Building a Simple Student Management System with Python RESTful APIs

Python: One-Week Notes

This article abstracts part of a real‑world project API into a simple example called “Student Management System”.

The system provides CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) functionality for school, teacher, and student information, using the standard RESTful actions POST, GET, PUT, and DELETE.

Example curl request and response are shown below:

The overall workflow includes RESTful API design, database table design, development structure, and result display.

1. Restful API Design

Key aspects are URL design and appropriate HTTP status codes. Illustrations for each HTTP method are provided:

POST:

GET:

PUT:

DELETE:

2. Database Design

The database schema includes table definitions and field types; the example shows the School table:

3. Development

Directory structure is designed with two main concerns: coupling and extensibility. Database operations are separated from business logic and exposed via interfaces:

The database API uses SQLAlchemy to encapsulate CRUD operations:

Example of an add operation:

Flask defines the API endpoints for each action:

POST request example:

4. Tools

Common tools for sending RESTful API requests:

POSTMAN – Chrome extension

RESTClient – Firefox extension

curl – command‑line tool on the server

5. Result Display

The request flow is: API → database CRUD (persistence) → JSON response with status code, which is then displayed:

Result screenshot:

Data inserted into the school table is shown:

The next article will explain testing this project using unittest, mock, tox, coverage, and nose.