Tastypie Cookbook

Adding Custom Values

You might encounter cases where you wish to include additional data in a response which is not obtained from a field or method on your model. You can easily extend the dehydrate() method to provide additional values:

class MyModelResource(Resource):
    class Meta:
        qs = MyModel.objects.all()

    def dehydrate(self, bundle):
        bundle.data['custom_field'] = "Whatever you want"
        return bundle

Per-Request Alterations To The Queryset

A common pattern is needing to limit a queryset by something that changes per-request, for instance the date/time. You can accomplish this by lightly modifying get_object_list:

from tastypie.utils import now

class MyResource(ModelResource):
    class Meta:
        queryset = MyObject.objects.all()

    def get_object_list(self, request):
        return super(MyResource, self).get_object_list(request).filter(start_date__gte=now)

Using Your Resource In Regular Views

In addition to using your resource classes to power the API, you can also use them to write other parts of your application, such as your views. For instance, if you wanted to encode user information in the page for some Javascript’s use, you could do the following:

# views.py
from django.shortcuts import render_to_response
from myapp.api.resources import UserResource


def user_detail(request, username):
    ur = UserResource()
    user = ur.obj_get(username=username)

    # Other things get prepped to go into the context then...

    ur_bundle = ur.build_bundle(obj=user, request=request)
    return render_to_response('myapp/user_detail.html', {
        # Other things here.
        "user_json": ur.serialize(None, ur.full_dehydrate(ur_bundle), 'application/json'),
    })

Using Non-PK Data For Your URLs

By convention, ModelResources usually expose the detail endpoints utilizing the primary key of the Model they represent. However, this is not a strict requirement. Each URL can take other named URLconf parameters that can be used for the lookup.

For example, if you want to expose User resources by username, you can do something like the following:

# myapp/api/resources.py
class UserResource(ModelResource):
    class Meta:
        queryset = User.objects.all()

    def prepend_urls(self):
        return [
            url(r"^(?P<resource_name>%s)/(?P<username>[\w\d_.-]+)/$" % self._meta.resource_name, self.wrap_view('dispatch_detail'), name="api_dispatch_detail"),
        ]

The added URLconf matches before the standard URLconf included by default & matches on the username provided in the URL.

Nested Resources

You can also do “nested resources” (resources within another related resource) by lightly overriding the prepend_urls method & adding on a new method to handle the children:

class ParentResource(ModelResource):
    children = fields.ToManyField(ChildResource, 'children')

    def prepend_urls(self):
        return [
            url(r"^(?P<resource_name>%s)/(?P<pk>\w[\w/-]*)/children%s$" % (self._meta.resource_name, trailing_slash()), self.wrap_view('get_children'), name="api_get_children"),
        ]

    def get_children(self, request, **kwargs):
        try:
            obj = self.cached_obj_get(request=request, **self.remove_api_resource_names(kwargs))
        except ObjectDoesNotExist:
            return HttpGone()
        except MultipleObjectsReturned:
            return HttpMultipleChoices("More than one resource is found at this URI.")

        child_resource = ChildResource()
        return child_resource.get_detail(request, parent_id=obj.pk)

Another alternative approach is to override the dispatch method:

# myapp/api/resources.py
class EntryResource(ModelResource):
    user = fields.ForeignKey(UserResource, 'user')

    class Meta:
        queryset = Entry.objects.all()
        resource_name = 'entry'

    def dispatch(self, request_type, request, **kwargs):
        username = kwargs.pop('username')
        kwargs['user'] = get_object_or_404(User, username=username)
        return super(EntryResource, self).dispatch(request_type, request, **kwargs)

# urls.py
from django.conf.urls.defaults import *
from myapp.api import EntryResource

entry_resource = EntryResource()

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    # The normal jazz here, then...
    (r'^api/(?P<username>\w+)/', include(entry_resource.urls)),
)

Adding Search Functionality

Another common request is being able to integrate search functionality. This approach uses Haystack, though you could hook it up to any search technology. We leave the CRUD methods of the resource alone, choosing to add a new endpoint at /api/v1/notes/search/:

