Django rest framework non-model serializer

Question

Let's say I have a model like

class MyModel(models.Model):
    kwargs = models.TextField()

where the kwargs field is usually a JSON string, representing a dictionary of keyword arguments, e.g. '{"X": 1, "Y": 2}'. It's not practical to modify this model, as it's a model belonging to a 3rd party app, and modifying the field would probably require a fork and other changes in the code.

Now, I'm using django-rest-framework to provide and endpoint for creating/updating/listing/deleting instances of MyModel, and I have a serializer something like:

class MyModelSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = MyModel
        fields = ('kwargs',)

to facilitate this. This all works OK, but for various reasons the user does not want to have manually enter the JSON dump string of the kwargs, i.e. manually entering '{"X": 1, "Y": 2}' in the text box or passing that manually built string. They'd rather be able to individually pass X and Y to the API.

How can I achieve this with a serializer? In other words how can I create a serializer with non-model fields offered to the user, but which get dumped/combined into a JSON string on update/create and mapped to the kwargs model instance field accordingly.

I am confused. You have only one field, which happens to be a text field, but you want to use a serializer to build your json based on user input? — cdvv7788
– cdvv7788, Commented Jan 4, 2016 at 1:03
The model being serialized has one field (well at least in this minimal example), but I would like the serialized to have multiple fields, e.g. X, Y the input of which gets combined into a string representing a JSON dictionary, which is then stored in the model instance's kwargs field as text. — fpghost
– fpghost, Commented Jan 4, 2016 at 1:14
You could create a serializer with all your fields, run serializer.is_valid() and convert the validated data to a json with json.dumps(). — cdvv7788
– cdvv7788, Commented Jan 4, 2016 at 23:16

Ben Hare · Accepted Answer · 2016-01-04 02:37:04Z

7

You don't have to make your serializer a ModelSerializer if you don't want to (maybe you already realize this, but I know I didn't at first), you can just inherit from serializers.Serializer, with the fields you want. Something like

class MyModelSerializer(serializers.Serializer):
    x = serializers.IntegerField()
    y = serializers.IntegerField()

Then you just set up your view to use this serializer, grab the data from it and create/update the model in the view.

answered Jan 4, 2016 at 2:37

Ben Hare

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