Develop Reference

DRF - Create a Viewset Mixin/Baseclass to inherit a viewset-action

I have a website that is essentially a wiki for a DnD campaign that I am participating in. As such it has articles of Creatures, Characters, Locations and more. I wanted to use Viewsets to access them easily and wanted to use a Viewset action (together with a custom router) to be able to look for individual records not through pk, but through various query-parameters.
I already have something that works for this, now I would like to apply some inheritance to it to not repeat myself. What I'd like to do is something like this:
class WikiBaseViewset (viewsets.ModelViewSet):
detail_with_params_url_pattern_suffix: str
#action(detail=True, url_name="detail-params", url_path=detail_with_params_url_pattern_suffix)
def detail_through_params(self, request, **kwargs):
if self.detail_with_params_url_pattern_suffix == "":
raise InvalidViewsetURLException("URL of view 'detail_through_params' of WikiBaseViewset is not defined!")
model = self.serializer_class.Meta.model
instance = get_object_or_404(model, **kwargs)
serializer = self.get_serializer(instance)
return Response(serializer.data)
class CharacterSerializer (serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = wiki_models.Character
fields = '__all__'
class CharacterViewSet(WikiBaseViewset):
"""Called with URLs: character, character/<str: name>"""
serializer_class = CharacterSerializer
queryset = wiki_models.Character.objects.all()
detail_with_params_url_pattern_suffix = "(?P<name__iexact>.+)"
However, I'm struggling over the fact that the decorator absolutely requires the URL parameter in the base class. Otherwise the code just doesn't compile due to a NameError complaining that detail_with_params_url_pattern_suffix is not defined. If you were to set detail_with_params_url_pattern_suffix="" in the base-class in order to not get an Error when your code is compiled, that still wouldn't matter, as the decorator from my experiments so far still grabs the value of that variable from WikiBaseViewset not CharacterViewSet.
How can I rewrite my BaseClass so that this works? Is there even a way?

I did not find a fully satisfying answer to this problem, but in the end acquiesced with this solution, as it was better than copy pasting.
You might not be able to inherit viewset actions, but you sure can inherit individual methods and then just overwrite them in the child and throw a decorator on top. This lead to this structure:
class WikiBaseViewset (viewsets.ModelViewSet):
detail_with_params_url_pattern_suffix: str
def detail_through_params(self, request, **kwargs):
model = self.serializer_class.Meta.model
instance = get_object_or_404(model, **kwargs)
serializer = self.get_serializer(instance)
return Response(serializer.data)
class CharacterSerializer (serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = wiki_models.Character
fields = '__all__'
class CharacterViewSet(WikiBaseViewset):
"""Called with URLs: character, character/<str: name>"""
serializer_class = CharacterSerializer
queryset = wiki_models.Character.objects.all()
#action(detail=True, url_name="detail-params", url_path="(?P<name__iexact>.+)")
def detail_through_params(self, request, **kwargs):
return super().detail_through_params(request, **kwargs)

In a Django serializer, take default field value from context (or request data)

I'm using Django with the REST Framework. In a serializer, I would like to assign a field value based on a view or request (request.data['type']) parameter, so I need the view/request in the context.
I succeeded, but only in a cumbersome way, and I am looking into ways to simplify the code. Here's the successful approach (omitting irrelevant fields):
class TypeDefault(object):
def set_context(self, serializer_field):
view = serializer_field.context['view'] # or context['request']
self.type = view.kwargs['type'].upper()
def __call__(self):
return self.type
class RRsetSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
type = serializers.CharField(read_only=True, default=serializers.CreateOnlyDefault(TypeDefault()))
class Meta:
model = RRset
fields = ('type',)
read_only_fields = ('type',)
To simplify things, I tried removing the TypeDefault class, and replacing the type serializer field by
type = serializers.SerializerMethodField()
def get_type(self, obj):
return self.context.get('view').kwargs['type'].upper() # also tried self._context
However, context.get('view') returns None. I am unsure why the view context is not available here. My impression is that it should be possible to get the desired functionality without resorting to an extra class.
As a bonus, it would be nice to specify the default in the field declaration itself, like
type = serializers.CharField(default=self.context.get('view').kwargs['type'].upper())
However, self is not defined here, and I'm not sure what the right approach would be.
Also, I am interested if there is any difference in retrieving information from the view or from the request data. While the context approach should work for both, maybe there's a simpler way to get the CreateOnlyDefault functionality when the value is obtained from request data, as the serializers deals with the request data anyways.
Edit: Per Geotob's request, here is the code of the view that calls the serializer:
class RRsetsDetail(generics.ListCreateAPIView):
serializer_class = RRsetSerializer
# permission_classes = ... # some permission constraints
def get_queryset(self):
name = self.kwargs['name']
type = self.kwargs.get('type')
# Note in the following that the RRset model has a `domain` foreign-key field which is referenced here. It is irrelevant for the current problem though.
if type is not None:
return RRset.objects.filter(domain__name=name, domain__owner=self.request.user.pk, type=type)
else:
return RRset.objects.filter(domain__name=name, domain__owner=self.request.user.pk)
In urls.py, I have (among others):
url(r'^domains/(?P<name>[a-zA-Z\.\-_0-9]+)/rrsets/$', RRsetsDetail.as_view(), name='rrsets'),
url(r'^domains/(?P<name>[a-zA-Z\.\-_0-9]+)/rrsets/(?P<type>[A-Z]+)/$', RRsetsDetail.as_view(), name='rrsets-type'),

