Doing query param request in Django

Typically, I want my API endpoint url to be flat like this:

mydomain.com/shit_api/v1/person/123

That url is pretty straight forward, it's trying to get a person with an ID of 123 from shit_api. But that's not always clear cut.

I've been working on a particular API that needed a pair of optional filters that we're a pain to work out in a regular expression. And this is where I found about Django's QueryDict object. With it I can write out API urls with params:

mydomain.com/shit_api/v1/something/?filter1=value1&filter2=value2

And on the urls and views, I can handle it as such:

#urls.py
urlpatterns = [
   url(r'^parts/$', SomethingView.as_view()), name='Something'),
]
...

#views.py
class SomethingView(View):
   def get(self, request, *args, *kwargs):
      fiter1_value = request.GET.get('filter1', 'default')
      fiter2_value = request.GET.get('filter2', 'default')

      #do more here

      return Response('some response')

The thing here is that request.GET.get() method having a default value. This make it that having it on the URL it isn't a problem. So call like:

mydomain.com/shit_api/v1/something/

Will still work.

Bonus since I don't have to deal with a convoluted regular expression. Yehey!

Tricks with Django URLs and knowing you suck doing RE

RE or regular expressions and I don't really see eye to eye. But as a programmer, I have to work with them. So it's awkward like your ex works in the same office as you. But lucky for us, we just stick to a couple of tricks to make it a bit palatable.

Numbers in URL

You'll need to use a \d+ in the pattern.

ex: (r’^status/(\d+)$’, ‘myapp.backbone_view’)

This would work on /api/status/1

Dealing with spaces

I found two ways to do this but then found out that they are the same: [\w|\W]+ AND .+

Yes that's a dot.

ex: (r’^status/([\w|\W]+)$’, ‘myapp.backbone_view’) OR
(r’^status/(.+)$’, ‘myapp.backbone_view’)

This would work on /api/status/dead on arrival

The browser will just replace the spaces with %20 and it should work.