Django-modern-rest 0.16.0 release

django-modern-rest 0.16.0 is out!

Is this your first time that you hear about this project? django-modern-rest is a fully typed / fast / flexible / async-ready framework to create REST APIs for Django. It supports Pydantic, msgspec, attrs and many other models.

Here's how the code looks like:

    import uuid
    import pydantic
    from dmr import Body, Controller
    from dmr.plugins.pydantic import PydanticFastSerializer

    class UserCreateModel(pydantic.BaseModel):
        email: str

    class UserModel(UserCreateModel):
        uid: uuid.UUID

    class UserController(Controller[PydanticFastSerializer]):
        def post(self, parsed_body: Body[UserCreateModel]) -> UserModel:
            return UserModel(uid=uuid.uuid4(), email=parsed_body.email)

- Builtin auth with sessions / JWT headers and cookies

- Validation of requests and responses according to the OpenAPI spec in debug mode, the spec is the source of truth

- Builtin content negotiation, supporting conditional request and response models for different content types

- Flexible error handling

- Optional error model negotiation and complete customization

- Streaming of SSE and JsonLines

- Code reuse is the first-class citizen, create your own typed abstractions and use them with ease and safety

- Advanced testing strategies, including OpenAPI coverage testing and property based tests with the help of schemathesis

- AI as the first-class feature: skills, contexts, mcps, etc. But, no slop inside.

- Repo: https://github.com/wemake-services/django-modern-rest

- Docs: https://django-modern-rest.readthedocs.io

Now, back to the 0.16.0 release!

Built during `opensource_september` community event with 32 contributors and 144 commits. This is our fastest release ever.

## Performance

- PydanticFastSerializer: deserialize x2.2, serialize x1.33 faster

- New BodyMsgspec component: decodes request bytes straight into a msgspec.Struct, x1.6 faster than Body

- msgspec request context validation x2 faster

- Content negotiation is memoized per header: up to x65 faster for browser-style Accept headers

- msgspec 0.22.0, cheaper checks, cookies, headers, and responses

## Features

- Default values for components: Body[Model | None] = None just works

- concrete_views for JWT, token, and session auth: a login route in one line of urls.py, zero view code

- Cursor (keyset) pagination with sync and async APIs

- `extras=` for your own typed `@modify` / `@validate` parameters

- PEP 696 TypeVar defaults for reusable controllers

- First-class CSRF: proper 403 specs and REST error responses

- external_re_path and nested external_path

- Error handlers can re-raise a new error for the next layer

- OpenAPI: x-extensions on every object, security for gateways and mTLS, OpenAPI 3.2 fields, controller-level tags/deprecated/servers, deterministic schema output

## One rule for all config

Settings are no longer merged across levels. Endpoint overrides controller, controller overrides settings. Explicit [] or None disables, EMPTY falls through. Merge explicitly when you want it: `@modify(auth=[*auth, other])`.

## AI tooling

Agent skills now ship inside the package: uvx library-skills installs the ones matching your version. The new `$dmr-upgrade` skill carries the migration prompts, so ask your coding agent to upgrade you from 0.15.0. Every docs page is also served as Markdown.

- Repo: https://github.com/wemake-services/django-modern-rest

- Docs: https://django-modern-rest.readthedocs.io

- Changelog: https://github.com/wemake-services/django-modern-rest/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md

- Full release notes: https://github.com/wemake-services/django-modern-rest/releases/tag/0.16.0