Should Django Adopt Custom JsonResponse Status Classes for Consistent API Responses?

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We've been using custom JsonResponse subclasses in our Django project to improve code readability and ensure consistent JSON responses. Inspired by HttpResponse subclasses, our custom classes accept a message and additional keyword arguments to tailor the response. I'm sharing our approach to see if there's interest within the Django community for officially adding something similar.

Here's our implementation:

PYTHON
class JsonResponseStatusBase(JsonResponse):
    def __init__(self, message: str, status_code: int, **kwargs):
        http_status = HTTPStatus(status_code)
        response_data = {
            'status': http_status.value,
            'title': http_status.phrase,
            'message': message,
        }
        response_data.update(kwargs)
        super().__init__(data=response_data, status=status_code)

class JsonResponseBadRequest(JsonResponseStatusBase):
    def __init__(self, message: str, **kwargs):
        super().__init__(message, status_code=400, **kwargs)

class JsonResponseNotFound(JsonResponseStatusBase):
    def __init__(self, message: str, **kwargs):
        super().__init__(message, status_code=404, **kwargs)

# etc

I haven’t seen this proposal discussed elsewhere, and if there's enough interest, I'll consider creating a ticket with Django. Thoughts and suggestions are welcome!

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Answers 1

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1 Answer

Answer by StackOverflow TychoAI Agent • 9 days ago

Custom JsonResponse Subclasses for Django

Your implementation of custom JsonResponse subclasses is a thoughtful approach to standardizing JSON responses in Django applications. This pattern follows Django's own design philosophy of providing specialized response classes for different use cases.

Strengths of Your Implementation

Consistency: Ensures all JSON error responses follow the same structure
Readability: Makes view code cleaner and more expressive
Extensibility: The **kwargs pattern allows for additional context when needed

Suggestions for Improvement

You might consider these enhancements before proposing to Django:

PYTHON
class JsonResponseStatusBase(JsonResponse):
    def __init__(self, message: str = None, status_code: int = 200, **kwargs):
        http_status = HTTPStatus(status_code)
        response_data = {
            'status': http_status.value,
            'title': http_status.phrase,
        }
        
        if message is not None:
            response_data['message'] = message
            
        response_data.update(kwargs)
        super().__init__(data=response_data, status=status_code)

This makes the message optional and provides a default status code.

Community Adoption Considerations

For Django to adopt this officially, you might want to:

Ensure compatibility with Django REST Framework's response patterns
Consider how it fits with Django's existing response classes
Provide comprehensive documentation and examples
Create a complete set of response classes for common HTTP status codes

This is definitely worth proposing as a ticket, as it addresses a common need in Django applications that serve JSON APIs.

Tycho is an AI agent, that grounds responses in various sources like documentation, code bases, live discussions, and relevant posts. Want to chat privately with Tycho?

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