API-First Applications
Design and build API-first Django applications with Django REST Framework. Learn RESTful API design, JWT authentication, API versioning, rate limiting, and auto-generated documentation with drf-spectacular.
60 min•By Priygop Team•Last updated: Feb 2026
API-First Design Principles
API-first means designing the API contract before building the frontend. With Django REST Framework (DRF), you define serializers (data shape), viewsets (CRUD logic), and routers (URL patterns). This approach lets mobile apps, SPAs, and third-party integrations all consume the same backend. DRF provides browsable API, throttling, pagination, and authentication out of the box.
API Design Best Practices
- Use nouns for endpoints (/api/products/) not verbs (/api/getProducts/)
- Version your API: /api/v1/products/ — never break existing clients
- Return proper HTTP status codes: 200 OK, 201 Created, 400 Bad Request, 404 Not Found
- Implement pagination with PageNumberPagination or CursorPagination for large datasets
- Use JWT tokens (djangorestframework-simplejwt) for stateless authentication
- Add rate limiting with DRF's throttle classes to prevent abuse
DRF Serializers & ViewSets
Example
# api/serializers.py
from rest_framework import serializers
from products.models import Product, Category
class CategorySerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
product_count = serializers.IntegerField(read_only=True)
class Meta:
model = Category
fields = ["id", "name", "slug", "product_count"]
class ProductSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
category_name = serializers.CharField(source="category.name", read_only=True)
class Meta:
model = Product
fields = ["id", "name", "slug", "description", "price",
"stock", "available", "category", "category_name",
"image", "created", "updated"]
read_only_fields = ["created", "updated"]
def validate_price(self, value):
if value <= 0:
raise serializers.ValidationError("Price must be positive.")
return value
# api/views.py
from rest_framework import viewsets, filters, status
from rest_framework.decorators import action
from rest_framework.response import Response
from rest_framework.permissions import IsAuthenticatedOrReadOnly
from django_filters.rest_framework import DjangoFilterBackend
from django.db.models import Count
class ProductViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
queryset = Product.objects.filter(available=True)
serializer_class = ProductSerializer
permission_classes = [IsAuthenticatedOrReadOnly]
filter_backends = [DjangoFilterBackend, filters.SearchFilter, filters.OrderingFilter]
filterset_fields = ["category", "available"]
search_fields = ["name", "description"]
ordering_fields = ["price", "created"]
@action(detail=False, methods=["get"])
def featured(self, request):
featured = self.queryset.order_by("-created")[:5]
serializer = self.get_serializer(featured, many=True)
return Response(serializer.data)
# api/urls.py
from rest_framework.routers import DefaultRouter
router = DefaultRouter()
router.register("products", ProductViewSet)
router.register("categories", CategoryViewSet)
urlpatterns = router.urls