title: Is it possible for django-rest-framework view to be called without a request object?
body: <p>I've inherited a Django code base using Django REST Framework that has many views that check for the existence of a <code>request</code> argument at the top, like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>class ExampleViewSet(viewsets.GenericViewSet):
      def create(self, request):
          if not request:
              return Response(status=404)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This doesn't seem logical to me as I don't understand how the method can be called without a request object.  I'm inclined to remove it since I haven't been able to find any documentation of this idiom.  Is there some purpose I'm missing?</p>