DRF Serialization II views.py

Posted under » Django on 30 Sep 2021

From DRF Serialization II, let us look at the views.py

The imports

from django.http import HttpResponse, JsonResponse
from django.views.decorators.csrf import csrf_exempt
from rest_framework.parsers import JSONParser
from snippets.models import Snippet
from snippets.serializers import SnippetSerializer

The snippet_list(request). This will list all the existing snippets, or creating a new snippet.

@csrf_exempt
def snippet_list(request):
    """
    List all code snippets, or create a new snippet.
    """
    if request.method == 'GET':
        snippets = Snippet.objects.all()
        serializer = SnippetSerializer(snippets, many=True)
        return JsonResponse(serializer.data, safe=False)

    elif request.method == 'POST':
        data = JSONParser().parse(request)
        serializer = SnippetSerializer(data=data)
        if serializer.is_valid():
            serializer.save()
            return JsonResponse(serializer.data, status=201)
        return JsonResponse(serializer.errors, status=400)

Note that because we want to be able to POST to this view from clients that won't have a CSRF token we need to mark the view as csrf_exempt. This isn't something that you'd normally want to do.

We'll also need a view which corresponds to an individual snippet, and can be used to retrieve, update or delete the snippet which is below.

@csrf_exempt
def snippet_detail(request, pk):
    """
    Retrieve, update or delete a code snippet.
    """
    try:
        snippet = Snippet.objects.get(pk=pk)
    except Snippet.DoesNotExist:
        return HttpResponse(status=404)

    if request.method == 'GET':
        serializer = SnippetSerializer(snippet)
        return JsonResponse(serializer.data)

    elif request.method == 'PUT':
        data = JSONParser().parse(request)
        serializer = SnippetSerializer(snippet, data=data)
        if serializer.is_valid():
            serializer.save()
            return JsonResponse(serializer.data)
        return JsonResponse(serializer.errors, status=400)

    elif request.method == 'DELETE':
        snippet.delete()
        return HttpResponse(status=204)

The URLs part. Create the snippets/urls.py file:

from django.urls import path
from snippets import views

urlpatterns = [
    path('', views.snippet_list),
    path('<int:pk>/', views.snippet_detail),
]

And finally, the main mysite/urls.py, to include our snippet app's URLs.

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import include, path

urlpatterns = [
    path('polls/', include('polls.urls')),
    path('napi/', include('napi.urls')),
    path('snippets/', include('snippets.urls')),
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
]

To access the API, you have to go to

• http://mysite/snippets/
• http://mysite/snippets/2/

Next we learn what does the views' GET, POST and etc do.