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The world can only really be changed one piece at a time. The art is picking that piece.— Tim Berners-Lee
There are many ways you can contribute to Django REST framework. We’d like it to be a community-led project, so please get involved and help shape the future of the project.
At this point in its lifespan we consider Django REST framework to be feature-complete. We focus on pull requests that track the continued development of Django versions, and generally do not accept new features or code formatting changes.

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Community

The most important thing you can do to help push the REST framework project forward is to be actively involved wherever possible. Code contributions are often overvalued as being the primary way to get involved in a project, we don’t believe that needs to be the case. If you use REST framework, we’d love you to be vocal about your experiences with it:
  • Write a blog post about using REST framework
  • Publish a tutorial about building a project with a particular JavaScript framework
  • Share your experiences on social media or forums
Experiences from beginners can be particularly helpful because you’ll be in the best position to assess which bits of REST framework are more difficult to understand and work with.
Other great ways you can help move the community forward:
  • Help answer questions on the discussion group
  • Set up an email alert on StackOverflow for django-rest-framework tag
  • Hyperlinking to related threads and tickets when answering questions
  • Include backlinks from those items if relevant

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Code of Conduct

Please keep the tone polite and professional. For some users a discussion on the REST framework mailing list or ticket tracker may be their first engagement with the open source community. First impressions count, so let’s try to make everyone feel welcome. Be mindful in the language you choose. As an example, in an environment that is heavily male-dominated, posts that start “Hey guys,” can come across as unintentionally exclusive. It’s just as easy, and more inclusive to use gender neutral language in those situations. The Django code of conduct gives a fuller set of guidelines for participating in community forums.

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Issues

Our contribution process is that the GitHub discussions page should generally be your starting point.
Important Guidelines:
  • Django REST framework is considered feature-complete
  • Do not file requests to change behavior unless required for security or Django/Python compatibility
  • Search for related items before opening new issues
  • Feature requests will typically be closed with a recommendation to implement as third-party libraries
This approach allows us to keep down the maintenance overhead of REST framework, so that the focus can be on continued stability and great documentation.

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Triaging Issues

Getting involved in triaging incoming issues is a good way to start contributing. Every ticket that comes into the tracker needs to be reviewed. You can help by:
Read through the ticket - does it make sense? Is it missing context that would help explain it better?
Is the ticket in the correct place? Would it be better suited as a discussion on the discussion group?
If it’s a bug report, can you reproduce it? Can you write a failing test case that demonstrates the issue?
If it’s a feature request, could it be implemented as a third-party package instead?
If a ticket hasn’t had much activity and addresses something you need, comment on it and try to get it moving again.

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Development

To start developing on Django REST framework, first create a Fork from the Django REST Framework repo on GitHub. Then clone your fork: 
git clone https://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/django-rest-framework
See GitHub’s Fork a Repo Guide for more help.

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Code Style

Changes should broadly follow the PEP 8 style conventions. We recommend you set up your editor to automatically indicate non-conforming styles. You can check your contributions against these conventions each time you commit using pre-commit hooks: 
# Install pre-commit
python -m pip install pre-commit

# Set up the git hooks
pre-commit install

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Testing

To run the tests, clone the repository, and then: 
# Setup the virtual environment
python3 -m venv env
source env/bin/activate
pip install -e . --group dev

# Run the tests
./runtests.py
If your tests require access to the database, inherit from django.test.TestCase or use the @pytest.mark.django_db() decorator.Example with TestCase:
from django.test import TestCase

class MyDatabaseTest(TestCase):
    def test_something(self):
        # Your test code here
        pass
Example with decorator:
import pytest

@pytest.mark.django_db()
class MyDatabaseTest:
    def test_something(self):
        # Your test code here
        pass
You can reuse existing models defined in tests/models.py for your tests.

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Test Options

./runtests.py -q
The test case and test method matching is fuzzy and will sometimes run other tests that contain a partial string match to the given command line input.

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Running Against Multiple Environments

You can use the excellent tox testing tool to run the tests against all supported versions of Python and Django: 
tox

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Pull Requests

It’s a good idea to make pull requests early on. A pull request represents the start of a discussion, and doesn’t necessarily need to be the final, finished submission.
1

Create a Branch

Always make a new branch before starting work on a pull request. This means you’ll be able to later switch back to working on another separate issue without interfering.
2

Run Tests

Always run the tests before submitting pull requests. Ideally run tox to check compatibility across all supported versions.
3

Check Build Status

Once you’ve made a pull request, check the build status in the GitHub interface and make sure tests are running as expected.
If you have an outstanding pull request, pushing new commits to your GitHub repo will automatically update the pull request.
GitHub’s documentation for working on pull requests is available here.

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Managing Compatibility Issues

Sometimes, in order to ensure your code works on various different versions of Django, Python or third party libraries, you’ll need to run slightly different code depending on the environment. Any code that branches in this way should be isolated into the compat.py module, and should provide a single common interface that the rest of the codebase can use.

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Documentation

The documentation for REST framework is built from the Markdown source files in the docs directory. There are many great Markdown editors that make working with the documentation really easy. The Mou editor for Mac is one such editor that comes highly recommended.

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Building the Documentation

To build the documentation, install MkDocs: 
pip install mkdocs
Then build the documentation: 
mkdocs build
This will build the documentation into the site directory. You can build and preview in a browser: 
mkdocs serve

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Language Style

Documentation should be in American English. The tone of the documentation is very important - try to stick to a simple, plain, objective and well-balanced style where possible.
  • Keep paragraphs reasonably short
  • Don’t use abbreviations like “e.g.” - use “For example” instead
  • Use simple, clear language
  • Maintain an objective tone

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Markdown Style

There are a couple of conventions you should follow when working on the documentation.

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Headers

Headers should use the hash style: 
### Some important topic
Don’t use underline style: 
Some important topic
====================
Links should always use the reference style, with referenced hyperlinks kept at the end of the document: 
Here is a link to [some other thing][other-thing].

More text...

[other-thing]: http://example.com/other/thing
For hyperlinking to another REST framework document, use relative links: 
[authentication]: ../api/authentication.md

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Notes

If you want to draw attention to a note or warning, use an admonition: 
!!! note
    A useful documentation note.
The documentation theme styles info, warning, tip and danger admonition types.

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