Django Rest Framework learnings

[lpatmo]

Feel free to put notes here re: what you learn from:

https://www.django-rest-framework.org/tutorial/quickstart/
https://www.django-rest-framework.org/tutorial/1-serialization/

[lpatmo]

Really nice to see token-based pagination supported out of the box 😍

See: https://engineering.mixmax.com/blog/api-paging-built-the-right-way/

[BethanyG]

FYI: absolutely, positively no expert here, but when I set up DRF, I use the following in settings:

'DEFAULT_PAGINATION_CLASS': 'rest_framework.pagination.PageNumberPagination', 'PAGE_SIZE': 10,

So I may have inadvertently overridden the token-base pagination with "page number" pagination. Ooops. But we can re-configure it to something else, I am sure.

[lpatmo]

Oh haha, actually I still see "next" and "previous" in the GET /resources, so you're fine! Also I don't think you overrode it because the tutorial called for me to do the same thing ( REST_FRAMEWORK = { "DEFAULT_PAGINATION_CLASS": "rest_framework.pagination.PageNumberPagination", "PAGE_SIZE": 10, }) as well.

... the last thing is I may have confused token-based pagination with the appearance of "next" and "previous" fields, when in fact maybe I should have expected tokens 🤔

In any case, I'm happy with how pagination is working right now.

[lpatmo]

On https://www.django-rest-framework.org/tutorial/1-serialization/, not sure I completely understand the {'base_template': 'textarea.html'} flag in the following example of a serializer:

from rest_framework import serializers
from snippets.models import Snippet, LANGUAGE_CHOICES, STYLE_CHOICES


class SnippetSerializer(serializers.Serializer):
    id = serializers.IntegerField(read_only=True)
    title = serializers.CharField(required=False, allow_blank=True, max_length=100)
    code = serializers.CharField(style={'base_template': 'textarea.html'})
    linenos = serializers.BooleanField(required=False)
    language = serializers.ChoiceField(choices=LANGUAGE_CHOICES, default='python')
    style = serializers.ChoiceField(choices=STYLE_CHOICES, default='friendly')

    def create(self, validated_data):
        """
        Create and return a new `Snippet` instance, given the validated data.
        """
        return Snippet.objects.create(**validated_data)

    def update(self, instance, validated_data):
        """
        Update and return an existing `Snippet` instance, given the validated data.
        """
        instance.title = validated_data.get('title', instance.title)
        instance.code = validated_data.get('code', instance.code)
        instance.linenos = validated_data.get('linenos', instance.linenos)
        instance.language = validated_data.get('language', instance.language)
        instance.style = validated_data.get('style', instance.style)
        instance.save()
        return instance

[lpatmo]

... will revisit later.

[BethanyG]

I think that is referring to the textarea widget in a django template....if I recall correctly (and I probably don't!) that quickstart project is about collecting code snippetts and saving them for later?? So code = serializers.CharField(style={'base_template': 'textarea.html'}) is saying that code is going to be its own nested serializer that is a character field that pulls from the base_templates textarea widget input.....at least that's my working theory. LOL.

[lpatmo]

Thanks, that makes sense! textarea.html appeared out of the blue so... I assume I'm going to get a better understanding of it once I have a better understanding of the thing it's asking us to build XD

[lpatmo]

model instance -> python native datatypes -> JSON

Can also serialize querysets instead of model instances by passing a flag:

serializer = SnippetSerializer(Snippet.objects.all(), many=True)

[BethanyG]

WOOT! That's going to come in handy when we have to make tagging and active hangout queries!