WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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In this video we're going to create our
first API view the API view that we

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create is going to be a hello world API
view that demonstrates how you would use

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an API view in practice

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Start by loading
up the atom editor and opening the views

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dot py file that was created
in our profiles API app in our project

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remove all the contents of this file and
we're going to start by importing some

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things at the top of the file so let's
type from rest framework dot views import

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API view

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and from rest framework dot
response import response with a capital

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R

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what this does is it imports the API
view class from the rest framework dot

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views module the rest framework is the
Django rest framework that we installed

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previously in our requirements dot txt file

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this line imports the response object

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which is used to return responses from
the API view so it's a standard response

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object that when you call the API view
or when Django rest framework calls our

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API view it's expecting it to return
this standard response object I'll show

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you how this works in a moment

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Now that
we've added these two imports let's

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create our API view class so type class
hello API view and then in the base

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class let's type API view and let's add
the doc string test API view so this

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creates a new class based on the API
view class that Django rest framework

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provides and it allows us to define the
application logic for our endpoint that

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we're going to assign to this view so
the way it works is you define a URL

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which is our endpoint and then you
assign it to this

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view and the Django rest framework
handles it by calling the appropriate

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function in the view for the HTTP
request that you make so we're going to

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be accepting HTTP GET request to our API
so let's type def get self request format

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equals none and then in the doc string
we'll type returns a list of API view

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features which we're going to be doing
in a moment

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I'll just explain what this

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get function is so the way API views are
broken up is it expects a function for

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the different HTTP requests that can be
made to the view so the HTTP GET request

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is typically used to retrieve a list of
objects or a specific object so whenever

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you make a HTTP GET request to the URL
that it will be assigned to this API

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view it will call the get function
and it will execute the logic that we

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write in the get function

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the parameters
here are self which is required for all

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class functions a request object this is
passed in by the Django rest framework

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and contains details of the request
being made to the API and the format

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which is used to add a format suffix to
the end of the endpoint URL we're not

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going to be using the format but it's
best practice to keep it in here so if

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you do ever enable formats on your API
it will be supported by the functions

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that we create

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Okay so what we're going to
do in our get function here is we're

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going to define a list which describes all
of the features of an API view so let's

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type an underscore API view equals and
create new list here and the first item

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in the list we're going to type a string
and write uses HTTP methods as functions

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and in brackets we'll put get post
patch put delete so these are all

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the functions that you can add to your
API view to support the different HTTP

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requests and we're adding the get
function here

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okay so the next item that

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we're going to add  is is similar to a
traditional django view so the API view

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is very similar to a traditional django
view but specifically intended to be

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used for apis

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Okay next we're going to
type gives you the most control over

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your application logic

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and then we'll
write is mapped manually to URLs and

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that is the list that we're going to
create for our API view so this is just

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a simple list to demonstrate how an API
view works in practice feel free to

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change this list and enter whatever you
want in it it doesn't matter what the

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contents is we just basically want to
demonstrate returning an object in our

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API view

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Okay every function that you
add to an API view that is a

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HTTP function so one of these get post
patch put delete must return a response

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object so Django rest framework is
expecting it to return a response which

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it will then output as part of when the API
is called so let's type return response

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and the response needs to contain a
dictionary or a list which it will then

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output when the API is called so
it converts the response object to json

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and in order to convert it to json it needs
to be either a list or a dictionary

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we're going to return a dictionary so open
these squiggly bracket lines here and

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we're going to add a key called message and
we'll assign a value of just a string

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that says hello

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and then we're going to add a second key

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called an API view and we're going to pass
in our an API view list that we created

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here so an API view

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and that's how you
define an API view with a get function

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so make sure you save the file and then
we're ready to move on to the next video