Learn DJANGORESTFRAMEWORK with Real Code Examples

DRF is built on top of Django, leveraging its ORM, authentication, and view system.

Supports both function-based and class-based views for API endpoints.

Provides serializers for translating between Python objects and JSON/XML.

Includes authentication, permissions, throttling, and filtering mechanisms.

Highly extensible and integrates seamlessly with Django’s ecosystem.

Serializers for data validation and transformation

Generic views and viewsets for CRUD operations

Routers for automatic URL routing

Authentication mechanisms (Token, JWT, OAuth2)

Browsable web API interface for debugging

Serializer - transforms Python objects to JSON and vice versa

View/ViewSet - handles requests and defines API behavior

Router - maps URLs to views automatically

QuerySet - Django ORM object for database querying

Permissions - control access to endpoints

project_name/settings.py - configuration

project_name/urls.py - URL routing

app_name/models.py - database models

app_name/serializers.py - DRF serializers

app_name/views.py - API views and viewsets

Define models in Django ORM

Create serializers to validate and transform data

Define API views or viewsets

Register routes using routers

Test endpoints using browsable API or tools like Postman

Beginner: basic CRUD API for a model

Intermediate: nested serializers and filtering

Advanced: token/JWT authentication and permissions

Expert: microservices or API versioning

Enterprise: high-load APIs with caching, async tasks, and monitoring

DRF vs Flask-RESTful: DRF more feature-rich; Flask lighter

DRF vs FastAPI: DRF mature, Django-integrated; FastAPI faster and async-native

DRF vs Express.js: Python ecosystem vs JS ecosystem

DRF vs Spring Boot: Python vs Java ecosystem

DRF vs Actix-web: DRF slower but higher-level and easier for Python devs

2011 - Initial release by Tom Christie

2012–2014 - Rapid adoption and feature expansion

2015 - Version 3.x with major refactor and improvements

2018 - Support for Django 2.x and Python 3.6+

2025 - Latest stable version with async-compatible features

Serializer - maps Python objects to JSON/XML

ViewSet - class-based view for CRUD operations

Router - maps URLs to viewsets automatically

QuerySet - Django ORM database query object

Permission - controls access to API endpoints