Customizing the ReSTful interface

HTTP methods

By default, the APIManager.create_api() method creates a read-only interface; requests with HTTP methods other than GET will cause a response with 405 Method Not Allowed. To explicitly specify which methods should be allowed for the endpoint, pass a list as the value of keyword argument methods:

apimanager.create_api(Person, methods=['GET', 'POST', 'DELETE'])

This creates an endpoint at /api/person which responds to GET, POST, and DELETE methods, but not to PATCH.

If you allow GET requests, you will have access to endpoints of the following forms.

GET /api/person
GET /api/person/1
GET /api/person/1/comments
GET /api/person/1/relationships/comments
GET /api/person/1/comments/2

The first four are described explicitly in the JSON API specification. The last is particular to Flask-Restless; it allows you to access a particular related resource via a relationship on another resource.

If you allow DELETE requests, you will have access to endpoints of the form

DELETE /api/person/1

If you allow POST requests, you will have access to endpoints of the form

POST /api/person

Finally, if you allow PATCH requests, you will have access to endpoints of the following forms.

PATCH /api/person/1
POST /api/person/1/relationships/comments
PATCH /api/person/1/relationships/comments
DELETE /api/person/1/relationships/comments

The last three allow the client to interact with the relationships of a particular resource. The last two must be enabled explicitly by setting the allow_to_many_replacement and allow_delete_from_to_many_relationships, respectively, to True when creating an API using the APIManager.create_api() method.

API prefix

To create an API at a prefix other than the default /api, use the url_prefix keyword argument:

apimanager.create_api(Person, url_prefix='/api/v2')

Then your API for Person will be available at /api/v2/person.

Collection name

By default, the name of the collection that appears in the URLs of the API will be the name of the table that backs your model. If your model is a SQLAlchemy model, this will be the value of its __table__.name attribute. If your model is a Flask-SQLAlchemy model, this will be the lowercase name of the model with camel case changed to all-lowercase with underscore separators. For example, a class named MyModel implies a collection name of 'my_model'. Furthermore, the URL at which this collection is accessible by default is /api/my_model.

To provide a different name for the model, provide a string to the collection_name keyword argument of the APIManager.create_api() method:

apimanager.create_api(Person, collection_name='people')

Then the API will be exposed at /api/people instead of /api/person.

Note

According to the JSON API specification,

Note: This spec is agnostic about inflection rules, so the value of type can be either plural or singular. However, the same value should be used consistently throughout an implementation.

It’s up to you to make sure your collection names are either all plural or all singular!

Specifying one of many primary keys

If your model has more than one primary key (one called id and one called username, for example), you should specify the one to use:

manager.create_api(User, primary_key='username')

If you do this, Flask-Restless will create URLs like /api/user/myusername instead of /api/user/123.

Enable bulk operations

Bulk operations via the JSON API Bulk extension are not yet supported.

Custom serialization

New in version 0.17.0.

Flask-Restless provides serialization and deserialization that work with the JSON API specification. If you wish to have more control over the way instances of your models are converted to Python dictionary representations, you can specify a custom serialization function by providing it to APIManager.create_api() via the serializer keyword argument. Similarly, to provide a deserialization function that converts a Python dictionary representation to an instance of your model, use the deserializer keyword argument. However, if you provide a serializer that fails to produce resource objects that satisfy the JSON API specification, your client will receive non-compliant responses!

Define your serialization functions like this:

def serialize(instance, only=None):
    return {'id': ..., 'type': ..., 'attributes': ...}

instance is an instance of a SQLAlchemy model and the only argument is a list; only the fields (that is, the attributes and relationships) whose names appear as strings in only should appear in the returned dictionary. The only exception is that the keys 'id' and 'type' must always appear, regardless of whether they appear in only. The function must return a dictionary representation of the resource object.

To help with creating custom serialization functions, Flask-Restless provides a simple_serialize() function, which returns the result of its basic, built-in serialization. Therefore, one way to customize your serialized objects is to do something like this:

from flask.ext.restless import simple_serialize

def my_serializer(instance, only=None):
    # Get the default serialization of the instance.
    result = simple_serialize(instance, only=only)
    # Make your changes here.
    result['meta']['foo'] = 'bar'
    # Return the dictionary.
    return result

You could also define a subclass of the DefaultSerializer class, override the DefaultSerializer.__call__() method, and provide an instance of that class to the serializer keyword argument.

