Introduction

In this tutorial, we are going to see how to create an API endpoint using flask. The endpoint will only accept POST request and it will use content-type application/json.

Step 1: Requirements and initial flask application

Install flask with:

pip install flask

Now we are ready to start a minimal flask application, create a file called main.py with the following contents:

from flask import Flask
app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route('/')
def hello():
    return "Hello World!"

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

Execute the main.py with python and connect to port 5000 using your browser, it will show you the hello world text.

Step 2: Adding API rest endpoint

We are going to add a new endpoint that will be used to create objects. Before the hello function add the following python code

from flask import request, jsonify

@app.route('/users', methods = ['POST']) 
def new_user():
    user_data = request.get_json() # 
    # add here the code to create the user
    res = {‘status’: ‘ok’}
    return jsonify(res)

The hardest part to understand the previous code is the usage of the request. The request is bound to the flask context. You can think that request on the context of the post, has all the information from the request sent to the endpoint /users

For using the endpoint you need to send the json using the content-type application/json header, let’s see an example using curl:

curl --header "Content-Type: application/json"  --request POST  --data '{"username":"tutorials","password":"secret"}'  http://localhost:5000/users

Using the previous command we sent a curl POST request using the application/json header. You should see the {‘status’: ‘ok’}