ViewSets and routers in Django - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Building a Simple API with Django ViewSets and Routers

📖 Scenario: You are creating a small web API for a bookstore. The API will allow users to see a list of books and details about each book.

🎯 Goal: Build a Django API using ViewSets and routers to manage book data easily.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a Django model for books with fields: title and author

Create a serializer for the Book model

Create a ViewSet for the Book model

Use a router to automatically generate URL routes for the Book API

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

APIs built with Django ViewSets and routers are common in web applications to provide easy and consistent access to data.

💼 Career

Understanding ViewSets and routers is essential for backend developers working with Django REST Framework to build scalable and maintainable APIs.

1

Create the Book model

Create a Django model called Book in models.py with two fields: title as a CharField with max length 100, and author as a CharField with max length 100.

Django

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Remember to import models from django.db before defining the model.

2

Create the Book serializer

Create a serializer class called BookSerializer in serializers.py that uses serializers.ModelSerializer and includes all fields from the Book model.

Django

from django.db import models

class Book(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    author = models.CharField(max_length=100)

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Import serializers from rest_framework and create a Meta class inside your serializer.

3

Create the Book ViewSet

Create a ViewSet class called BookViewSet in views.py that inherits from viewsets.ModelViewSet. Set its queryset to all Book objects and its serializer_class to BookSerializer.

Django

from django.db import models

class Book(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    author = models.CharField(max_length=100)

from rest_framework import serializers

class BookSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = Book
        fields = '__all__'

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Import viewsets from rest_framework and create the ViewSet class with the correct attributes.

4

Register the ViewSet with a router

In urls.py, import DefaultRouter from rest_framework.routers and BookViewSet from views. Create a router instance, register the BookViewSet with the prefix 'books', and set urlpatterns to the router's URLs.

Django

from django.db import models

class Book(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    author = models.CharField(max_length=100)

from rest_framework import serializers

class BookSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = Book
        fields = '__all__'

from rest_framework import viewsets

class BookViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    queryset = Book.objects.all()
    serializer_class = BookSerializer

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Import the router and the ViewSet, then register the ViewSet with the router and assign urlpatterns to router.urls.