Flask API

Browsable Web APIs for Flask

Overview

Flask API is a drop-in replacement for Flask that provides an implementation of browsable APIs similar to what Django REST framework provides. It gives you properly content negotiated-responses and smart request parsing:

Screenshot

Installation

Requirements:

The following packages are optional:

Install using pip:

pip install Flask-API

Import and initialize your application:

from flask_api import FlaskAPI app = FlaskAPI(__name__)

Responses

Return any valid response object as normal, or return a list or dict.

@app.route('/example/') def example(): return {'hello': 'world'}

A renderer for the response data will be selected using content negotiation based on the client 'Accept' header. If you're making the API request from a regular client, this will default to a JSON response. If you're viewing the API in a browser it'll default to the browsable API HTML.

Requests

Access the parsed request data using request.data. This will handle JSON or form data by default.

@app.route('/example/') def example(): return {'request data': request.data}

Example

The following example demonstrates a simple API for creating, listing, updating and deleting notes.

from flask import request, url_for from flask_api import FlaskAPI, status, exceptions app = FlaskAPI(__name__) notes = { 0: 'do the shopping', 1: 'build the codez', 2: 'paint the door', } def note_repr(key): return { 'url': request.host_url.rstrip('/') + url_for('notes_detail', key=key), 'text': notes[key] } @app.route("/", methods=['GET', 'POST']) def notes_list(): """ List or create notes. """ if request.method == 'POST': note = str(request.data.get('text', '')) idx = max(notes.keys()) + 1 notes[idx] = note return note_repr(idx), status.HTTP_201_CREATED # request.method == 'GET' return [note_repr(idx) for idx in sorted(notes.keys())] @app.route("/<int:key>/", methods=['GET', 'PUT', 'DELETE']) def notes_detail(key): """ Retrieve, update or delete note instances. """ if request.method == 'PUT': note = str(request.data.get('text', '')) notes[key] = note return note_repr(key) elif request.method == 'DELETE': notes.pop(key, None) return '', status.HTTP_204_NO_CONTENT # request.method == 'GET' if key not in notes: raise exceptions.NotFound() return note_repr(key) if __name__ == "__main__": app.run(debug=True)

Now run the webapp:

$ python ./example.py * Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/ * Restarting with reloader

You can now open a new tab and interact with the API from the command line:

$ curl -X GET http://127.0.0.1:5000/ [{"url": "http://127.0.0.1:5000/0/", "text": "do the shopping"}, {"url": "http://127.0.0.1:5000/1/", "text": "build the codez"}, {"url": "http://127.0.0.1:5000/2/", "text": "paint the door"}] $ curl -X GET http://127.0.0.1:5000/1/ {"url": "http://127.0.0.1:5000/1/", "text": "build the codez"} $ curl -X PUT http://127.0.0.1:5000/1/ -d text="flask api is teh awesomez" {"url": "http://127.0.0.1:5000/1/", "text": "flask api is teh awesomez"}

You can also work on the API directly in your browser, by opening http://127.0.0.1:5000/. You can then navigate between notes, and make GET, PUT, POST and DELETE API requests.