For deserialization, define your custom deserialization function like this:

def deserialize(document):
    return Person(...)

document is a dictionary representation of the complete incoming JSON API document, where the data element contains the primary resource object. The function must return an instance of the model that has the requested fields.

Note

If you wish to write your own serialization functions, we strongly suggest using a Python object serialization library instead of writing your own serialization functions. This is also likely a better approach than specifying which columns to include or exclude (Inclusion of related resources) or preprocessors and postprocessors (Request preprocessors and postprocessors).

For example, if you create schema for your database models using Marshmallow, then you use that library’s built-in serialization functions as follows:

class PersonSchema(Schema):
    id = fields.Integer()
    name = fields.String()

    def make_object(self, data):
        print('MAKING OBJECT FROM', data)
        return Person(**data)

person_schema = PersonSchema()

def person_serializer(instance):
    return person_schema.dump(instance).data

def person_deserializer(data):
    return person_schema.load(data).data

manager = APIManager(app, session=session)
manager.create_api(Person, methods=['GET', 'POST'],
                   serializer=person_serializer,
                   deserializer=person_deserializer)

For a complete version of this example, see the examples/server_configurations/custom_serialization.py module in the source distribution, or view it online.

Per-model serialization

The correct serialization function will be used for each type of SQLAlchemy model for which you invoke APIManager.create_api(). For example, if you create two APIs, one for Person objects and one for Article objects,

manager.create_api(Person, serializer=person_serializer)
manager.create_api(Article, serializer=article_serializer)

and then make a request like

GET /api/article/1?include=author HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
Accept: application/vnd.api+json

then Flask-Restless will use the article_serializer function to serialize the primary data (that is, the top-level data element in the response document) and the person_serializer to serialize the included Person resource.

Capturing validation errors

By default, no validation is performed by Flask-Restless; if you want validation, implement it yourself in your database models. However, by specifying a list of exceptions raised by your backend on validation errors, Flask-Restless will forward messages from raised exceptions to the client in an error response.

For example, if your validation framework includes an exception called ValidationError, then call the APIManager.create_api() method with the validation_exceptions keyword argument:

from cool_validation_framework import ValidationError
apimanager.create_api(Person, validation_exceptions=[ValidationError],
                      methods=['PATCH', 'POST'])

Note

Currently, Flask-Restless expects that an instance of a specified validation error will have a errors attribute, which is a dictionary mapping field name to error description (note: one error per field). If you have a better, more general solution to this problem, please visit our issue tracker.

Now when you make POST and PATCH requests with invalid fields, the JSON response will look like this:

HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request

{
  "errors": [
    {
      "status": 400,
      "title": "Validation error",
      "detail": "age: must be an integer"
    }
  ]
}

Request preprocessors and postprocessors

To apply a function to the request parameters and/or body before the request is processed, use the preprocessors keyword argument. To apply a function to the response data after the request is processed (immediately before the response is sent), use the postprocessors keyword argument. Both preprocessors and postprocessors must be a dictionary which maps HTTP method names as strings (with exceptions as described below) to a list of functions. The specified functions will be applied in the order given in the list.

There are many different routes on which you can apply preprocessors and postprocessors, depending on HTTP method type, whether the client is accessing a resource or a relationship, whether the client is accessing a collection or a single resource, etc.

This table states the preprocessors that apply to each type of endpoint.

preprocessor name applies to URLs like…
GET_COLLECTION /api/person
GET_RESOURCE /api/person/1
GET_RELATION /api/person/1/articles
GET_RELATED_RESOURCE /api/person/1/articles/2
DELETE_RESOURCE /api/person/1
POST_RESOURCE /api/person
PATCH_RESOURCE /api/person/1
GET_RELATIONSHIP /api/person/1/relationships/articles
DELETE_RELATIONSHIP /api/person/1/relationships/articles
POST_RELATIONSHIP /api/person/1/relationships/articles
PATCH_RELATIONSHIP /api/person/1/relationships/articles

This table states the postprocessors that apply to each type of endpoint.

