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Flask Rest API -Part:1- Using MongoDB with Flask

Paurakh Sharma Humagain on December 13, 2019

Part 1: Using MongoDB with Flask Howdy! In the last Part of the series, we learned how to create a basic CRUD REST API functionality usi...

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Ivan Khromov • Jul 12 '20 • Edited

Helpful note to everyone, who wants MongoEngine to serialize JSON like this:

{
    "id": "5f0b54728a42acf154e2082d",
    // the rest of document
}

not this:

{
    "_id": {
        "$oid": "5f0b54728a42acf154e2082d"
    }
    // ... the rest of document
}

Install MongoEngine GoodJSON library and extend Movie class like this:

from .db import db
import mongoengine_goodjson as gj

class Movie(gj.Document):
#the rest of code here ...

Paurakh Sharma Humagain • Jul 16 '20

Wow, that's cool. Thank you.
I was doing manual normalization, but this looks awesome.

benayat • May 31 '21

thanks alot, I really like your style.
about the folder structure - in the begining, is says that the file models.py is inside the database folder, but than later - it says that "models" is the folder: dev.to/paurakhsharma/flask-rest-ap...
which is it?
plus, I'm working with vscode, and in the file "models.py", it doesn't recognize StringField at all. should it? or am I missing something?

Paurakh Sharma Humagain • Jun 3 '21

Thank you so much, Sorry for the confusion.
models.py is a file. You can see the full code for this part here: github.com/paurakhsharma/flask-res...

benayat • Jun 3 '21

I did, thanks. on one hand, it's the most comprehensive flask rest-api tutorial I found online, and that's a lot, really. I could learn in a few days everything I needed. but on the other hand, respectfully, it looks like you just quit after first draft...error handling not working, typos, and no edits regarding comments...
you'll probably spend more time on answering comments...it could be so much more

Paurakh Sharma Humagain • Jun 3 '21

Yeah you are right, I should update the post for newer version of packages and fix some bugs, typos.
I got distracted with other things so couldn't give much attention to this tutorial. I will try to get some time soon to work on those. Really appreciate your criticism. Thanks! Have a great day.

Jestemkioskiem • Jan 13 '22 • Edited

This is by far the best resource for learning how to do proper JWT Authorization and Authentication in Flask. I've spent hours looking at different tutorials with dubious solutions and not once did I hear about flask_jwt_extended. Thanks a lot!

One thing you might want to update, @jwt_required is now @jwt_required() in newer versions of flask_jwt_extended.

Marcelo Ribeiro da Silva • May 1 '20

Great article,

I tried to make some changes to the parameters of the fields in the document, but it doesn't seem to have any effect

I removed the "required" parameter from the fields and there was no effect. How can changes be made to an existing document?

Paurakh Sharma Humagain • May 2 '20

It's probably because when you give constrains to the field like required, mongodb creates an index for the field. So, to make the change take place you either have to delete the index or easier thing will be to delete the database (don't do that in production 😉)

Please let me know if deleting the index or the database solves your issue.

Marcelo Ribeiro da Silva • May 30 '20

I had already tried to delete the bank and the index, but I was looking for an alternative to a document that cannot be deleted.

the-real-ibukun • Jan 17 '20

Really helpful,
Some section of the code is omitted here, saved by the complete code on github though.
Thanks again.

Paurakh Sharma Humagain • Jan 18 '20

Thank you so much ❤️
Can you point me what is missing so that I can add it here.

the-real-ibukun • Jan 18 '20 • Edited

Missing function definition add_movie()

@app.route('/movies', methods=['POST'])
body = request.get_json()
movie = Movie(**body).save()
id = movie.id
return {'id': str(id)}, 200

.movie not required

from database.models.movie import Movie

Apart from that it's ready to run 😃

boredomdenied • Mar 12 '20 • Edited

I'm getting this error:

TypeError: TopLevelDocumentMetaclass object argument after ** must be a mapping, not NoneType

update

has been resolved by adding force=True

body = request.get_json(force=True)

Paurakh Sharma Humagain • Mar 15 '20

Awesome 👍 Glad that you got it to work. I am not sure how you got this problem. Maybe something to do with your request body?

Rohan Sawant • Dec 13 '19

Nice!

Embedding git diffs, into blog posts? Hmm, that's something I had never thought of before.

I am borrowing that some time!

🤗

Paurakh Sharma Humagain • Dec 13 '19

Yeah, I thought it would make following the code changes easier 😃

keshavadk • Apr 27 '20 • Edited

Thank you for this clear explanation.

Can you make the "Flask REST API using Pymongo"?

Paurakh Sharma Humagain • Apr 28 '20

Using pymongo is almost similar to Mongoengine, mongoengine only makes it easier to do stuffs....
I will try to make one article to show how to use Flask with Pymongo.