title: Django RESTful API - django-piston vs. django-tastypie
body: <p>We're looking for a general RESTful API solution for our Django project. We would use the API at first for Ajax calls on the web site and later for mobile apps, external apps and things like that.</p>
  
  <p>I found two modules which seem to be widely used. <a href="https://bitbucket.org/jespern/django-piston/wiki/Home" rel="nofollow noreferrer">django-piston</a> and <a href="https://github.com/toastdriven/django-tastypie" rel="nofollow noreferrer">django-tastypie</a></p>
  
  <p>From what I read, piston seems to be older and thus more mature but maybe a bit outdated?! 
  While tastypie is relatively new and nicely documented.</p>
  
  <p>What would be the best thing to go with? <strong>django-piston</strong> or <strong>django-tastypie</strong>?
  Important for us (ordered by priority): Continuous maintenance of the source, documentation, stability, ease of use.</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT (2013 Jul 16th):</strong></p>
  
  <p>Now over a year later we have a clear winner. At first we went with tastypie. Which we kinda liked. But after half a year or so we switched to the then upcoming <a href="https://github.com/tomchristie/django-rest-framework" rel="nofollow noreferrer">django-rest-framework</a> and never looked back. </p>
  
  <p>What we like most about it:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><p>Nice documentation</p></li>
  <li><p>Active community</p></li>
  <li><p>Clean design (build upon django's class based views)</p></li>
  <li><p>Browsable API for development and debugging</p></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>We rely on the API heavily so support (in the future) is one of our main concerns. We met the maintainer - Tom Christie - (on and offline) and he seems very committed to the project. So we feel very comfortable using the django-rest-framework.</p>