Django Ninja - Fast Django REST Framework¶

Django Ninja is a web framework for building APIs with Django and Python 3.6+ type hints.

Key features:

• Easy: Designed to be easy to use and intuitive.
• FAST execution: Very high performance thanks to Pydantic and async support.
• Fast to code: Type hints and automatic docs lets you focus only on business logic.
• Standards-based: Based on the open standards for APIs: OpenAPI (previously known as Swagger) and JSON Schema.
• Django friendly: (obviously) has good integration with the Django core and ORM.
• Production ready: Used by multiple companies on live projects (If you use Django Ninja and would like to publish your feedback, please email [email protected]).

Benchmarks:

Installation¶

pip install django-ninja

Quick Example¶

Start a new Django project (or use an existing one)

django-admin startproject apidemo

in urls.py

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path
from ninja import NinjaAPI

api = NinjaAPI()


@api.get("/add")
def add(request, a: int, b: int):
    return {"result": a + b}


urlpatterns = [
    path("admin/", admin.site.urls),
    path("api/", api.urls),
]

Now, run it as usual:

./manage.py runserver

Note: You don't have to add Django Ninja to your installed apps for it to work.

Check it¶

Open your browser at http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/add?a=1&b=2

You will see the JSON response as:

{"result": 3}

• receives an HTTP GET request at /api/add
• takes, validates and type-casts GET parameters a and b
• decodes the result to JSON
• generates an OpenAPI schema for defined operation

Interactive API docs¶

Now go to http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/docs

You will see the automatic, interactive API documentation (provided by the OpenAPI / Swagger UI or Redoc):

Recap¶

In summary, you declare the types of parameters, body, etc. once only, as function parameters.

You do that with standard modern Python types.

You don't have to learn a new syntax, the methods or classes of a specific library, etc.

Just standard Python 3.6+.

For example, for an int:

a: int

or, for a more complex Item model:

class Item(Schema):
    foo: str
    bar: float

def operation(a: Item):
    ...

... and with that single declaration you get:

• Editor support, including:
  • Completion
  • Type checks
• Validation of data:
  • Automatic and clear errors when the data is invalid
  • Validation, even for deeply nested JSON objects
• Conversion of input data coming from the network, to Python data and types, and reading from:
  • JSON
  • Path parameters
  • Query parameters
  • Cookies
  • Headers
  • Forms
  • Files
• Automatic, interactive API documentation

This project was heavily inspired by FastAPI (developed by Sebastián Ramírez)