django-filter tutorial¶
In this section, we will be adding filtering functionality to the API built in the Django REST Framework Tutorial. To do this we’ll be using the django-filter package.
For more information, django-filter has a comprehensive setup guide in its documentation.
1. Install django-filter¶
To install django-filter, run the following command:
pip install django-filter
2. Configure django-filter settings¶
Add django_filters to your INSTALLED_APPS in the settings.py file of your Django project.
INSTALLED_APPS = (
# ...
'django_filters',
)
Also add the following lines to the REST_FRAMEWORK setting in the same file:
REST_FRAMEWORK = {
'DEFAULT_FILTER_BACKENDS': (
'django_filters.rest_framework.DjangoFilterBackend',
# ...
)
}
3. Configure filtering for the API¶
Define a new filterset_fields variable at the class level of the viewset you created in the previous tutorial:
# ...
class ChapterViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
queryset = Chapter.objects.all()
serializer_class = ChapterSerializer
# Add this line:
filterset_fields = ('number', 'title')
# ...
4. Test the filtering¶
You can now test the filtering by adding query parameters to the API URL. For example, to filter chapters by title, you can use the following URL:
http://localhost:8000/api/chapters?title=Introduction&number=1
You’ll see that only the chapter with the title “Introduction” and number “1” is returned in the response. Note that you may need to add more chapters to your database to fully see the filtering in action.
5. Conclusion on django-filter¶
Now you know how to add filtering functionality to your APIs. The django-filter package has a number of additional features including the ability to create more complex and custom filters. For more information, see the django-filter documentation.
To wrap up these tutorials, in the next section we’ll be covering how to write tests for the API you just built.
