Why DRF matters for APIs in Django - See It in Action

Why DRF Matters for APIs

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple web API to share book information. You want to create the data, configure a setting, write the main logic to expose the data as an API, and complete the setup so the API works properly.

🎯 Goal: Build a basic Django REST Framework (DRF) API that returns a list of books with their titles and authors.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of dictionaries with book data

Add a configuration variable for API version

Use DRF's APIView to create an API endpoint

Complete the URL routing to connect the API view

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

APIs are how apps and websites share data. DRF makes building APIs in Django easier and faster.

💼 Career

Knowing DRF is important for backend developers working with Django to create clean, maintainable APIs.

1

DATA SETUP: Create the book data list

Create a variable called books that is a list containing these exact dictionaries: {'title': 'The Hobbit', 'author': 'J.R.R. Tolkien'} and {'title': '1984', 'author': 'George Orwell'}.

Django

# Create the books list with two dictionaries
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a list with two dictionaries exactly as shown.

2

CONFIGURATION: Add API version variable

Create a variable called API_VERSION and set it to the string 'v1'.

Django

books = [
    {'title': 'The Hobbit', 'author': 'J.R.R. Tolkien'},
    {'title': '1984', 'author': 'George Orwell'}
]
# Define API_VERSION variable
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Set API_VERSION exactly to 'v1'.

3

CORE LOGIC: Create a DRF APIView to return books

Import APIView and Response from rest_framework.views and rest_framework.response respectively. Then create a class called BookList that inherits from APIView. Inside it, define a get method that takes self and request and returns a Response with the books list.

Django

books = [
    {'title': 'The Hobbit', 'author': 'J.R.R. Tolkien'},
    {'title': '1984', 'author': 'George Orwell'}
]

API_VERSION = 'v1'

# Import APIView and Response
# Create BookList class with get method
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use DRF's APIView and Response to create the API endpoint.

4

COMPLETION: Add URL pattern for the API view

Import path from django.urls. Then create a variable called urlpatterns that is a list containing a single path with the route 'api/v1/books/' (use the API_VERSION variable), the view BookList.as_view(), and the name 'book-list'.

Django

from rest_framework.views import APIView
from rest_framework.response import Response

books = [
    {'title': 'The Hobbit', 'author': 'J.R.R. Tolkien'},
    {'title': '1984', 'author': 'George Orwell'}
]

API_VERSION = 'v1'

class BookList(APIView):
    def get(self, request):
        return Response(books)

# Import path and create urlpatterns list
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use path with the route using API_VERSION and connect it to BookList.as_view().