Python REST API tutorial: Getting started with FastAPI

Hug built on-top of Falcon and Python3 with an aim to make developing Python driven APIs as simple as possible, but no simpler. Hug leverages Python3 annotations to automatically validate and convert incoming and outgoing API parameters. Falcon is a fast and lightweight framework well suited to create RESTful APIs. Restless is a lightweight API framework that aims to be framework agnostic. The general concept is that you can use the same API code for Django, Flask, Bottle, Pyramid or any other WSGI framework with minimal porting effort.

This site is a prototype API for distant reading of science fiction novels. python api design All requests we make to the API must begin with this portion of the URL.

Exercise 4: Automated Testing Using Postman

⚠️ YOU SHOULD NOT expose a continuation parameter in the list_ client method – this is supported in the by_page() function. In Azure SDK for Python cilent libraries, this is exposed to users through the ItemPaged protocol. The ItemPaged protocol optimizes for retrieving the full set of items rather than forcing users to deal with the underlying paging. # Please note that there is no status code etc. as part of the response. The logical entity is a protocol neutral representation of a response.

Rather than handling the data , we return success and include a 201 status code. In the GET example a status code wasn’t required because 200 is Flask’s default. The code includes a hard-coded array of two company objects to use as results. Next, we initialize Flask and declare a route for our endpoint. When a consumer visits /companies using a GET request, the list of two companies will be returned.

How can I improve the structure / design of my API?

Not only does it make your work accessible to researchers working on other projects, but it often leads to a more comprehensible and maintainable project. Before we modify our code, first download the example database from this location and copy the file to your api folder using your graphical user interface. The final version of our API will query this database when returning results to users. Right now, users can only view our entire database—they can’t filter or find specific resources.

REST stands for REpresentational State Transfer and is an architectural style used in modern web development. It defines a set or rules/constraints for a web application to send and receive data. ☑️ YOU SHOULD attempt to document your library into silence. Preempt developers’ usage questions and minimize GitHub issues by clearly explaining your API in the docstrings. Include information on service limits and errors they might hit, and how to avoid and recover from those errors. ✅ DO include example code snippets alongside your library’s code within the repository.

🔗 A More Structured Falcon GET Request

The first is to deploy on an Ubuntu machine and the second is to deploy to Heroku. First you will learn learn the fundamentals of API design including routes, serialization/deserialization, schema validation, and models. You will also learn about how to setup and use SQL databases. These two Stack Overflow questions and answers onIs it better to place a REST API on a subdomain or in a subfolder? Andsubdomain vs. subdirectory in web programmingprovide reasons and opinions on the debate around using a subdomain, for example api.fullstackpython.com versus /api/.

There are a couple of Flask extensions that help with building RESTful services with Flask, but the task is so simple that in my opinion there is no need to use an extension. To learn more about securing Python APIs with Auth0, take a look at this tutorial. Alongside with tutorials for backend technologies , the Auth0 Docs webpage also provides tutorials for Mobile/Native apps and Single-Page applications. Using dictionaries in a simple use case like the one above is enough. However, for more complex applications that deal with different entities and have multiple business rules and validations, we might need to encapsulate our data into Python classes.

The Flask Web Framework

However, before we start building our own API, it may be useful to discuss how APIs are useful for researchers. In doing so, we’ll familiarize ourselves with the basic elements of a good API. Considering APIs from the perspective of a user will come in useful when we begin to design our own API later in the lesson. Adventures in running a free, public APIis a quick story of a developer’s geolocation API being abused and his lack of resources for preventing further abuse.

Flask provides us with a jsonify function that allows us to convert lists and dictionaries to JSON format. In the route we created, our book entries are converted from a list of Python dictionaries to JSON before being returned to a user. First, create a new folder on your computer that will serve as a project folder. This can be in your Desktop folder, but I recommend creating a dedicated projects folder for this and similar projects.