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *
from django.core.paginator import Paginator, InvalidPage
from django.http import Http404
from haystack.query import SearchQuerySet
from tastypie.resources import ModelResource
from tastypie.utils import trailing_slash
from notes.models import Note


class NoteResource(ModelResource):
    class Meta:
        queryset = Note.objects.all()
        resource_name = 'notes'

    def prepend_urls(self):
        return [
            url(r"^(?P<resource_name>%s)/search%s$" % (self._meta.resource_name, trailing_slash()), self.wrap_view('get_search'), name="api_get_search"),
        ]

    def get_search(self, request, **kwargs):
        self.method_check(request, allowed=['get'])
        self.is_authenticated(request)
        self.throttle_check(request)

        # Do the query.
        sqs = SearchQuerySet().models(Note).load_all().auto_query(request.GET.get('q', ''))
        paginator = Paginator(sqs, 20)

        try:
            page = paginator.page(int(request.GET.get('page', 1)))
        except InvalidPage:
            raise Http404("Sorry, no results on that page.")

        objects = []

        for result in page.object_list:
            bundle = self.build_bundle(obj=result.object, request=request)
            bundle = self.full_dehydrate(bundle)
            objects.append(bundle)

        object_list = {
            'objects': objects,
        }

        self.log_throttled_access(request)
        return self.create_response(request, object_list)

Creating per-user resources

One might want to create an API which will require every user to authenticate and every user will be working only with objects associated with them. Let’s see how to implement it for two basic operations: listing and creation of an object.

For listing we want to list only objects for which ‘user’ field matches ‘request.user’. This could be done by applying a filter in the apply_authorization_limits method of your resource.

For creating we’d have to wrap obj_create method of ModelResource. Then the resulting code will look something like:

# myapp/api/resources.py
class EnvironmentResource(ModelResource):
    class Meta:
        queryset = Environment.objects.all()
        resource_name = 'environment'
        list_allowed_methods = ['get', 'post']
        authentication = ApiKeyAuthentication()
        authorization = Authorization()

    def obj_create(self, bundle, request=None, **kwargs):
        return super(EnvironmentResource, self).obj_create(bundle, request, user=request.user)

    def apply_authorization_limits(self, request, object_list):
        return object_list.filter(user=request.user)

camelCase JSON Serialization

The convention in the world of Javascript has standardized on camelCase, where Tastypie uses underscore syntax, which can lead to “ugly” looking code in Javascript. You can create a custom serializer that emits values in camelCase instead:

from tastypie.serializers import Serializer

class CamelCaseJSONSerializer(Serializer):
    formats = ['json']
    content_types = {
        'json': 'application/json',
    }

    def to_json(self, data, options=None):
        # Changes underscore_separated names to camelCase names to go from python convention to javacsript convention
        data = self.to_simple(data, options)

        def underscoreToCamel(match):
            return match.group()[0] + match.group()[2].upper()

        def camelize(data):
            if isinstance(data, dict):
                new_dict = {}
                for key, value in data.items():
                    new_key = re.sub(r"[a-z]_[a-z]", underscoreToCamel, key)
                    new_dict[new_key] = camelize(value)
                return new_dict
            if isinstance(data, (list, tuple)):
                for i in range(len(data)):
                    data[i] = camelize(data[i])
                return data
            return data

        camelized_data = camelize(data)

        return simplejson.dumps(camelized_data, sort_keys=True)

    def from_json(self, content):
        # Changes camelCase names to underscore_separated names to go from javascript convention to python convention
        data = simplejson.loads(content)

        def camelToUnderscore(match):
            return match.group()[0] + "_" + match.group()[1].lower()

        def underscorize(data):
            if isinstance(data, dict):
                new_dict = {}
                for key, value in data.items():
                    new_key = re.sub(r"[a-z][A-Z]", camelToUnderscore, key)
                    new_dict[new_key] = underscorize(value)
                return new_dict
            if isinstance(data, (list, tuple)):
                for i in range(len(data)):
                    data[i] = underscorize(data[i])
                return data
            return data

    underscored_data = underscorize(data)

    return underscored_data

Pretty-printed JSON Serialization

By default, Tastypie outputs JSON with no indentation or newlines (equivalent to calling json.dumps() with indent set to None). You can override this behavior in a custom serializer:

from django.core.serializers import json
from django.utils import simplejson
from tastypie.serializers import Serializer

class PrettyJSONSerializer(Serializer):
    json_indent = 2

    def to_json(self, data, options=None):
        options = options or {}
        data = self.to_simple(data, options)
        return simplejson.dumps(data, cls=json.DjangoJSONEncoder,
                sort_keys=True, ensure_ascii=False, indent=self.json_indent)

