## Django Rest Framework Discovery
### Summary
[](https://travis-ci.org/ztroop/django-rest-framework-discovery)
[](https://badge.fury.io/py/djangorestframework-discovery)
[](https://coveralls.io/github/ztroop/django-rest-framework-discovery?branch=master)
Discovery allows you to create an API from an existing database with minimal effort. This project is based on Shabda Raaj's [Bookrest][1]. You can also leverage the capabilties of the Django Rest Framework to apply [filtering][2], [pagination][3] and [documentation][4] generation. Examples can be found in the `examples` directory.
[1]: https://github.com/agiliq/bookrest
[2]: https://django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/filtering/
[3]: https://django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/pagination/
[4]: https://django-rest-framework.org/topics/documenting-your-api/
### Problem Statement
The data is not always accessible in legacy applications. You might be in a situation where you need access to the data for reporting or prototyping new tools. Adding new functionality to legacy software can be cost prohibitive and this solution aims to work-around this issue.
### Requirements
For successful schema generation, you need to have a primary key present in the table. Otherwise, it will be silently ignored.
### Installation
```bash
pip install djangorestframework-discovery
```
In your `settings.py`:
```python
INSTALLED_APPS = [
# ...
"rest_framework",
"rest_framework_discovery",
]
```
Add a variable to your `settings.py` named `DISCOVERY_ALIAS_NAME`. You can use any value, but `discovery` is recommended. You will use that to define the database you would like to use for viewset generation.
```python
DISCOVERY_ALIAS_NAME = 'discovery'
DATABASES = {
'default': {
'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
'NAME': os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'db.sqlite3'),
},
'discovery': {
'NAME': 'YOUR_DB_NAME',
'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql',
'USER': 'YOUR_DB_USER',
'PASSWORD': 'YOUR_DB_PASSWORD',
'HOST': 'YOUR_DB_HOST',
'PORT': 'YOUR_DB_PORT',
},
}
```
Add the generated patterns to the rest of your application by modifying the `urls.py`.
```python
urlpatterns = [
# ...
url(r'^api/discovery/', include('rest_framework_discovery.urls')),
]
```
You will also need to include `DEFAULT_SCHEMA_CLASS` explicitly in `settings.py` to get this to work. [See additional details.](https://www.django-rest-framework.org/community/3.10-announcement/).
```python
REST_FRAMEWORK = {
...
'DEFAULT_SCHEMA_CLASS': 'rest_framework.schemas.coreapi.AutoSchema'
}
```
### Testing
You can run through the testing suite by running `runtests.py` or `tox`.
### Configuration
You can configure the following in `settings.py`:
- `DISCOVERY_ALIAS_NAME`: (required) The database alias name to use with discovery.
- `DISCOVERY_READ_ONLY`: (optional) `True` or `False`, whether or not the viewsets should be read-only.
- `DISCOVERY_INCLUDE`: (optional) A list of tables that you would like to *only* include.
- `DISCOVERY_EXCLUDE`: (optional) A list of tables that you would like to ignore.
