django-rest-framework

Django REST framework is a toolkit for building web APIs (application programming interfaces — the endpoints that let apps exchange data over the internet) using Django, a Python web framework. The problem it solves is that Django is primarily designed for building traditional websites that serve HTML pages, but modern applications often need to serve data in formats like JSON to mobile apps, single-page web apps, or third-party services. Setting this up from scratch requires a lot of repetitive code; Django REST framework provides the building blocks so you do not have to write it all yourself.

It handles the main tasks involved in building an API: serialization (converting your database models into JSON and back), URL routing (mapping web addresses to the right code), authentication (checking who is making the request), and permissions (deciding what they are allowed to do). One standout feature is a web-browsable API — when you open an API endpoint in a regular browser, you see a clean interface that lets you explore and interact with the data, which makes development and debugging much easier.

You would use this when building a Django application that needs to expose data to external clients — for example, a mobile app that needs to fetch and update records, or a service that other developers will call. The tech stack is Python and Django. It requires Python 3.10 or higher and is compatible with recent Django versions.