Skip to content

# Tutorial 3: Class-based Views

We can also write our API views using class-based views, rather than function based views. As we'll see this is a powerful pattern that allows us to reuse common functionality, and helps us keep our code DRY.

## Rewriting our API using class-based views

We'll start by rewriting the root view as a class-based view. All this involves is a little bit of refactoring of `views.py`.

    from snippets.models import Snippet
    from snippets.serializers import SnippetSerializer
    from django.http import Http404
    from rest_framework.views import APIView
    from rest_framework.response import Response
    from rest_framework import status

    class SnippetList(APIView):
        """
        List all snippets, or create a new snippet.
        """

        def get(self, request, format=None):
            snippets = Snippet.objects.all()
            serializer = SnippetSerializer(snippets, many=True)
            return Response(serializer.data)

        def post(self, request, format=None):
            serializer = SnippetSerializer(data=request.data)
            if serializer.is_valid():
                serializer.save()
                return Response(serializer.data, status=status.HTTP_201_CREATED)
            return Response(serializer.errors, status=status.HTTP_400_BAD_REQUEST)

So far, so good. It looks pretty similar to the previous case, but we've got better separation between the different HTTP methods. We'll also need to update the instance view in `views.py`.

    class SnippetDetail(APIView):
        """
        Retrieve, update or delete a snippet instance.
        """

        def get_object(self, pk):
            try:
                return Snippet.objects.get(pk=pk)
            except Snippet.DoesNotExist:
                raise Http404

        def get(self, request, pk, format=None):
            snippet = self.get_object(pk)
            serializer = SnippetSerializer(snippet)
            return Response(serializer.data)

        def put(self, request, pk, format=None):
            snippet = self.get_object(pk)
            serializer = SnippetSerializer(snippet, data=request.data)
            if serializer.is_valid():
                serializer.save()
                return Response(serializer.data)
            return Response(serializer.errors, status=status.HTTP_400_BAD_REQUEST)

        def delete(self, request, pk, format=None):
            snippet = self.get_object(pk)
            snippet.delete()
            return Response(status=status.HTTP_204_NO_CONTENT)

That's looking good. Again, it's still pretty similar to the function based view right now.

We'll also need to refactor our `snippets/urls.py` slightly now that we're using class-based views.

    from django.urls import path
    from rest_framework.urlpatterns import format_suffix_patterns
    from snippets import views

    urlpatterns = [
        path("snippets/", views.SnippetList.as_view()),
        path("snippets/<int:pk>/", views.SnippetDetail.as_view()),
    ]

    urlpatterns = format_suffix_patterns(urlpatterns)

Okay, we're done. If you run the development server everything should be working just as before.

## Using mixins

One of the big wins of using class-based views is that it allows us to easily compose reusable bits of behavior.

The create/retrieve/update/delete operations that we've been using so far are going to be pretty similar for any model-backed API views we create. Those bits of common behavior are implemented in REST framework's mixin classes.

Let's take a look at how we can compose the views by using the mixin classes. Here's our `views.py` module again.

    from snippets.models import Snippet
    from snippets.serializers import SnippetSerializer
    from rest_framework import mixins
    from rest_framework import generics

    class SnippetList(
        mixins.ListModelMixin, mixins.CreateModelMixin, generics.GenericAPIView
    ):
        queryset = Snippet.objects.all()
        serializer_class = SnippetSerializer

        def get(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
            return self.list(request, *args, **kwargs)

        def post(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
            return self.create(request, *args, **kwargs)

We'll take a moment to examine exactly what's happening here. We're building our view using `GenericAPIView`, and adding in `ListModelMixin` and `CreateModelMixin`.

The base class provides the core functionality, and the mixin classes provide the `.list()` and `.create()` actions. We're then explicitly binding the `get` and `post` methods to the appropriate actions. Simple enough stuff so far.

    class SnippetDetail(
        mixins.RetrieveModelMixin,
        mixins.UpdateModelMixin,
        mixins.DestroyModelMixin,
        generics.GenericAPIView,
    ):
        queryset = Snippet.objects.all()
        serializer_class = SnippetSerializer

        def get(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
            return self.retrieve(request, *args, **kwargs)

        def put(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
            return self.update(request, *args, **kwargs)

        def delete(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
            return self.destroy(request, *args, **kwargs)

Pretty similar. Again we're using the `GenericAPIView` class to provide the core functionality, and adding in mixins to provide the `.retrieve()`, `.update()` and `.destroy()` actions.

## Using generic class-based views

Using the mixin classes we've rewritten the views to use slightly less code than before, but we can go one step further. REST framework provides a set of already mixed-in generic views that we can use to trim down our `views.py` module even more.

    from snippets.models import Snippet
    from snippets.serializers import SnippetSerializer
    from rest_framework import generics

    class SnippetList(generics.ListCreateAPIView):
        queryset = Snippet.objects.all()
        serializer_class = SnippetSerializer

    class SnippetDetail(generics.RetrieveUpdateDestroyAPIView):
        queryset = Snippet.objects.all()
        serializer_class = SnippetSerializer

Wow, that's pretty concise. We've gotten a huge amount for free, and our code looks like good, clean, idiomatic Django.

Next we'll move onto part 4 of the tutorial, where we'll take a look at how we can deal with authentication and permissions for our API.