Flask-RESTful and Swagger: Best practices for building RESTful APIs in Python web applications (Part 2)

Flask-RESTful and Swagger: Best practices for building RESTful APIs in Python web applications (Part 2)

In the previous article, we explored how to use Flask-RESTful and Swagger to Best practices for building RESTful APIs. We introduced the basics of the Flask-RESTful framework and showed how to use Swagger to build documentation for a RESTful API. This article continues to delve into these topics and introduces more advanced techniques and practices.

1. Use Authorization and Authentication

RESTful API should be secure, ensuring that only authorized users can access it. To achieve this we need to use Authorization and Authentication. Authorization is the process of determining whether a user is allowed to access a resource. Authentication is the process of verifying a user's identity.

Flask-RESTful provides a very useful extension, Flask-JWT. Flask-JWT can help us implement token-based authentication and permission management. Here we briefly introduce how to use Flask-JWT to implement token authentication.

from flask import Flask
from flask_jwt import JWT, jwt_required, current_identity
from werkzeug.security import safe_str_cmp

app = Flask(__name__)
app.config['SECRET_KEY'] = 'super-secret'

class User:
   def __init__(self, id, username, password):
      self.id = id
      self.username = username
      self.password = password

   def __str__(self):
      return "User(id='%s')" % self.id

users = [
   User(1, 'john', 'pass'),
   User(2, 'susan', 'pass'),
]

username_table = {u.username: u for u in users}
userid_table = {u.id: u for u in users}

def authenticate(username, password):
   user = username_table.get(username, None)
   if user and safe_str_cmp(user.password.encode('utf-8'), password.encode('utf-8')):
      return user

def identity(payload):
   user_id = payload['identity']
   return userid_table.get(user_id, None)

jwt = JWT(app, authenticate, identity)

@app.route('/protected')
@jwt_required()
def protected():
   return '%s' % current_identity

if __name__ == '__main__':
   app.run()

In the above code, we create a JWT object that is connected to the Flask application. The JWT object uses the Flask app's SECRET_KEY to encrypt and decrypt the token. We also define a user class, and user information is stored in the users list.

When defining the authentication function authenitcate, we check whether the username exists and carries the password information. If the password verification passes, the function returns the user object. When defining the identity function identity, we return the authenticated user object.

Under the @app.route('/protected') decorator, the @jwt_required() decorator is used to protect this endpoint, ensuring that only authenticated and authorized users can access it.

2. Implementing Version Control

Version control is a very important concept because it allows the interaction between the client and the server to be stable and backward compatible. An API should maintain compatibility between clients and servers as much as possible, especially when there are major changes to the API. In order to achieve version control, we need to introduce version numbers in the API.

The following is a good version control practice:

from flask import Flask
from flask_restful import Resource, Api

app = Flask(__name__)
api = Api(app)
version = 'v1'

class HelloWorld(Resource):
    def get(self):
        return {'version': version, 'message': 'Hello World'}

api.add_resource(HelloWorld, f'/{version}/')

if __name__ == '__main__':
   app.run()

In the above code, we define the version variable to specify the version of the API, and then use it in the @app.route decorator f-{version}-String to add version number. This enables version control and better interface compatibility between client and server.

3. Using other extensions

Flask-RESTful provides many extensibility plug-ins that can help you build RESTful APIs faster and easier. The following are some commonly used extensions:

• Flask-CORS: Solve the problem of cross-domain access of applications.
• Flask-Bcrypt: Provides bcrypt password hashing function for encrypting passwords.
• Flask-Migrate: Provides data migration and database upgrade functions.
• Flask-Login: Provides user login function.

These extensions help you build RESTful APIs more efficiently.

Summary

This article delves into the best practices of how to use Flask-RESTful and Swagger to build RESTful APIs. We introduced how to use Authorization and Authentication to ensure the security of APIs, and how to implement version control. At the same time, in order to better build APIs, we also introduce some commonly used Flask extensions. These practices will help you build RESTful APIs more quickly and make the interaction between client and server more stable and backwards compatible.

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