Why, in 2025, do we still need a 3rd party app to write a REST API with Django?

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The question was asked to the president of the DSF this year at FOSDEM, after his talk. And it is clearly a legitimate one!

But… is it True? Do we actually need a 3rd party app to write an API with Django?

In a lot of cases, when you require a complex and full-featured API, I would recommend you do use one. Django REST Framework and Django Ninja being very sound choices with a bunch of nifty things you might need in a bigger project.

But… what if what you need is a simple REST API that does CRUD? Do you really need a 3rd party app to do that?

Let's try not to!

Let's first ask what is a REST API in the context of this article. Let's limit ourselves to building this:

• a URL that answers to GET requests with a list of records of a single model type
• POST-ing to that same URL should create a new record
• a second URL with the primary key of a record tagged to the end. When GET-ing that URL, one should receive only that single record, in a similar format as in the list
• PUT-ing data to that URL should update the record and return that record with updated values
• DELETE-ing to that same URL should delete the record
• everything should be achieved using JSON

Listing records from a model

Chances are you have heard of generic class-based views (CBVs) in Django, the one that comes to mind when it comes to listing records is https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2025/may/22/why-need-3rd-party-app-rest-api-with-django/