serialize verbose fields of related foreign key object in django REST?

Question

for an app with three objects - User, Event, and Action where users take actions on events creating an object like:

class Action(models.Model):
    event = models.ForeignKey('CauseActivity', on_delete=models.CASCADE, related_name='actions')
    user = models.ForeignKey('users.User', on_delete=models.CASCADE, related_name='actions')
    type = models.CharField(max_length=100, choices=ACTION_TYPES)
    date_created = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    date_updated = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)

I would like our RESTful API to be able to return the actions for one specific user, either within the user request (which requires no extra API calls) or with one additional request (get actions by user)

a simple User serializer with 'actions' as a field will return only the obj ids (response to GET ex: "actions":[108,109])

from rest_framework import serializers

class UserSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):

    class Meta:
        model = User
        fields = (
            ..., 'actions', )

I am aware of nesting to serialize custom fields like username = serializers.ReadOnlyField(source='user.name') but is there a way to use serializers.ListSerializer or .ModelSerializer to serialize the full set of Action objects' fields within my UserSerializer? I read through https://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/serializers/ and best approach isn't really clear to me. thanks

m0etaz m0etaz · Accepted Answer · 2018-10-29T22:31:15

create a serializer for your Action model (let's call it ActionSerializer) then make your code like

class UserSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    actions = ActionSerializer(many=True)
    class Meta:
        model = User
        fields = ('actions',...)

serialize verbose fields of related foreign key object in django REST?

1 Answers