Develop Reference

How to auto populate a read-only serializer field in django rest framework?

I have a question regarding django rest framework.
Most of the time, I have a serializer which has some read-only fields. For example, consider this simple model below:
class PersonalMessage(models.Model):
sender = models.ForeignKey(User, related_name="sent_messages", ...)
recipient = models.ForeignKey(User, related_name="recieved_messages", ...)
text = models.CharField(...)
def __str__(self) -> str:
return f"{self.text} (sender={self.sender})"
In this model, the value of sender and recipient should be automatically provided by the application itself and the user shouldn't be able to edit those fields. Alright, now take a look at this serializer:
class PersonalMessageSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = PersonalMessage
fields = '__all__'
read_only_fields = ('sender', 'recipient')
It perfectly prevents users from setting an arbitrary value on the sender and recipient fields. But the problem is, when these fields are marked as read-only in the serializer, the serializer will completely ignore all the values that are passed into the constructor for these fields. So when I try to create a model, no values would be set for these fields:
PersonalMessageSerializer(data={**request.data, 'sender': ..., 'recipient': ...) # Won't work
What's the best way to prevent users from setting an arbitrary value and at the same time auto-populate those restricted fields in django rest framework?

Depending on how you get those two objects, you can use the serializer's save method to pass them, and they will automatically be applied to the object you are saving:
sender = User.objects.first()
recipient = User.objects.last()
serializer = PersonalMessageSerializer(data=request.data)
message = serializer.save(sender=sender, recipient=recipient)
The kwargs should match the field names in your model for this to work. For reference, have a look here

You able to override the serializer context like this;
PersonalMessageSerializer(data={**request.data, context={'sender': sender, 'recipent': recipent})
and catch the context inside serializer.
class PersonalMessageSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = PersonalMessage
fields = '__all__'
read_only_fields = ('sender', 'recipient')
def validate(self, attrs):
attrs = super().validate(attrs)
attrs['sender'] = self.context['sender']
attrs['recipent'] = self.context['recipent']
return attrs
now serializer.validated_data it must returns sender and recipent.

From the question it is not possible to understand what field(s) of the relationship with sender and recipient you want to interact with, but a general answer can be found in the Serializer relations section of Django REST documentation.
Long story short, if you want to interact with one field only, you can use SlugRelatedField, which lets you interact with the target of the relationship using only one of its fields.
If it just the id, you can use PrimaryKeyRelatedField.
If you want to interact with more than one field, the way to go is Nested Relationships. Here you can specify a custom serializer for the target relationship, but you will have to override the create() method in your PersonalMessageSerializer to create the object from your relationship, as nested serializers are read-only by default.

So this is how you can make set a default on create but read only after in DRF. Although in this solution it wont actually be readonly, it's writable, but you now have explicit control on what the logged in user can write, which is the ultimate goal
Given the model
class PersonalMessage(models.Model):
sender = models.ForeignKey(User,...)
recipient = models.ForeignKey(User,..)
text = models.CharField(...)
You would first create your own custom default (I will show an example for only one field)
# Note DRF already has a CurrentUserDefault you can also use
class CurrentSenderDefault:
requires_context = True
def __call__(self, serializer_field):
return serializer_field.context['request'].user
def __repr__(self):
return '%s()' % self.__class__.__name__
Next you make your own field, that knows whats up with the filter.
This queryset prevents people from setting a value they are not allowed to. which is exactly what you want
class SenderField(serializers.PrimaryKeyRelatedField):
def get_queryset(self):
user = self.context['request'].user
if user:
queryset = User.objects.filter(id=user.id)
else:
queryset = User.objects.none()
return queryset
Finally on the serialiser you go
class PersonalMessageSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
sender = SenderField(default=CurrentSenderDefault())
recipient = ...
class Meta:
model = PersonalMessage
fields = '__all__'
read_only_fields = ('sender', 'recipient')

Django model instance with nested field filter

I have these two models:
class Task(models.Model):
pass
class Result(models.Model)
task = models.ForeignKey('tasks.Task', related_name='results')
enabled = models.BooleanField('enabled', default=False)
And I want to get task with filtered results for my temporary calculations:
task = Task.objects.first()
results = task.results.filter(enabled=True)
task.results.set(results)
This is the working code, but task results will be rewritten after the first usage. How to get the new task with filtered results without task.results rewriting? I need to keep the changed task instance in memory only.
My final point is to pass the task to the serializer. But it seems to me the serializer must serialize and not to filter something. Because the context of filtering may be different in other submodules.
class ResultSerializer(DynamicFieldsMixin, ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = Result
class TaskResultsSerializer(ModelSerializer):
results = ResultSerializer(many=True, read_only=True)
class Meta:
model = Task

Set is used for replacing related objects. You getting results and then reset them. I'm not sure why? Maybe you are trying to do the update?
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/ref/models/querysets/#django.db.models.query.QuerySet.update

It looks from your choice of serializer class like you're using the Django REST framework for serialization. If that's correct, I would handle this by declaring a callable on the Task model that returns the results you want to include, and then explicitly specifying a serializer field for that callable. EG:
class Task(models.Model):
def enabled_results(self):
return self.results.filter(enabled=True)
class TaskResultsSerializer(ModelSerializer):
results = ResultSerializer(source='enabled_results', many=True, read_only=True)
class Meta:
model = Task
This is untested, but it looks like it should work.

