Routers In Django Rest Framework

Routers In Django Rest Framework

Routers are used with ViewSets in django rest framework to auto config the urls. Routers provides a simple, quick and consistent way of wiring ViewSet logic to a set of URLs. Router automatically maps the incoming request to proper viewset action based on the request method type(i.e GET, POST, etc). Let's start using routers.

Working with DRF Routers

Lets's see a simple example how to configure viewset urls

urls.py

from rest_framework import routers
from .views import UserViewSet

router = routers.SimpleRouter()
router.register('users', UserViewSet)
urlpatterns = router.urls

Above example will generate urls configuration like below

  • URL pattern: ^users/$ Name: 'user-list'
  • URL pattern: ^users/{pk}/$ Name: 'user-detail'
  • URL pattern: ^accounts/$ Name: 'account-list'
  • URL pattern: ^accounts/{pk}/$ Name: 'account-detail'

We have two types of routers in Django REST

SimpleRouter

  • It includes actions for all actions (i.e list, create, retrieve, update, partial_update and destroy).
  • Let's see how it configures the urls
URL StyleHTTP MethodActionURL Name
{prefix}/GETlist{basename}-list
POSTcreate
{prefix}/{url_path}/GET, or as specified by `methods` argument`@action(detail=False)` decorated method{basename}-{url_name}
{prefix}/{lookup}/GETretrieve{basename}-detail
PUTupdate
PATCHpartial_update
DELETEdestroy
{prefix}/{lookup}/{url_path}/GET, or as specified by `methods` argument`@action(detail=True)` decorated method{basename}-{url_name}

DefaultRouter

  • It also includes all actions just like SimpleRouter and it additionally provides a default root view which returns a response containing hyperlinks to all the list views.
  • Let's see how it configures the urls
URL StyleHTTP MethodActionURL Name
[.format]GETautomatically generated root viewapi-root
{prefix}/[.format]GETlist{basename}-list
POSTcreate
{prefix}/{url_path}/[.format]GET, or as specified by `methods` argument`@action(detail=False)` decorated method{basename}-{url_name}
{prefix}/{lookup}/[.format]GETretrieve{basename}-detail
PUTupdate
PATCHpartial_update
DELETEdestroy
{prefix}/{lookup}/{url_path}/[.format]GET, or as specified by `methods` argument`@action(detail=True)` decorated method{basename}-{url_name}

To avoid trailing slash we have to provide trailing_slash=False while initiating the router like below.

router = SimpleRouter(trailing_slash=False)
# or 
# router = DefaultRouter(trailing_slash=False)

Reference: https://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/routers

SourceCode: https://github.com/encode/django-rest-framework/blob/master/rest_framework/routers.py

Related Blog Articles

Parsers In Django Rest Framework

parsers in Django Rest are used to parse the content of incoming HTTP request. Parsers can parse different HTTP content types like `applicaion/json` etc.

Viewsets In Django Rest Framework

DRF allows us to combine the logic for a set of related views in a single class ViewSet. ViewSets can speed-up the development and better maintainability.