**Note**: Full documentation for the project is available at [http://django-rest-framework.org][docs].
**Full documentation for REST framework is available on [http://django-rest-framework.org][docs].**
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# Overview
# Overview
Django REST framework is a powerful and flexible toolkit that makes it easy to build Web APIs.
Django REST framework is a powerful and flexible toolkit that makes it easy to build Web APIs.
Web APIs built using REST framework are fully self-describing and web browseable - a huge useability win for your developers. It also supports a wide range of media types, authentication and permission policies out of the box.
Some reasons you might want to use REST framework:
If you are considering using REST framework for your API, we recommend reading the [REST framework 2 announcment][rest-framework-2-announcement] which gives a good overview of the framework and it's capabilities.
* Modular and decoupled architecture that stays close to Django idioms throughout.
* The Web browseable API is a huge useability win for your developers.
* Authentication policies including OAuth1a and OAuth2 out of the box.
* Permission policies including support for the Django contrib permissions.
* Serialization that supports both ORM and non-ORM data sources.
* Customizable all the way down. You can just use regular function based views if you don't need the more powerful features.
* Extensive documentation, and great community support.
There is also a sandbox API you can use for testing purposes, [available here][sandbox].
There is a live example API for testing purposes, [available here][sandbox].