Building a Basic RestFul API in Python

codementor.io/@sagaragarwal94/building-a-basic-restful-api-in-python-58k02xsiq

Introduction
API Development in Python is a very easy task. This tutorial will help you to create a
basic REST API in Python with the Flask Framework.

REST APIs are pretty much everywhere. They are the standard method to expose
databases to clients and knowing how to develop a REST API is a necessity at all layers
of the stack.

There are many reasons why you should learn to develop REST APIs in Python. If you
are new to API development, then learning how to develop a REST API, will help you to
showcase yourself to the industry.

What is REST API ?

REST (REpresentational State Transfer) is an architectural style, and an approach to
communications that is often used in the development of Web services. The use of REST
is often preferred over the more heavyweight SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)
style because REST does not leverage as much bandwidth, which makes it a better fit for
use over the Internet. The SOAP approach requires writing or using a provided server
program (to serve data) and a client program (to request data).

You will get it more cleared by this picture.

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Stuffs we require to build our first REST API
Python
Flask
Flask-SQLAlchemy
Flask-Restful
SQlite3
Jsonify

Let the Code Begin

Download the dataset from the Employees and Tracks Details and extract in your
project folder named 'python_rest'. Database name is "chinook.db"

Once downloaded, make a file named server.py in the python_rest folder. This file will
contain the API Definitions and Flask Code.

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Now, we create a basic virtual
environment for Python2.7 and
install the packages after it's
activation.

$ virtualenv venv
$ source venv/bin/activate
$ pip install flask flask-jsonpify flask-
sqlalchemy flask-restful
$ pip freeze

Let's create the basic GET API

REST has got 4 options

GET
PUT
POST
DELETE
We will deal with GET and you will get how other works

Before the code, connect yourself to database.

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Now everything being set up, we begin the code of exposing employees data and tracks
data from database and also add a query operator on employees where employee's
details is searched and fetched by EmployeeID.

The code is:

from flask import Flask, request

from flask_restful import Resource, Api
from sqlalchemy import create_engine
from json import dumps
from flask.ext.jsonpify import jsonify

db_connect = create_engine('sqlite:///chinook.db')
app = Flask(__name__)
api = Api(app)

class Employees(Resource):
def get(self):
conn = db_connect.connect() # connect to database
query = conn.execute("select * from employees") # This line performs query and returns
json result
return {'employees': [i[0] for i in query.cursor.fetchall()]} # Fetches first column that is
Employee ID

class Tracks(Resource):
def get(self):
conn = db_connect.connect()
query = conn.execute("select trackid, name, composer, unitprice from tracks;")
result = {'data': [dict(zip(tuple (query.keys()) ,i)) for i in query.cursor]}
return jsonify(result)

class Employees_Name(Resource):
def get(self, employee_id):
conn = db_connect.connect()
query = conn.execute("select * from employees where EmployeeId =%d "
%int(employee_id))
result = {'data': [dict(zip(tuple (query.keys()) ,i)) for i in query.cursor]}
return jsonify(result)

api.add_resource(Employees, '/employees') # Route_1

api.add_resource(Tracks, '/tracks') # Route_2
api.add_resource(Employees_Name, '/employees/<employee_id>') # Route_3

if __name__ == '__main__':
app.run(port='5002')

There will be three routes created :

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http://127.0.0.1:5002/employees shows ids of all the employees in database

http://127.0.0.1:5002/tracks shows tracks details

http://127.0.0.1:5002/employees/8 shows details of employee whose employeeid

is 8

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It is simple to create a API. You
can also add support to
PUT,POST and DELETE on
data too.
GitHub link is given below.
Fork, Clone and add the
supports and ace me back the
Pull Requests

Project Link:

https://github.com/sagaragarwal94/python_rest_flask

Resources
Flask Official Documentation

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