Settings

Django REST Framework configuration is all namespaced inside a single Django setting named REST_FRAMEWORK. This keeps your settings.py file clean and organized.

General Configuration

Here is an example demonstrating some of the most commonly used global settings:

REST_FRAMEWORK = {
    # Authentication & Permissions
    'DEFAULT_AUTHENTICATION_CLASSES': [
        'rest_framework.authentication.BasicAuthentication',
        'rest_framework.authentication.SessionAuthentication',
    ],
    'DEFAULT_PERMISSION_CLASSES': [
        'rest_framework.permissions.IsAuthenticated',
    ],

    # Pagination
    'DEFAULT_PAGINATION_CLASS': 'rest_framework.pagination.PageNumberPagination',
    'PAGE_SIZE': 100,

    # Throttling
    'DEFAULT_THROTTLE_CLASSES': [
        'rest_framework.throttling.AnonRateThrottle',
        'rest_framework.throttling.UserRateThrottle'
    ],
    'DEFAULT_THROTTLE_RATES': {
        'anon': '100/day',
        'user': '1000/day'
    },

    # Content Negotiation
    'DEFAULT_RENDERER_CLASSES': [
        'rest_framework.renderers.JSONRenderer',
        'rest_framework.renderers.BrowsableAPIRenderer',
    ],
    'DEFAULT_PARSER_CLASSES': [
        'rest_framework.parsers.JSONParser',
        'rest_framework.parsers.FormParser',
        'rest_framework.parsers.MultiPartParser'
    ],

    # Filtering
    'DEFAULT_FILTER_BACKENDS': [
        'django_filters.rest_framework.DjangoFilterBackend'
    ],

    # Date and Time Formats
    'DATETIME_FORMAT': '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%fZ',
    'DATE_FORMAT': 'iso-8601',
    'TIME_FORMAT': 'iso-8601',
}

Accessing Settings in Code

If you need to access DRF's settings within your own application code, you should import the api_settings object instead of reading directly from Django's settings.py. This ensures default values are properly applied.

from rest_framework.settings import api_settings

print(api_settings.DEFAULT_AUTHENTICATION_CLASSES)

Important Settings Categories

• API Policy Settings: Control authentication, permissions, throttling, and filtering behavior.
• Generic View Settings: Control pagination and URL kwarg configurations.
• Content Negotiation Settings: Control renderers, parsers, and metadata classes.
• Format Settings: Control datetime formatting and input validation formats.
• Testing Settings: Control the default formats used by the APIClient.
• Schema Settings: Configure how OpenAPI schemas are automatically generated.