postprocessor name applies to URLs like…
GET_COLLECTION /api/person
GET_RESOURCE /api/person/1
GET_TO_MANY_RELATION /api/person/1/articles
GET_TO_ONE_RELATION /api/articles/1/author
GET_RELATED_RESOURCE /api/person/1/articles/2
DELETE_RESOURCE /api/person/1
POST_RESOURCE /api/person
PATCH_RESOURCE /api/person/1
GET_TO_MANY_RELATIONSHIP /api/person/1/relationships/articles
GET_TO_ONE_RELATIONSHIP /api/articles/1/relationships/author
GET_RELATIONSHIP /api/person/1/relationships/articles
DELETE_RELATIONSHIP /api/person/1/relationships/articles
POST_RELATIONSHIP /api/person/1/relationships/articles
PATCH_RELATIONSHIP /api/person/1/relationships/articles

Each type of preprocessor or postprocessor requires different arguments. For preprocessors:

preprocessor name keyword arguments
GET_COLLECTION filters, sort, group_by, single
GET_RESOURCE resource_id
GET_RELATION resource_id, relation_name, filters, sort, group_by, single
GET_RELATED_RESOURCE resource_id, relation_name, related_resource_id
DELETE_RESOURCE resource_id
POST_RESOURCE data
PATCH_RESOURCE resource_id, data
GET_RELATIONSHIP resource_id, relation_name
DELETE_RELATIONSHIP resource_id, relation_name
POST_RELATIONSHIP resource_id, relation_name, data
PATCH_RELATIONSHIP resource_id, relation_name, data

For postprocessors:

postprocessor name keyword arguments
GET_COLLECTION result, filters, sort, group_by, single
GET_RESOURCE result
GET_TO_MANY_RELATION result, filters, sort, group_by, single
GET_TO_ONE_RELATION result
GET_RELATED_RESOURCE result
DELETE_RESOURCE was_deleted
POST_RESOURCE result
PATCH_RESOURCE result
GET_TO_MANY_RELATIONSHIP result, filters, sort, group_by, single
GET_TO_ONE_RELATIONSHIP result
DELETE_RELATIONSHIP was_deleted
POST_RELATIONSHIP none
PATCH_RELATIONSHIP none

How can one use these tables to create a preprocessor or postprocessor? If you want to create a preprocessor that will be applied on GET requests to /api/person, first define a function that accepts the keyword arguments you need, and has a **kw argument for any additional keyword arguments (and any new arguments that may appear in future versions of Flask-Restless):

def fetch_preprocessor(filters=None, sort=None, group_by=None, single=None,
                       **kw):
    # Here perform any application-specific code...

Next, instruct these preprocessors to be applied by Flask-Restless by using the preprocessors keyword argument to APIManager.create_api(). The value of this argument must be a dictionary in which each key is a string containing a processor name and each value is a list of functions to be applied for that request:

preprocessors = {'GET_COLLECTION': [fetch_preprocessor]}
manager.create_api(Person, preprocessors=preprocessors)

For preprocessors for endpoints of the form /api/person/1, a returned value will be interpreted as the resource ID for the request. (Remember, as described in Resource ID must be a string, the returned ID must be a string.) For example, if a preprocessor for a GET request to /api/person/1 returns the string 'foo', then Flask-Restless will behave as if the request were originally for the URL /api/person/foo. For preprocessors for endpoints of the form /api/person/1/articles or /api/person/1/relationships/articles, the function can return either one value, in which case the resource ID will be replaced with the return value, or a two-tuple, in which case both the resource ID and the relationship name will be replaced. Finally, for preprocessors for endpoints of the form /api/person/1/articles/2, the function can return one, two, or three values; if three values are returned, the resource ID, the relationship name, and the related resource ID are all replaced. (If multiple preprocessors are specified for a single HTTP method and each one has a return value, Flask-Restless will only remember the value returned by the last preprocessor function.)

Those preprocessors and postprocessors that accept dictionaries as parameters can (and should) modify their arguments in-place. That means the changes made to, for example, the result dictionary will be seen by the Flask-Restless view functions and ultimately returned to the client.

Note

For more information about the filters and single keyword arguments, see Filtering. For more information about sort and group_by keyword arguments, see Sorting.

In order to halt the preprocessing or postprocessing and return an error response directly to the client, your preprocessor or postprocessor functions can raise a ProcessingException. If a function raises this exception, no preprocessing or postprocessing functions that appear later in the list specified when the API was created will be invoked. For example, an authentication function can be implemented like this:

def check_auth(resource_id=None, **kw):
    # Here, get the current user from the session.
    current_user = ...
    # Next, check if the user is authorized to modify the specified
    # instance of the model.
    if not is_authorized_to_modify(current_user, instance_id):
        raise ProcessingException(detail='Not Authorized', status=401)
manager.create_api(Person, preprocessors=dict(GET_SINGLE=[check_auth]))

The ProcessingException allows you to specify as keyword arguments to the constructor the elements of the JSON API error object. If no arguments are provided, the error is assumed to have status code 400 Bad Request.