Determining format via URL

Sometimes it’s required to allow selecting the response format by specifying it in the API URL, for example /api/v1/users.json instead of /api/v1/users/?format=json. The following snippet allows that kind of syntax additional to the default URL scheme:

# myapp/api/resources.py

# Piggy-back on internal csrf_exempt existence handling
from tastypie.resources import csrf_exempt

class UserResource(ModelResource):
    class Meta:
        queryset = User.objects.all()

    def prepend_urls(self):
        """
        Returns a URL scheme based on the default scheme to specify
        the response format as a file extension, e.g. /api/v1/users.json
        """
        return [
            url(r"^(?P<resource_name>%s)\.(?P<format>\w+)$" % self._meta.resource_name, self.wrap_view('dispatch_list'), name="api_dispatch_list"),
            url(r"^(?P<resource_name>%s)/schema\.(?P<format>\w+)$" % self._meta.resource_name, self.wrap_view('get_schema'), name="api_get_schema"),
            url(r"^(?P<resource_name>%s)/set/(?P<pk_list>\w[\w/;-]*)\.(?P<format>\w+)$" % self._meta.resource_name, self.wrap_view('get_multiple'), name="api_get_multiple"),
            url(r"^(?P<resource_name>%s)/(?P<pk>\w[\w/-]*)\.(?P<format>\w+)$" % self._meta.resource_name, self.wrap_view('dispatch_detail'), name="api_dispatch_detail"),
        ]

    def determine_format(self, request):
        """
        Used to determine the desired format from the request.format
        attribute.
        """
        if (hasattr(request, 'format') and
                request.format in self._meta.serializer.formats):
            return self._meta.serializer.get_mime_for_format(request.format)
        return super(UserResource, self).determine_format(request)

    def wrap_view(self, view):
        @csrf_exempt
        def wrapper(request, *args, **kwargs):
            request.format = kwargs.pop('format', None)
            wrapped_view = super(UserResource, self).wrap_view(view)
            return wrapped_view(request, *args, **kwargs)
        return wrapper

Adding to the Django Admin

If you’re using the django admin and ApiKeyAuthentication, you may want to see or edit ApiKeys next to users. To do this, you need to unregister the built-in UserAdmin, alter the inlines, and re-register it. This could go in any of your admin.py files. You may also want to register ApiAccess and ApiKey models on their own.:

from tastypie.admin import ApiKeyInline
from tastypie.models import ApiAccess, ApiKey
from django.contrib.auth.admin import UserAdmin
from django.contrib.auth.models import User

admin.site.register(ApiKey)
admin.site.register(ApiAccess)

class UserModelAdmin(UserAdmin):
    inlines = UserAdmin.inlines + [ApiKeyInline]

admin.site.unregister(User)
admin.site.register(User,UserModelAdmin)

Using SessionAuthentication

If your users are logged into the site & you want Javascript to be able to access the API (assuming jQuery), the first thing to do is setup SessionAuthentication:

from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from tastypie.authentication import SessionAuthentication
from tastypie.resources import ModelResource


class UserResource(ModelResource):
    class Meta:
        resource_name = 'users'
        queryset = User.objects.all()
        authentication = SessionAuthentication()

Then you’d build a template like:

<html>
    <head>
        <title></title>
        <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript">
            $(document).ready(function() {
                // We use ``.ajax`` here due to the overrides.
                $.ajax({
                    // Substitute in your API endpoint here.
                    url: '/api/v1/users/',
                    contentType: 'application/json',
                    // The ``X-CSRFToken`` evidently can't be set in the
                    // ``headers`` option, so force it here.
                    // This method requires jQuery 1.5+.
                    beforeSend: function(jqXHR, settings) {
                        // Pull the token out of the DOM.
                        jqXHR.setRequestHeader('X-CSRFToken', $('input[name=csrfmiddlewaretoken]').val());
                    },
                    success: function(data, textStatus, jqXHR) {
                        // Your processing of the data here.
                        console.log(data);
                    }
                });
            });
        </script>
    </head>
    <body>
        <!-- Include the CSRF token in the body of the HTML -->
        {% csrf_token %}
    </body>
</html>

There are other ways to make this function, with other libraries or other techniques for supplying the token (see https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/contrib/csrf/#ajax for an alternative). This is simply a starting point for getting things working.