DELETE for removing resources in Rest API - Mini Project: Build & Apply

DELETE for Removing Resources in REST API

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple REST API for a library system. The API manages books, and you want to allow users to remove books from the collection when they are no longer available.

🎯 Goal: Build a REST API endpoint that allows deleting a book resource by its ID using the DELETE HTTP method.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary called books with exact book entries

Add a variable book_id_to_delete to specify which book to remove

Write code to delete the book with the given ID from the books dictionary

Print the updated books dictionary after deletion

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

APIs often need to remove resources like users, products, or posts. Using DELETE requests is the standard way to do this.

💼 Career

Understanding how to remove resources safely and correctly is essential for backend developers and API designers.

1

DATA SETUP: Create the initial books dictionary

Create a dictionary called books with these exact entries: 1: 'The Hobbit', 2: '1984', 3: 'Pride and Prejudice'

Rest API

# Create the books dictionary with the given entries
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create a dictionary with keys as numbers and values as book titles.

2

CONFIGURATION: Specify the book ID to delete

Create a variable called book_id_to_delete and set it to 2 to indicate the book to remove

Rest API

books = {1: 'The Hobbit', 2: '1984', 3: 'Pride and Prejudice'}
# Set the book_id_to_delete variable to 2
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just assign the number 2 to the variable book_id_to_delete.

3

CORE LOGIC: Delete the book from the dictionary

Use the del statement with books[book_id_to_delete] to remove the book with the given ID

Rest API

books = {1: 'The Hobbit', 2: '1984', 3: 'Pride and Prejudice'}
book_id_to_delete = 2
# Delete the book with ID 2 from books
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use del followed by the dictionary key access to remove the entry.

4

OUTPUT: Print the updated books dictionary

Write print(books) to display the dictionary after deletion

Rest API

books = {1: 'The Hobbit', 2: '1984', 3: 'Pride and Prejudice'}
book_id_to_delete = 2
del books[book_id_to_delete]
# Print the updated books dictionary
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the print() function to show the current state of the books dictionary.