How to upload images with Django REST framework

Django REST framework provides a powerful and flexible toolkit for building Web APIs. One common task when building a web API is to allow users to upload images. In this article, we will walk through the process of setting up image uploads with Django REST framework.

Setting up the model

The first step in allowing image uploads is to define a model that will store the uploaded images. We can create a simple model like this:

        
from django.db import models

class Image(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    image = models.ImageField(upload_to='images/')
        
    

Setting up the serializer

Next, we need to create a serializer that will allow us to serialize and deserialize our Image model for use in the API. We can create a serializer like this:

        
from rest_framework import serializers
from .models import Image

class ImageSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = Image
        fields = ('id', 'title', 'image')
        
    

Setting up the view

Now we need to create a view that will handle the image upload. We can create a view like this:

        
from rest_framework import viewsets
from .models import Image
from .serializers import ImageSerializer

class ImageViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    queryset = Image.objects.all()
    serializer_class = ImageSerializer
        
    

Setting up the URL patterns

Finally, we need to define the URL patterns that will map our view to the appropriate endpoints. We can define the URL patterns like this:

        
from django.urls import path, include
from rest_framework.routers import DefaultRouter
from .views import ImageViewSet

router = DefaultRouter()
router.register(r'images', ImageViewSet)

urlpatterns = [
    path('', include(router.urls)),
]
        
    

Conclusion

With these steps, we have set up the necessary components to allow image uploads with Django REST framework. Users can now upload images through the API, and the images will be stored in the database for later retrieval. This can be a useful feature for a variety of web applications that require image uploads.