Guide to Self-Documenting APIs with Django REST Framework (DRF)¶

• Table of contents
• Guide to Self-Documenting APIs with Django REST Framework (DRF)
  • Installation and Setup
  • Enabling Automatic Schema Generation

Django REST Framework (DRF) provides a powerful toolkit for building Web APIs with Django and offers a built-in mechanism for generating self-documenting APIs. In this guide, we'll walk you through the steps to set up and use automatic schema generation in DRF for creating detailed API documentation.

Installation and Setup¶

1. Install Django REST Framework: If you haven't already, install Django REST Framework using pip:

   pip install djangorestframework
   
   
   

2. Add DRF to Installed Apps: In your Django project's settings.py , add ' rest_framework ' to the INSTALLED_APPS :

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # ...
    'rest_framework',
    # ...
]

Enabling Automatic Schema Generation¶

Enable DRF's Default Router: In your project's urls.py , you can use DRF's DefaultRouter to automatically generate API endpoints. Replace ' your-model-name ' and ' views.YourModelViewSet ' with your actual model name and viewset:

from rest_framework import routers
from yourapp import views

router = routers.DefaultRouter()
router.register(r'your-model-name', views.YourModelViewSet)

urlpatterns = [
    # ... other URL patterns ...
    path('api/', include(router.urls)),
]