Question

I would like to make a Tastypie based API adder. Here is how it works… the user would post to the two numbers they would like added and using Tastypie + Django I would like to include the added number on the return to the user.

I have no interest in putting it into the mySQL database.

class Adder(resource):
    class Meta:
    authorization = Authorization()
    authentication = Authentication()

    def hydrate(self,bundle):
        _a = bundle.data['first_number']
        _b = bundle.data['second_number']

        self.create_response(request, return_dict)
        return bundle

The documentation for Tastypie really seems to revolve around the models (for obvious reasons).

But I was curious if the create_response can be called from within the hydrate method and if calling the hydrate method is the right way of handling the post data.

Answer 1

I would probably skip the finer-grained things like hydrate, apply_sorting, build_filters, etc.

I’m assuming that without objects behind the api you’re using a list-looking url like /api/v1/add_stuff/, and assuming you’re accepting POST requests. If these assumptions are wrong you can adjust by changing to post_detail, get_list, etc.

def post_list(self, request, **kwargs):
    _a = request.POST.get('first_number', None)
    _b = request.POST.get('second_number', None)
    if None in (_a, _b):
        raise HttpBadRequest()
    return self.create_response(request, {'result': _a + _b})

Note that I think this code would work but I haven’t tested it. It’s meant to provide a starting point.

This section of the Tastypie docs describes the order in which the various methods are called, and toward the bottom of the page there is a full API reference so you can see what parameters things expect and what they are supposed to return.

Edit:

The flow for this situation will look something like this:

1. In dispatch, the request uri is inspected. Depending on whether a
   detail or a list uri was requested (/api/v1/add_stuff/<pk>/ or
   /api/v1/add_stuff/), handling is delegated to dispatch_detail or
   dispatch_list. This is also where authentication, authorization,
   and throttling checks happen.

2. In dispatch_list, the request method is inspected and the call is
   delegated to a method named '%s_list' % request.METHOD.lower().
   To answer your comment, these are magical method names. If the
   request method is POST, dispatch_list looks for a method named
   post_list and an error is thrown if the appropriate handler
   is not defined.