Find new REST API framework

[JustinLex]

We currently have a basic REST API setup using flask-restless to automatically generate a REST endpoints from our database ORM.

However Flask-restless seems to be unmaintained for over two years now, and we'd be better off using another Flask framework, maybe just standard Flask? This bug is particularly annoying.

[JustinLex]

Been working with Django-Rest-Framework a bit, and the way it handles serialization and middlewares is really sexy. I think we might want something more modular than Django, though.

[JustinLex]

Using Marshmallow with Flask and SQLalchemy integration now. Pretty much the same functionality as flask-restless, but much more flexible and actually maintained.

One of the neat tricks we can do is provide a url to related objects instead of nesting them in the JSON response (known as an HATEOAS design). I think this is the best design, as the flat JSON we output is easily importable into JS objects from the Immutable NPM libraryo and the client can decide to load exactly the data it wants, on the fly. If, say, we're loading comments about a member, we don't have to load them until the comments tab is opened on the UI, and we can just load the ones that are currently visible (plus some buffer). Having the API give direct URLs should also make it easier for other students to develop off the API, as they can just follow the links.

[JustinLex]

Using FastAPI