Hello;
[ This question might be more about general principles for API design than
Django, but since Django is my tool of choice - and my context of
understanding, I am posting it here.]
I have been maintaining a small Django based website for some time. It is
mostly based on conventional views returning HTML, but both to support
JavaScript interactivity and to interact with a traditional desktop
application I am gradually creating a REST based API. Up until now I have
created the REST endpoints manually, but I now I intend to look into the
Django Rest Framework (DRF) and try to do things more properly. Now - the
question where I would appreciate some guidance boils down to: "How much
should I use my own http based API internally?". Assume I have two django
models 'Author' and 'Book', each book can have several authors and of
course each author can write several books - i.e. this is a many to many
relationship:
class Author(models.Model):
....
books = models.ManyToManyfield( "Book", ...)
class Book(models.Model):
....
It is then natural(?) to configure the urls:
/books/1 - Get information about the book with ID=1
/authors/7 - Get information about the author with ID=7
But let us say that I wanted to create the endpoint:
/books/7/authors
To get the author information for the authors of the book with ID=7. In my
view I have used:
book = Book.objects.get( pk = 7 )
To get the right book, now I want the author details. As I see it I have
two approaches to get the author details:
1. I can just use the ordinary Model/ORM methods.
2. I can use my own http api - and "loopback" repeated calls to:
/authors/$ID
On the one hand I strongly believe in the "eat your own dogfood" principle,
but on the other hand it feels a bit over the top to issue http calls in
this situation? Grateful for comments from experienced API desginers.
Joakim
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