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authorDaniel Izquierdo2012-02-21 15:23:31 +0900
committerDaniel Izquierdo2012-02-21 22:51:32 +0900
commit86d470796e077e8c3c2253bba26cd7550f5d8f33 (patch)
tree4fef9d53e14e555adbc4e2eb557bd75209b51c7f /docs/howto
parentc7e7279d979a346b5d1c950cc960183013799c41 (diff)
downloaddjango-rest-framework-86d470796e077e8c3c2253bba26cd7550f5d8f33.tar.bz2
Add a HOWTO page for the custom `reverse()'
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+Returning URIs from your Web APIs
+=================================
+
+ "The central feature that distinguishes the REST architectural style from
+ other network-based styles is its emphasis on a uniform interface between
+ components."
+
+ -- Roy Fielding, Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures
+
+As a rule, it's probably better practice to return absolute URIs from you web APIs, e.g. "http://example.com/foobar", rather than returning relative URIs, e.g. "/foobar".
+
+The advantages of doing so are:
+
+* It's more explicit.
+* It leaves less work for your API clients.
+* There's no ambiguity about the meaning of the string when it's found in representations such as JSON that do not have a native URI type.
+* It allows us to easily do things like markup HTML representations with hyperlinks.
+
+Django REST framework provides two utility functions to make it simpler to return absolute URIs from your Web API.
+
+There's no requirement for you to use them, but if you do then the self-describing API will be able to automatically hyperlink its output for you, which makes browsing the API much easier.
+
+reverse(viewname, request, ...)
+-------------------------------
+
+The :py:func:`~utils.reverse` function has the same behavior as :py:func:`django.core.urlresolvers.reverse` [1]_, except that it takes a request object and returns a fully qualified URL, using the request to determine the host and port::
+
+ from djangorestframework.utils import reverse
+ from djangorestframework.views import View
+
+ class MyView(View):
+ def get(self, request):
+ context = {
+ 'url': reverse('year-summary', request, args=[1945])
+ }
+
+ return Response(context)
+
+reverse_lazy(viewname, request, ...)
+------------------------------------
+
+The :py:func:`~utils.reverse_lazy` function has the same behavior as :py:func:`django.core.urlresolvers.reverse_lazy` [2]_, except that it takes a request object and returns a fully qualified URL, using the request to determine the host and port.
+
+.. rubric:: Footnotes
+
+.. [1] https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/http/urls/#reverse
+.. [2] https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/http/urls/#reverse-lazy