I have a question about dealing with m2m / through models and their presentation in django rest framework. Let’s take a classic example:
models.py:
from django.db import models
class Member(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length = 20)
groups = models.ManyToManyField('Group', through = 'Membership')
class Group(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length = 20)
class Membership(models.Model):
member = models.ForeignKey('Member')
group = models.ForeignKey('Group')
join_date = models.DateTimeField()
serializers.py:
imports...
class MemberSerializer(ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = Member
class GroupSerializer(ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = Group
views.py:
imports...
class MemberViewSet(ModelViewSet):
queryset = Member.objects.all()
serializer_class = MemberSerializer
class GroupViewSet(ModelViewSet):
queryset = Group.objects.all()
serializer_class = GroupSerializer
When GETing an instance of Member, I successfully receive all of the member’s fields and also its groups – however I only get the groups’ details, without extra details that comes from the Membership model.
In other words I expect to receive:
{
'id' : 2,
'name' : 'some member',
'groups' : [
{
'id' : 55,
'name' : 'group 1'
'join_date' : 34151564
},
{
'id' : 56,
'name' : 'group 2'
'join_date' : 11200299
}
]
}
Note the join_date.
I have tried oh so many solutions, including of course Django Rest-Framework official page about it and no one seems to give a proper plain answer about it – what do I need to do to include these extra fields? I found it more straight-forward with django-tastypie but had some other problems and prefer rest-framework.
Answers:
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Method 1
How about…..
On your MemberSerializer, define a field on it like:
groups = MembershipSerializer(source='membership_set', many=True)
and then on your membership serializer you can create this:
class MembershipSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):
id = serializers.Field(source='group.id')
name = serializers.Field(source='group.name')
class Meta:
model = Membership
fields = ('id', 'name', 'join_date', )
That has the overall effect of creating a serialized value, groups, that has as its source the membership you want, and then it uses a custom serializer to pull out the bits you want to display.
EDIT: as commented by @bryanph, serializers.field was renamed to serializers.ReadOnlyField in DRF 3.0, so this should read:
class MembershipSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):
id = serializers.ReadOnlyField(source='group.id')
name = serializers.ReadOnlyField(source='group.name')
class Meta:
model = Membership
fields = ('id', 'name', 'join_date', )
for any modern implementations
Method 2
I was facing this problem and my solution (using DRF 3.6) was to use SerializerMethodField on the object and explicitly query the Membership table like so:
class MembershipSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
"""Used as a nested serializer by MemberSerializer"""
class Meta:
model = Membership
fields = ('id','group','join_date')
class MemberSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
groups = serializers.SerializerMethodField()
class Meta:
model = Member
fields = ('id','name','groups')
def get_groups(self, obj):
"obj is a Member instance. Returns list of dicts"""
qset = Membership.objects.filter(member=obj)
return [MembershipSerializer(m).data for m in qset]
This will return a list of dicts for the groups key where each dict is serialized from the MembershipSerializer. To make it writable, you can define your own create/update method inside the MemberSerializer where you iterate over the input data and explicitly create or update Membership model instances.
Method 3
NOTE: As a Software Engineer, I love to use Architectures and I have deeply worked on Layered Approach for Development so I am gonna be Answering it with Respect to Tiers.
As i understood the Issue, Here’s the Solution
models.py
class Member(models.Model):
member_id = models.AutoField(primary_key=True)
member_name = models.CharField(max_length =
class Group(models.Model):
group_id = models.AutoField(primary_key=True)
group_name = models.CharField(max_length = 20)
fk_member_id = models.ForeignKey('Member', models.DO_NOTHING,
db_column='fk_member_id', blank=True, null=True)
class Membership(models.Model):
membershipid = models.AutoField(primary_key=True)
fk_group_id = models.ForeignKey('Group', models.DO_NOTHING,
db_column='fk_member_id', blank=True, null=True)
join_date = models.DateTimeField()
serializers.py
import serializer
class AllSerializer(serializer.Serializer):
group_id = serializer.IntegerField()
group_name = serializer.CharField(max_length = 20)
join_date = serializer.DateTimeField()
CustomModels.py
imports...
class AllDataModel():
group_id = ""
group_name = ""
join_date = ""
BusinessLogic.py
imports ....
class getdata(memberid):
alldataDict = {}
dto = []
Member = models.Members.objects.get(member_id=memberid) #or use filter for Name
alldataDict["MemberId"] = Member.member_id
alldataDict["MemberName"] = Member.member_name
Groups = models.Group.objects.filter(fk_member_id=Member)
for item in Groups:
Custommodel = CustomModels.AllDataModel()
Custommodel.group_id = item.group_id
Custommodel.group_name = item.group_name
Membership = models.Membership.objects.get(fk_group_id=item.group_id)
Custommodel.join_date = Membership.join_date
dto.append(Custommodel)
serializer = AllSerializer(dto,many=True)
alldataDict.update(serializer.data)
return alldataDict
You would technically, have to pass the Request to DataAccessLayer which would return the Filtered Objects from Data Access Layer but as I have to Answer the Question in a Fast Manner so i adjusted the Code in Business Logic Layer!
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