Setup the Project for Django REST Framework

Install Django REST Framework and implement Swagger interface for the API.

Install Django REST Framework

Modify requirements.txt adding djangorestframework and drf-yasg as dependencies:

requirements.txt

# ...
djangorestframework
# ...

We are using drf-yasg to generate Swagger interface for our API.

Run pip to reflect the changes:

$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Create Swagger interface for Our API

We are using drf-yasg as Swagger interface generator so if not already installed, you need to install it:

$ pip install drf-yasg
...

drf-yasg is a Django application so you need to register it in the project’s settings.py:

elearn/settings.py

# ...
INSTALLED_APPS = [
   # ...
   # 3rd party apps
   'drf_yasg',
   # Local apps
   # ...
]
# ...

We need also to do a litle work to define a view for our Swagger interface and register it the /docs/ url for it.

elearn/views.py

from drf_yasg.views import get_schema_view
from drf_yasg import openapi
from rest_framework import permissions

schema_view = get_schema_view(
   openapi.Info(
      title="BEL",
      default_version='v1',
      description="Brith E-Learning (BEL) API",
      terms_of_service="https://www.bel.local/bel/terms/",
      contact=openapi.Contact(email="contact@bel.local"),
      license=openapi.License(name="BSD License"),
   ),
   public=True,
   permission_classes=(permissions.AllowAny,),
)

elearn/urls.py

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path
from .views import schema_view


urlpatterns = [
   path('docs/', schema_view.with_ui('swagger', cache_timeout=0), name='schema-swagger-ui'),
   path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
]

Preview Our API Swagger interface

Now you can run a development server:

$ python elearn/manage.py runserver
Watching for file changes with StatReloader
Performing system checks...

System check identified no issues (0 silenced).
September 09, 2023 - 17:22:26
Django version 4.2, using settings 'elearn.settings'
Starting development server at http://127.0.0.1:8000/
Quit the server with CTRL-BREAK.

And navigate to http://127.0.0.1:8000/docs/ to see the brand new beautiful Swagger interface for our API. It has no APIs defined as we haven’t created any URLs yet.

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