How to return a custom list of Model objects using Django REST Framework?

Question

I'm building a Django application that exposes a REST API by which users can query my application's models. I'm following the instructions here.

My Model looks like this:

class MyObject(models.Model):
    name = models.TextField()

My Route looks like this in myApp's url.py:

from rest_framework import routers
router = routers.DefaultRouter()
router.register(r'myObjects/(?P<id>\d+)/?$', views.MyObjectsViewSet)
url(r'^api/', include(router.urls)),

My Serializer looks like this:

class MyObjectSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = MyObject
    fields = ('id', 'name',)

My Viewset looks like this:

class MyObjectsViewSet(viewsets.ViewSet):

    def retrieve(self,request,pk=None):
        queryset = MyObjects.objects.get(pk=pk).customMyObjectList()

        if not queryset:
            return Response(status=status.HTTP_400_BAD_REQUEST)
        else:
            serializer = MyObjectSerializer(queryset)
            return Response(serializer.data,status=status.HTTP_200_OK)

When I hit /api/myObjects/60/ I get the following error:

`base_name` argument not specified, and could not automatically determine the name from the viewset, as it does not have a `.model` or `.queryset` attribute.

This says that I need a base_name parameter on my route. But from the docs, it is unclear to me what that value of that base_name parameter should be. Can someone please tell me what the route should look like with the base_name?

possible duplicate of How to build a Django REST-Api that returns a custom list of models? — almalki

Scott Woodall Scott Woodall · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-28T04:16:18

Your viewset is missing a .queryset or .model property. DefaultRouter() introspects one of these properties to determine the url path.

You can optionally define base_name when creating DefaultRouter():

router = routers.DefaultRouter()
router.register('myObjects', views.MyObjectsViewSet, 'base-name-here')

How to return a custom list of Model objects using Django REST Framework?

1 Answers