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Your First REST API Endpoint

Let's start off by defining where we'll store our data. In most REST APIs, you'd store your data in a database. For now, and for simplicity, we'll store it in a Python list.

Later on we'll work on making this data dynamic. For now let's use some sample data.

app.py
from flask import Flask

app = Flask(__name__)

stores = [{"name": "My Store", "items": [{"name": "my item", "price": 15.99}]}]

Now that we've got the data stored, we can go ahead and make a Flask route that, when accessed, will return all our data.

app.py
from flask import Flask

app = Flask(__name__)

stores = [{"name": "My Store", "items": [{"name": "my item", "price": 15.99}]}]


@app.get("/store")
def get_stores():
    return {"stores": stores}

Anatomy of a Flask route​

There are two parts to a Flask route:

  • The endpoint decorator
  • The function that should run

The endpoint decorator (@app.get("/store")) registers the route's endpoint with Flask. That's the /store bit. That way, the Flask app knows that when it receives a request for /store, it should run the function.

The function's job is to do everything that it should, and at the end return something. In most REST APIs, we return JSON, but you can return anything that can be represented as text (e.g. XML, HTML, YAML, plain text, or almost anything else).