Creating a Rest API/Webservice with Django Rest Framework and MONGO (django-rest-framework-mongoengine) using Python 3

DATABASES = {
}

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    #...
    'rest_framework'
]

Install django-rest-framework-mongoengine Dependencies

pip3 install mongoengine

pip3 install django-rest-framework-mongoengine

Install MongoDb service (on Mac) with Homebrew

brew update

brew install mongodb

mkdir -p /data/db

mongod

2018-01-09T22:18:03.471-0200 I FTDC [initandlisten] Initializing full-time diagnostic data capture with directory '/data/db/diagnostic.data'2018-01-09T22:18:03.471-0200 I NETWORK [initandlisten] waiting for connections on port 21017

Inform the Database for mongoengine and django

In the Django App settings.py add the database connection information

import mongoengine

mongoengine.connect(
    db="tools",
    host="localhost"
)

Create your Models

Here is a sample on how to create a Model

# project/appname/models.py

from mongoengine import Document, EmbeddedDocument, fields

class ToolInput(EmbeddedDocument):
    name = fields.StringField(required=True)
    value = fields.DynamicField(required=True)

class Tool(Document):
    label = fields.StringField(required=True)
    description = fields.StringField(required=True, null=True)
    inputs = fields.ListField(fields.EmbeddedDocumentField(ToolInput))

Create the Serializers

Create the serializers.py inside your app and add the following content

from rest_framework_mongoengine import serializers
from project.appname.models import Tool

class ToolSerializer(serializers.DocumentSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = Tool
        fields = '__all__'

Create the Views

This is a pure rest-framework-mongoengine, you will probably have more rest-framework only imports and definitions

from django.shortcuts import render

from rest_framework_mongoengine import viewsets as meviewsets
from project.appname.serializers import ToolSerializer
from project.appname.models import Tool

class ToolViewSet(meviewsets.ModelViewSet):
    lookup_field = 'id'
    queryset = Tool.objects.all()
    serializer_class = ToolSerializer

Create Routes

To accomplish this first create a urls.py file inside the project/appname, this one is a “chid” url set

from django.conf.urls import url
from rest_framework_mongoengine import routers as merouters
from project.appname.views import ToolViewSet

merouter = merouters.DefaultRouter()
merouter.register(r'mongo', ToolViewSet)

urlpatterns = [

]

urlpatterns += merouter.urls

Inform the project that this new url set exist. In the project/urls.py (the parent), add the child, like this:

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path

from django.conf.urls import url, include

urlpatterns = [
    url(r'^admin/', admin.site.urls),
    url(r'^api/', include('project.appname.urls')),
]

Test your Application

Run the server

python3 manage.py runserver

Test connection to the server using you favorite tool, i use Postman. If everything here has been applied and the mongod service is up, everything should work right.

Sources:

https://github.com/umutbozkurt/django-rest-framework-mongoengine

http://mongoengine.org/

https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/

https://medium.com/@vasjaforutube/django-mongodb-django-rest-framework-mongoengine-ee4eb5857b9a