SerializerMethodField is a read-only field so I do not think it will work unless you set a default value... and you are back to the same problem as with CharField.
To simply things you could get rid of serializers.CreateOnlyDefault:
class RRsetSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
type = serializers.CharField(read_only=True, default=TypeDefault())
If you want something more dynamic, I can only think of something like this:
class FromContext(object):
def __init__(self, value_fn):
self.value_fn = value_fn
def set_context(self, serializer_field):
self.value = self.value_fn(serializer_field.context)
def __call__(self):
return self.value
class RRsetSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
type = serializers.CharField(read_only=True,
default=FromContext(lambda context: context.get('view').kwargs['type'].upper()))
FromContext takes a function during instantiation that will be used to retrieve the value you want from context.

All in all, your second approach above is the correct one:
Use serializers.SerializerMethodField and access self.context from the serializer method:
class SomeSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
type = serializers.SerializerMethodField()
def get_type(self, obj):
return self.context['view'].kwargs['type'].upper()
The view, request and format keys are automatically added to your serializer context by all of the DRF generic views (http://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/generic-views/#methods at the end of the section). This works just fine.
If you are creating a serializer instance manually, you will have to pass context=contextDict as an argument, where contextDict is whatever you need it to be (http://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/serializers/#including-extra-context).
As #Michael has pointed out in another answer, the SerializerMethodField will be read only. But going by your first example (type = serializers.CharField(read_only=True.....) this seems to be what you want.

Failure when using setattr to add field to Django form class

I'm trying to write use Django FormView and a bit of ingenuity to create a view which will allow me to get inputs from a user that will be fed to a function. I'd like the code to be reusable, so I'd like to make a view that will be able to take a target function as a parameter and automagically create a form appropriate to that function. There is more plumbing to be done, but the general idea would be:
class FormViewForFunction(FormView):
template_name = '...'
func = None
def get_form_class(self):
class _FunctionForm(forms.Form):
pass
a = inspect.getargspec(self.func)
for argname in a['args']:
setattr(_FunctionForm, argname, forms.CharField())
return _FunctionForm
The idea would be that then you could set up something in your URLConf that used FormViewForFunction.as_view(func=***insert any function you want***) and you would wind up being presented with a form that was appropriate for specifying parameters for that function. Let's not worry about what would happen on form submission. For now I'm just stuck getting the form to generate properly.
With the code above, the form doesn't wind up having any fields! What am I doing wrong?

form's fields are initialized during initialization, you should override the __init__ method and then append the fields to the self.fields dictionary

This should work:
class FormViewForFunction(FormView):
template_name = '...'
func = None
def get_form_class(self):
a = inspect.getargspec(self.func)
class _FunctionForm(forms.Form):
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
super(_FunctionForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
for argname in a['args']:
self.fields[argname] = forms.CharField()
return _FunctionForm

Get Current User in django-filter Method

I have a filter where I need to access the request.user. However, django-filter does not pass it. Without using the messy inspect.stack() is there a way to get the current user in the method member_filter below?
class ClubFilter(django_filters.FilterSet):
member = django_filters.MethodFilter(action='member_filter')
class Meta:
model = Club
fields = ['member']
def member_filter(self, queryset, value):
# get current user here so I can filter on it.
return queryset.filter(user=???)
For example this works but feels wrong...
def member_filter(self, queryset, value):
import inspect
request_user = None
for frame_record in inspect.stack():
if frame_record[3] == 'get_response':
request_user = frame_record[0].f_locals['request'].user
print(request_user)
is there maybe a way to add this to some middleware that injects user into all methods? Or is there a better way?

Yes, you can do it, and it's very easy.
First, define __init__ method in your ClubFilter class that will take one extra argument:
class ClubFilter(django_filters.FilterSet):
# ...
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
self.user = kwargs.pop('user')
super(ClubFilter, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
With having your user saved into attribute inside ClubFilter, you can use it in your filter. Just remember to pass current user from your view inside FilterSet.

Try self.request.user.
Why it must work.

you can access the request instance in FilterSet.qs property, and then filter the primary queryset there.
class ClubFilter(django_filters.FilterSet):
member = django_filters.MethodFilter(action='member_filter')
class Meta:
model = Club
fields = ['member']
#property
def qs(self):
primary_queryset=super(ClubFilter, self).qs
return primary_queryset.filter(user=request.user)

Understanding django Form initialisation

I have a class like so:
class EmailForm(forms.Form):
users = forms.MultipleChoiceField(required=False, widget=MultipleHiddenInput())
subject = forms.CharField(max_length=100)
message = forms.Textarea()
def __init__(self, users, *args, **kwargs):
super(EmailForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
self.users.choices = users
# self.fields['users'].choices = []
The commented line at the bottom works perfectly if I use it instead of self.users.
Am I right in thinking that users, subject and message are class level so that is why they are popped out of the attribute list?
So self.fields is the per object copy of the attributes in case I want to change them in some way?
Thanks.

The Form class uses the DeclarativeFieldsMetaclass, which enables the declarative syntax for the fields.
The implementation means that the form class and instance does not actually have an attribute self.field_name for each field. That is why trying to use self.users gives an error.
The fields of the form instance can be accessed as self.fields, which is created when you call super in the __init__ method.
The fields of the form class can be accessed as self.base_fields.