Building better APIs: from Django to client libraries with OpenAPI

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tl;dr

A summary of resources and learnings related to building REST API I put together over the last couple of years. Complete API development workflow from Django backend to frontend clients using Django REST Framework, drf-spectacular for OpenAPI spec generation, and automated client generation with openapi-generator. Big productivity boost!

There is a lot of discussion about frameworks for building REST APIs, some of them being even able to generate OpenAPI specs directly for you. Django is not quite known for that, but there are ways of doing this by automating most of the process while being very productive and offering your team a clean developer experience.

Overview

The stack I prefer makes use of several additional modules you will require: django-rest-framework and drf-spectacular alongside Django. REST Framework helps you extend your application in order to have a REST API, while drf-spectacular will help you the ability to generate the OpenAPI spec (standalone post: Create OpenAPI spec for Django REST Framework APIs.

After having the OpenAPI spec, you can generate clients with openapi-generator. Here is an example I mapped out of generating an Angular client:

Step-by-step process

There is als...

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