Django REST Framework combining routers from different apps

Question

I have a project that spans multiple apps:

./project/app1 ./project/app2 ./project/... 

Each app has a router for Django REST Framework to incorporate the parts of the API provided by that app:

from django.conf.urls import url, include from rest_framework.routers import DefaultRouter from .views import ThingViewSet  router = DefaultRouter() router.register(r'things', ThingViewSet, base_name='thing')  urlpatterns = [     url(r'^', include(router.urls)), ] 

Because the apps are separate, my top-level URLs file (./project/urls.py) includes each of the URLs files from the separate apps:

url(r'^api/app1/', include('app1.urls', namespace='a1')), url(r'^api/app2/', include('app2.urls', namespace='a2')), 

This means that Django REST Framework shows a separate API root for each app. What I would like, however, is a unified API structure, so that if I navigate to http://example.com/api/ I see the full list of all URLs that are available at that level of the hierarchy.

I presume there is a way to include all my separate routers defined in the individual urls.py files for each app into a single router, but I can't find documentation on how to do this. Am I missing something obvious?

Answer 1

Another solution is to use SimpleRouter to define routers for individual apps. Then, use a customized DefaultRouter to include app specific routes. This way all of the app specific url definitions will stay in the corresponding app.

Lets say you have two apps named "app1" and "app2" each of these apps have a directory named "api" and in this directory there is a file named "urls" that contain all your route definitions.

├── project/ │ ├── api_urls.py │ ├── app1 │ │ ├── api │ │ │ ├── urls.py │ ├── app2 │ │ ├── api │ │ │ ├── urls.py │ ├── patches │ │ ├── routers.py

use patches/router.py to define a class named DefaultRouter that inherits from rest_framework.routers.DefaultRouter.

from rest_framework import routers  class DefaultRouter(routers.DefaultRouter):     """     Extends `DefaultRouter` class to add a method for extending url routes from another router.     """     def extend(self, router):         """         Extend the routes with url routes of the passed in router.          Args:              router: SimpleRouter instance containing route definitions.         """         self.registry.extend(router.registry) 

Fill your api urls with route definitions like

""" URL definitions for the api. """ from patches import routers  from app1.api.urls import router as app1_router from app2.api.urls import router as app2_router  router = routers.DefaultRouter() router.extend(app1_router) router.extend(app2_router)