How to Create a basic API using Django Rest Framework ?

Last Updated : 25 Apr, 2025

Django REST Framework is a wrapper over the default Django Framework, basically used to create APIs of various kinds. There are three stages before creating an API through the REST framework, Converting a Model’s data to JSON/XML format (Serialization), Rendering this data to the view, and Creating a URL for mapping to the views.
This article revolves around how to create a basic API using the Django REST Framework. It assumes you are familiar with Django basics – Django tutorial—also, installation of Django REST Framework. Assuming you have created a project named geeksforgeeks with Django, let’s initiate Django REST Framework.

Steps
Add rest_framework to INSTALLED_APPS
Create a app and model
Serialization
Creating a viewset
Define URLs of API
Run server and check API

Creating API in Django using Django Rest Framework

Add rest_framework to INSTALLED_APPS

To initialize REST Framework in your project, go to settings.py, and in INSTALLED_APPS add ‘rest_framework’ at the bottom to create api in python django.

Python3

# Application definition
 
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'rest_framework',
]

Create a app and model

Now, let’s create a app using command,

python manage.py startapp apis

A folder with name apis would have been registered by now. let’s add this app to INSTALLED_APPS and urls.py also.
In, settings.py.

Python3

# Application definition
 
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'rest_framework',
    'apis',
]

Now, add APIs urls in urls.py. In geeksforgeeks.urls.py.

Python3

from django.contrib import admin
# include necessary libraries
from django.urls import path, include
 
urlpatterns = [
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
    # add apis urls
    path('', include("apis.urls"))
]

Create a model

To demonstrate, create api in python django and using an API, let’s create a model named “GeeksModel”. In apis/models.py

Python3

from django.db import models
 
 
class GeeksModel(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    description = models.TextField()
 
    def __str__(self):
        return self.title

now our app is ready, let’s serialize the data and create views from the same.

Serializing Django objects

Serializers allow complex data such as querysets and model instances to be converted to native Python datatypes that can then be easily rendered into JSON, XML or other content types. Serializers also provide deserialization, allowing parsed data to be converted back into complex types, after first validating the incoming data. Let’s start creating a serializer, in file apis/serializers.py,

Python3

# import serializer from rest_framework
from rest_framework import serializers
 
# import model from models.py
from .models import GeeksModel
 
# Create a model serializer
class GeeksSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):
    # specify model and fields
    class Meta:
        model = GeeksModel
        fields = ('title', 'description')

Creating a viewset

To render data into frontend, and handle requests from user, we need to create a view. In Django REST Framework, we call these as viewsets, so let’s create a view in apis/views.py,

Python3

# import viewsets
from rest_framework import viewsets
 
# import local data
from .serializers import GeeksSerializer
from .models import GeeksModel
 
# create a viewset
 
 
class GeeksViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    # define queryset
    queryset = GeeksModel.objects.all()
 
    # specify serializer to be used
    serializer_class = GeeksSerializer

Define URLs of API

Now create api in python django and Specify the url path of APIs to be accessed, In apis/urls.py,

Python3

# basic URL Configurations
from django.urls import include, path
# import routers
from rest_framework import routers
 
# import everything from views
from .views import *
 
# define the router
router = routers.DefaultRouter()
 
# define the router path and viewset to be used
router.register(r'geeks', GeeksViewSet)
 
# specify URL Path for rest_framework
urlpatterns = [
    path('', include(router.urls)),
    path('api-auth/', include('rest_framework.urls'))
]

After everything is successfully ready, let’s run some commands to activate the server.

Run server and check API

Run following commands to create the database, and then run server,

python manage.py makemigrations python manage.py migrate python manage.py runserver

Now visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/geeks/,

Create-a-basic-API-with-Django-REST-Framework

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How to Create a basic API using Django Rest Framework ?

Steps

Creating API in Django using Django Rest Framework

Add rest_framework to INSTALLED_APPS

Python3

Create a app and model

Python3

Python3

Create a model

Python3

Serializing Django objects

Python3

Creating a viewset

Python3

Define URLs of API

Python3

Run server and check API

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