How can I choose the type of view in Django Rest Framework

Question

I can create my view in Django with :

• Function Base View
• Class Base View
• Generic Views & Mixins
• ViewSets

Now is there any standard to tell us when should we use which?

and why we have this much type at all?

Answer 1

There is no standard but you can start with this simple strategy:

1. Specific action on a model class -- generic views (RetrieveAPIView, ListAPIView, UpdateAPIView, etc.)
2. Several actions in one class and basic CRUD -- ViewSets (ModelViewSet and ReadOnlyModelViewSet are most useful)
3. Some action on 1 instance -- ViewSet + @action(detail=True)
4. Some action on several or all objects -- ViewSet +@action(detail=False)
5. Simplest custom actions -- function based views or @action again.

Also check DRF views classes for quick overview.