Files
pecan/docs/source/rest.rst
Ryan Petrello 087ea4f699 Improve pecan documentation and correct intersphinx references.
Change-Id: Iac6229a2727a3c662d3fe9e83e1aa02ef648f025
2014-01-19 17:49:11 -05:00

155 lines
6.9 KiB
ReStructuredText

.. _rest:
Writing RESTful Web Services with Pecan
=======================================
If you need to write controllers to interact with objects, using the
:class:`~pecan.rest.RestController` may help speed things up. It follows the
Representational State Transfer Protocol, also known as REST, by routing the
standard HTTP verbs of ``GET``, ``POST``, ``PUT``, and ``DELETE`` to individual
methods.
::
from pecan import expose
from pecan.rest import RestController
from mymodel import Book
class BooksController(RestController):
@expose()
def get(self, id):
book = Book.get(id)
if not book:
abort(404)
return book.title
URL Mapping
-----------
By default, :class:`~pecan.rest.RestController` routes as follows:
+-----------------+--------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| Method | Description | Example Method(s) / URL(s) |
+=================+==============================================================+============================================+
| get_one | Display one record. | GET /books/1 |
+-----------------+--------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| get_all | Display all records in a resource. | GET /books/ |
+-----------------+--------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| get | A combo of get_one and get_all. | GET /books/ |
| | +--------------------------------------------+
| | | GET /books/1 |
+-----------------+--------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| new | Display a page to create a new resource. | GET /books/new |
+-----------------+--------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| edit | Display a page to edit an existing resource. | GET /books/1/edit |
+-----------------+--------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| post | Create a new record. | POST /books/ |
+-----------------+--------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| put | Update an existing record. | POST /books/1?_method=put |
| | +--------------------------------------------+
| | | PUT /books/1 |
+-----------------+--------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| get_delete | Display a delete confirmation page. | GET /books/1/delete |
+-----------------+--------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| delete | Delete an existing record. | POST /books/1?_method=delete |
| | +--------------------------------------------+
| | | DELETE /books/1 |
+-----------------+--------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
Pecan's :class:`~pecan.rest.RestController` uses the ``?_method=`` query string
to work around the lack of support for the PUT and DELETE verbs when
submitting forms in most current browsers.
In addition to handling REST, the :class:`~pecan.rest.RestController` also
supports the :meth:`index`, :meth:`_default`, and :meth:`_lookup`
routing overrides.
.. warning::
If you need to override :meth:`_route`, make sure to call
:func:`RestController._route` at the end of your custom method so
that the REST routing described above still occurs.
Nesting ``RestController``
---------------------------
:class:`~pecan.rest.RestController` instances can be nested so that child
resources receive the parameters necessary to look up parent resources.
For example::
from pecan import expose
from pecan.rest import RestController
from mymodel import Author, Book
class BooksController(RestController):
@expose()
def get(self, author_id, id):
author = Author.get(author_id)
if not author_id:
abort(404)
book = author.get_book(id)
if not book:
abort(404)
return book.title
class AuthorsController(RestController):
books = BooksController()
@expose()
def get(self, id):
author = Author.get(id)
if not author:
abort(404)
return author.name
class RootController(object):
authors = AuthorsController()
Accessing ``/authors/1/books/2`` invokes :func:`BooksController.get` with
``author_id`` set to ``1`` and ``id`` set to ``2``.
To determine which arguments are associated with the parent resource, Pecan
looks at the :func:`get_one` then :func:`get` method signatures, in that order,
in the parent controller. If the parent resource takes a variable number of
arguments, Pecan will pass it everything up to the child resource controller
name (e.g., ``books`` in the above example).
Defining Custom Actions
-----------------------
In addition to the default methods defined above, you can add additional
behaviors to a :class:`~pecan.rest.RestController` by defining a special
:attr:`_custom_actions`
dictionary.
For example::
from pecan import expose
from pecan.rest import RestController
from mymodel import Book
class BooksController(RestController):
_custom_actions = {
'checkout': ['POST']
}
@expose()
def checkout(self, id):
book = Book.get(id)
if not book:
abort(404)
book.checkout()
:attr:`_custom_actions` maps method names to the list of valid HTTP
verbs for those custom actions. In this case :func:`checkout` supports
``POST``.