework (eg. Django, Pyramid et al.) and there's not "one way and only one way" of doing things in it. Implementation details like data validation are up to you to provide via plugins, libraries or even implementing them yourself (not recommended).

I wonder if this even makes sense to use Flask RESTPLUS at all?

From what I've seen in the Quick start page of Flask-RESTPlus, it provides useful models that facilitates exposing REST verbs for resources, endpoints, arg parsing and data formatting. But again, this question depends mostly on you and your application requirements.

Upvotes: 2

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