Pets Back End Delete Route

Learning objective: By the end of this lesson, students will be able to create a new route to delete a single pet by interacting with the database and sending a JSON response to the client.

DELETE - Delete route

In this section, we will create a new route to delete a single pet. This route will be a DELETE request to /pets/<pet_id>, returning a status of 204 with no content.

We will be following these specs when building the route:

• CRUD Action: DELETE
• Method: DELETE
• Path: /pets/<pet_id>
• Response: No Content
• Success Status Code: 204

• Error Status Code: 404

  500

• Error Response Body: A JSON object with an error message describing the error.

Defining the route

Inside app.py, create a new route for removing a single pet from the database. Our route should use the pet_id parameter in the route handler function object to access the pet_id from the path. If a pet has been deleted successfully, we’ll return a 204 status, with the message "Pet Deleted Successfully".

Add the following to app.py:

# app.py
@app.route('/pets/<pet_id>', methods=['DELETE'])
def delete_pet(pet_id):
    try:
        connection = get_db_connection()
        cursor = connection.cursor(cursor_factory=psycopg2.extras.RealDictCursor)
        cursor.execute("DELETE FROM pets WHERE id = %s", (pet_id,))
        if cursor.rowcount == 0:
            return "Pet not found", 404
        connection.commit()
        cursor.close()
        return "Pet deleted successfully", 204
    except Exception as e:
        return str(e), 500

With the route in place, let’s test it out in Postman.

Open Postman and create a new request with the following details:

• Use the drop-down menu to select DELETE as the method.

• Enter the URL http://localhost:5000/pets/<pet_id> in the address bar, where <pet_id> is a valid pet id that exists in your database. If you need to create some more pets, use the Create Route we built earlier to add them to the database.

After you have sent the request, you should receive a status code of 204 with no content in the response. This means the pet was successfully deleted from the database.