django rest framework - global default model serializer

In short, I want to have a global default serializer per model. My use case here is to create dynamic serializer- i.e creating ModelSerializer classes on the fly.
class Customer(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
code = models.CharField(max_length=200)
# many more fields..
class CustomerTicket(models.Model):
customer = models.ForeignKey(Customer)
date = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
# more fields..
Customer will be referenced by many other models, and hence it will be serialized as a nested object. I don't want the 'code' field to appear in the output - no matter what it should always be excluded.
Now I'd like to create a function:
def serialize_default(model, fields, queryset):
class S(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = model
fields = fields
depth = 1
return S(queryset, many=True)
if I serialize CustomerTicket queryset using this function, I will get all the customer fields as a nested object. I know I can override it locally, but I want to define a CustomerSerializer that will be used by default (for the nested Customer here) unless other serializer is specified as a field. How to achieve this?

Would something like that work for you?
class DefaultCustomerSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
# whatever fields you want
class DefaultCustomerSerializerModel(serializers.ModelSerializer):
customer = DefaultCustomerSerializer()
# You can inherit from this to have default customer serializer
# on serializers you want.
class CustomerTicketSerializer(DefaultCustomerSerializerModel):
# Other fields

Save a many-to-many model in Django/REST?

I'm writing a REST API for my Django app, and can't get POST requests to work on one model.
Here's the model in question:
class ProjectNode(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=60)
place = models.CharField(max_length=150)
time_spent = models.BigIntegerField()
parent_project = models.ForeignKey(Project, related_name='tasks')
workers = models.ManyToManyField(User, related_name='tasks_can_do')
def __str__(self):
return self.name
The User model just holds a name field at the moment.
Here's my serializer for ProjectNode:
class ProjectNodeSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = ProjectNode
fields = ('id', 'name', 'place', 'time_spent', 'workers',)
And here's the API view (from views.py):
class WebProjectNodeListView(generics.ListCreateAPIView):
queryset = ProjectNode.objects.all()
serializer_class = ProjectNodeSerializer
def pre_save(self, obj):
obj.parent_project = Project.objects.get(pk=self.request.DATA['parent_project'])
for worker_pk in self.request.DATA['workers']:
obj.workers.add(User.objects.get(pk=worker_pk))
obj.final_worker = User.objects.get(pk=self.request.DATA['final_workers'])
I tried a simpler version yesterday at first, which only had the Project ForeignKey relationship, and it seemed to work, so I thought that using add would work too, but I get an error when testing out the API with httpie (I already added some users and projects, and am sure I get their id's correctly).
Here's the request:
http POST :8000/api/tasks/ name="newtask" place="home" time_spent:=50 parent_project:=1 workers:=[1]
And I get this error:
"<ProjectNode: newtask>" needs to have a value for field "projectnode" before this many-to-many relationship can be used.
And the traceback also points to this line of code:
obj.workers.add(User.objects.get(id=worker_pk))
Now, I get the feeling that this is because I'm trying to update the relationship on the User object before a ProjectNode object is created in the database, but I'm not sure how to resolve this?

DRF doesn't works create models which are nested serializers objects or Many to Many fields.
So is necessary to override Serializer create method and create/get M2M models before create ProjectNode.
Try to override create(self, validated_data) in your serializer and work with your data inside this method..
Example:
My model Project has M2M relation with ProjectImages. In ProjectSerializer I override create method like this.
def create(self, validated_data):
try:
# Remove nested and M2m relationships from validated_data
images = validated_data.pop('projectimage_set') if 'projectimage_set' in validated_data else []
# Create project model
instance = Project(**validated_data)
if status:
instance.set_status(status)
project = instance.save()
# Create relations
for image in images:
ProjectImage.objects.create(project=project, **image)
except exceptions.ValidationError as e:
errors_messages = e.error_dict if hasattr(e, 'error_dict') else e.error_list
raise serializers.ValidationError(errors_messages)
return project
Hope this help!

How can I update only certain fields in a Django model form?

I have a model form that I use to update a model.
class Turtle(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=50, blank=False)
description = models.TextField(blank=True)
class TurtleForm(forms.ModelForm):
class Meta:
model = Turtle
Sometimes I don't need to update the entire model, but only want to update one of the fields. So when I POST the form only has information for the description. When I do that the model never saves because it thinks that the name is being blanked out while my intent is that the name not change and just be used from the model.
turtle_form = TurtleForm(request.POST, instance=object)
if turtle_form.is_valid():
turtle_form.save()
Is there any way to make this happen? Thanks!

Only use specified fields:
class FirstModelForm(forms.ModelForm):
class Meta:
model = TheModel
fields = ('title',)
def clean_title(self....
See http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/forms/modelforms/#controlling-which-fields-are-used-with-fields-and-exclude
It is common to use different ModelForms for a model in different views, when you need different features. So creating another form for the model that uses the same behaviour (say clean_<fieldname> methods etc.) use:
class SecondModelForm(FirstModelForm):
class Meta:
model = TheModel
fields = ('title', 'description')

If you don't want to update a field, remove it from the form via the Meta exclude tuple:
class Meta:
exclude = ('title',)