How to create CRUD API in Flask

In this tutorial, we will create a working Restful API with Flask and MySQL database. Restful APIs make it possible to establish communication between the backend and the frontend of mobile and web applications.

Flask-SQLAlchemy is a Flask extension library that we will use to add SQLAlchemy to the Flask project. SQLAlchemy is an Object Relational Mapper that provides access to SQL databases through Python objects.

Prerequisites

1. Python 3.6 and above installed on your computer.

2. Postman installed on your computer.

3. Apache XAMPP installed on your computer.

4. Favourite code editor installed. I use Pycharm community edition which is free.

5. Some knowledge of the Python programming language.

Project setup

Before we start creating our application, ensure you have virtualenv installed on your computer.

To verify if virtualenv is installed on your computer, execute the command below.

$ virtualenv --version

virtualenv 20.2.2 from /home/username/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/virtualenv/__init__.py

If you get an error executing the above command, run the below command to install virtualenv on your computer.

$ pip install virtualenv

On the terminal execute the below command to create the projects’ working directory and move into that directory.

$ mkdir flasktodo

cd flasktodo

In the projects’ working directory execute the below command to create a virtual environment for our project. Virtual environments make it easier to manage packages for various projects separately.

$ virtualenv venv

To activate our virtual environment, execute the below command.

$ source venv/bin/activate

Once the virtual environment has been activated, we need to install Flask and Flask-SQLAlchemy into our virtual environment using the below command.

(venv)$ pip install flask flask-sqlalchemy

We now need to install PyMySQL, a driver that allows the connection to the MYSQL database in Python. Execute the below command to install PyMySQL.

(venv)$ pip install pymysql

We need to install flask-marshmallow and marshmallow libraries which eases the work of converting Python objects to JSON and vise versa. To install flask-marshmallow and marshmallow run the below command.

(venv)$ pip install flask-marshmallow marshmallow

(venv)$ pip install marshmallow_sqlalchemy

Open the project folder in your favorite IDE and create a new file name app.py in the project folder.

Paste the below code into the app.py file created above.

from flask import Flask, request, jsonify, make_response
from flask_sqlalchemy import SQLAlchemy
from marshmallow import fields
from marshmallow_sqlalchemy import ModelSchema

In the section above, we imported all of the required modules that we will use in our application.

• from flask import Flask imports the Flask web module that we use to create an instance of the Flask web application.

• from flask_sqlalchemy import SQLAlchemy imports SQLAlchemy module which we use to connect to the database.

• from marshmallow import fields and from marshmallow_sqlalchemy import ModelSchema imports the modules that we will use to serialize Python objects.

Project configuration

In this section, we will create an instance of the Flask application, setup the database configurations and create a database object.

app = Flask(__name__)
app.config['SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI'] = 'mysql+pymysql://root:@localhost:3306/todo'
db = SQLAlchemy(app)

• app = Flask(__name__) creates an instance of the flask web application.
• app.config['SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI'] = 'mysql+pymysql://<username>:<password>@localhost: <database port>/<database name>' contains the information required to connect to our database. Our database username is root, the password is an empty string , the database port is 3306 and the database name is todo.

On your computer start the XAMPP control panel, start the Apache and MySQL servers. On your browser open http://localhost/dashboard/ then phpAdmin, create a database with the name todo as shown below.

db = SQLAlchemy(app) creates an object of the SQLAlchemy and stores it in a variable db.

Creating the Todo model

We are going to be creating the Todo model which will be a Python class representing the Todo table in the database.

# Model
class Todo(db.Model):
   __tablename__ = "todos"
   id = db.Column(db.Integer, primary_key=True)
   title = db.Column(db.String(20))
   todo_description = db.Column(db.String(100))

   def create(self):
       db.session.add(self)
       db.session.commit()
       return self

   def __init__(self, title, todo_description):
       self.title = title
       self.todo_description = todo_description

   def __repr__(self):
       return f"{self.id}"

db.create_all()

Todo model class has an ID property which is used as the primary key.

