DataMan (Data MiddleMan)

DataMan is a dynamic, CLI-driven backend framework built on top of Django and Django REST Framework. It eliminates the boilerplate of writing standard CRUD APIs, routing, and serializers by allowing you to scaffold endpoints instantly from the command line while preserving your ability to inject custom business logic and strict validation whenever you need it.

👉 Looking to build an API in 5 minutes? Check out the Developer Quickstart Tutorial!

Features

• Instant CRUD APIs: Automatically generate RESTful APIs from simple model definitions.
• CLI Scaffolding: Setup projects and table structures with simple commands.
• Hook-Based Business Logic: Inject custom logic via service.py (before_create, after_delete, etc.) without touching serializers or viewsets.
• Validation Injection: Run custom data validators before database commits via validation.py.
• Fine-Grained Authentication: Lock down endpoints using granular, table-and-operation specific scopes (e.g., customer:read, order:write).
• Dynamic Routing & Pagination: Built-in DRF integration with default pagination and dynamic URL mappings.
• Production Health Probes: Built-in /health/live/ and /health/ready/ endpoints for Kubernetes/Docker container monitoring, database vitality, and migration checks.
• Multi-Database Routing: Organize tables by database directory (<database>/<table>) and route traffic, migrations, and health checks across isolated databases.
• ASGI High-Concurrency Engine: Built-in uvicorn server execution mode (dataman server start --asgi) for high throughput asynchronous performance.

Installation

Ensure you have Python 3.13+ installed.

# Using uv (Recommended)
uv add dataman-engine

# Using pip
pip install dataman-engine

Quick Start

Get a full REST API running in under a minute!

1. Initialize a Project

Run the following in an empty directory to scaffold the necessary environment:

dataman init

This generates your project configuration:

my-project/
├── .env           # Environment variables & secrets
├── database.py    # Database connection & pooling (SQLite default, Postgres, MySQL)
├── config.py      # Project settings (Hosts, CORS, pagination, custom middleware)
└── tables/        # API tables & database migrations

2. Configure Database & Project Settings (Optional)

Easily customize your database backend in database.py (e.g., PostgreSQL or MySQL) and global settings in config.py:

# database.py
DATABASES = {
    "default": dj_database_url.config(
        default="postgres://user:pass@localhost:5432/my_db",
        conn_max_age=600,
    )
}

3. Create a Table

Scaffold a new table (e.g., Customer) with full CRUD operations (-o crud):

dataman create table Customer -o crud

4. Define Your Fields

Open the generated tables/Customer/models.py and define your Django fields:

from django.db import models


class Customer(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=255)
    email = models.EmailField(unique=True)
    created_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)

    class Meta:
        db_table = "customer"

4. Migrate and Run

Apply the database migrations and start the server!

dataman makemigration
dataman migrate

# Start development WSGI server
dataman server start

# OR start high-concurrency production ASGI server with Uvicorn
dataman server start --asgi --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000 --workers 4

Your API is now live at http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/customer/!

Advanced Usage

DataMan abstracts away the boring parts but leaves you full control over the important logic. Every table generated under tables/<TableName>/ comes with four critical files:

1. config.py (API Settings)

Control exactly what HTTP methods are exposed and whether the table requires authentication.

# tables/Customer/config.py
ALLOWED_OPERATIONS = ["C", "R"]  # Only allow Create (POST) and Read (GET)
REQUIRE_AUTH = True  # Lock down this endpoint
DEPTH = 1  # Automatically serialize nested Foreign Key relationships on read (GET)

# Advanced Filtering, Search & Ordering
FILTER_FIELDS = {
    "price": ["gte", "lte", "exact"],
    "name": ["icontains", "exact"],
    "is_active": ["exact"],
}  # Or simple list: ["name", "email"]
SEARCH_FIELDS = ["name", "email"]
ORDERING_FIELDS = ["created_at", "price"]

2. Authentication & Scopes

If REQUIRE_AUTH = True, clients must provide a token in the Authorization header. You can generate fine-grained access tokens directly from the CLI:

dataman users create-token MyFrontendService --scopes customer:read,customer:create

Use the token in your requests:

Authorization: Token <your_generated_token_key>

3. validation.py (Data Validation)

Validate incoming JSON payloads before they are passed to the database. Raise ValidationError to immediately return a 400 Bad Request.

# tables/Customer/validation.py
from rest_framework.exceptions import ValidationError


def validate(data):
    if "admin" in data.get("name", "").lower():
        raise ValidationError({"name": "Reserved keyword used."})

    # You can also mutate incoming data
    data["name"] = data["name"].strip().title()
    return data

4. service.py (Pre/Post Hooks)

Run business logic right before or after the database commits a transaction. Available hooks: before_create, after_create, before_update, after_update, before_destroy, after_destroy.

# tables/Customer/service.py
def before_create(data):
    # E.g., hash a password, trigger a background task, or enforce rules
    if not data.get("email"):
        raise ValueError("Email is strictly required")


def after_create(instance):
    # instance is the saved Django model object
    print(f"Successfully created customer: {instance.name}")

5. Health Checks & Readiness Probes

DataMan comes with built-in health check endpoints designed for cloud platforms, load balancers, and orchestrators (Kubernetes, AWS ECS, Docker):

• GET /health/live/ (or /api/health/live/): Liveness probe returning 200 OK indicating the process is alive.
• GET /health/ready/ (or /api/health/ready/): Readiness probe validating active database connection integrity and unapplied migrations (returns 200 OK or 503 Service Unavailable).
• GET /health/ (or /api/health/): Unified health status with database latency metrics.

6. Multi-Database Architecture

Organize large projects with isolated physical databases:

my_project/
├── database.py
├── config.py
├── analytics_db/
│   ├── events/
│   │   ├── models.py
│   │   └── config.py
│   └── metrics/
│       ├── models.py
│       └── config.py
└── core_db/
    └── users/
        ├── models.py
        └── config.py

1. Create a database:

dataman create database analytics_db

2. Scaffold a table bound to that database:

dataman create table events --database analytics_db

3. Run migrations across all databases (or target a single database):

dataman migrate
# or
dataman migrate --database analytics_db

Endpoints are automatically registered at both api/<table_name>/ and namespaced api/<database_name>/<table_name>/.

Testing

DataMan is rigorously tested with 95%+ branch coverage, verifying extreme edge cases, token validations, and dynamic hook executions.

To run the test suite:

uv run pytest tests/ -v

License

MIT License