Universal preprocessors and postprocessors

New in version 0.13.0.

The previous section describes how to specify a preprocessor or postprocessor on a per-API (that is, a per-model) basis. If you want a function to be executed for all APIs created by a APIManager, you can use the preprocessors or postprocessors keyword arguments in the constructor of the APIManager class. These keyword arguments have the same format as the corresponding ones in the APIManager.create_api() method as described above. Functions specified in this way are prepended to the list of preprocessors or postprocessors specified in the APIManager.create_api() method.

This may be used, for example, if all POST requests require authentication:

from flask import Flask
from flask.ext.restless import APIManager
from flask.ext.restless import ProcessingException
from flask.ext.login import current_user
from mymodels import User
from mymodels import session

def auth_func(*args, **kw):
    if not current_user.is_authenticated():
        raise ProcessingException(detail='Not authenticated', status=401)

app = Flask(__name__)
preprocessors = {'POST_RESOURCE': [auth_func]}
api_manager = APIManager(app, session=session, preprocessors=preprocessors)
api_manager.create_api(User)

Preprocessors for collections

When the server receives, for example, a GET request for /api/person, Flask-Restless interprets this request as a search with no filters (that is, a search for all instances of Person without exception). In other words, a GET request to /api/person is roughly equivalent to the same request to /api/person?filter[objects]=[]. Therefore, if you want to filter the set of Person instances returned by such a request, you can create a GET_COLLECTION preprocessor that appends filters to the filters keyword argument. For example:

def preprocessor(filters=None, **kw):
    # This checks if the preprocessor function is being called before a
    # request that does not have search parameters.
    if filters is None:
        return
    # Create the filter you wish to add; in this case, we include only
    # instances with ``id`` not equal to 1.
    filt = dict(name='id', op='neq', val=1)
    # *Append* your filter to the list of filters.
    filters.append(filt)

preprocessors = {'GET_COLLECTION': [preprocessor]}
manager.create_api(Person, preprocessors=preprocessors)

Custom queries

In cases where it is not possible to use preprocessors or postprocessors (Request preprocessors and postprocessors) efficiently, you can provide a custom query attribute to your model instead. The attribute can either be a SQLAlchemy query expression or a class method that returns a SQLAlchemy query expression. Flask-Restless will use this query attribute internally, however it is defined, instead of the default session.query(Model) (in the pure SQLAlchemy case) or Model.query (in the Flask-SQLAlchemy case). Flask-Restless uses a query during most GET and PATCH requests to find the model(s) being requested.

You may want to use a custom query attribute if you want to reveal only certain information to the client. For example, if you have a set of people and you only want to reveal information about people from the group named “students”, define a query class method this way:

class Group(Base):
    __tablename__ = 'group'
    id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)
    groupname = Column(Unicode)
    people = relationship('Person')

class Person(Base):
    __tablename__ = 'person'
    id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)
    group_id = Column(Integer, ForeignKey('group.id'))
    group = relationship('Group')

    @classmethod
    def query(cls):
        original_query = session.query(cls)
        condition = (Group.groupname == 'students')
        return original_query.join(Group).filter(condition)

Then GET requests to, for example, /api/person will only reveal instances of Person who also are in the group named “students”.

Requiring authentication for some methods

If you want certain HTTP methods to require authentication, use preprocessors:

from flask import Flask
from flask.ext.restless import APIManager
from flask.ext.restless import ProcessingException
from flask.ext.login import current_user
from mymodels import User

def auth_func(*args, **kwargs):
    if not current_user.is_authenticated():
        raise ProcessingException(detail='Not authenticated', status=401)

app = Flask(__name__)
api_manager = APIManager(app)
# Set `auth_func` to be a preprocessor for any type of endpoint you want to
# be guarded by authentication.
preprocessors = {'GET_RESOURCE': [auth_func], ...}
api_manager.create_api(User, preprocessors=preprocessors)

For a more complete example using Flask-Login, see the examples/server_configurations/authentication directory in the source distribution, or view the authentication example online.