• db.create_all() makes the application create all the defined tables in the database.

• db.session.add(self) adds the Todo instance into the SQLAlchemy database connection session.

• db.session.commit() executes all the database operations that are available in the session.

class TodoSchema(ModelSchema):
   class Meta(ModelSchema.Meta):
       model = Todo
       sqla_session = db.session
   id = fields.Number(dump_only=True)
   title = fields.String(required=True)
   todo_description = fields.String(required=True)

The TodoSchema class above makes it possible to return JSON from the Python objects from the SQLAlchemy.

Creating the API endpoints

POST endpoint

@app.route('/api/v1/todo', methods=['POST'])
def create_todo():
   data = request.get_json()
   todo_schema = TodoSchema()
   todo = todo_schema.load(data)
   result = todo_schema.dump(todo.create())
   return make_response(jsonify({"todo": result}), 200)

The above endpoint allows for a POST request and creates a new Todo in the database.

• data = request.get_json() gets the data from the request body.

• @app.route('/api/v1/todo', methods=['POST']) defines the URL to the endpoint and the HTTP method allowed for the endpoint.

The POST endpoint only allows creating a single Todo at a time.

GET endpoint

@app.route('/api/v1/todo', methods=['GET'])
def index():
   get_todos = Todo.query.all()
   todo_schema = TodoSchema(many=True)
   todos = todo_schema.dump(get_todos)
   return make_response(jsonify({"todos": todos}))

• @app.route('/api/v1/todo', methods=['GET']) defines the URL to the endpoint and the HTTP method allowed for the endpoint.

The above endpoint returns a list of todos.

• get_todos = Todo.query.all() queries all the todos from the database.

• todo_schema = TodoSchema(many=True) and todos = todo_schema.dump(get_todos) serializes the objects from SQLAlchemy.

• return make_response(jsonify({"todos": todos})) returns a list of todos as JSON.

@app.route('/api/v1/todo/<id>', methods=['GET'])
def get_todo_by_id(id):
   get_todo = Todo.query.get(id)
   todo_schema = TodoSchema()
   todo = todo_schema.dump(get_todo)
   return make_response(jsonify({"todo": todo}))

The above endpoint allows for a GET request to pass in the ID of the Todo in the URL path. It returns a single Todo with the specified ID.

PUT endpoint

@app.route('/api/v1/todo/<id>', methods=['PUT'])
def update_todo_by_id(id):
   data = request.get_json()
   get_todo = Todo.query.get(id)
   if data.get('title'):
       get_todo.title = data['title']
   if data.get('todo_description'):
       get_todo.todo_description = data['todo_description']
   db.session.add(get_todo)
   db.session.commit()
   todo_schema = TodoSchema(only=['id', 'title', 'todo_description'])
   todo = todo_schema.dump(get_todo)

   return make_response(jsonify({"todo": todo}))

The above endpoint allows for a PUT request and updates the Todo with the specified ID in the database.

DELETE endpoint

@app.route('/api/v1/todo/<id>', methods=['DELETE'])
def delete_todo_by_id(id):
   get_todo = Todo.query.get(id)
   db.session.delete(get_todo)
   db.session.commit()
   return make_response("", 204)

The above endpoint allows for a DELETE request deleting the Todo with the specified ID in the database.

Running the application

To run our application, execute the below command in the projects root directory.

(venv)$ flask run

Testing the API endpoints

POST endpoint

GET endpoint

PUT endpoint

DELETE endpoint

You can find the entire source code for the project here.

Conclusion

Now that you have learned how to create CRUD API, add the date_created and last_modified fields to our Todo model. Consider using the datetime object from Python datetime module when implementing the date_created and last_modified fields.

Happy Coding.

Peer Review Contributions by: Geoffrey Mungai