What is the purpose of the class meta in Django?

8
votes

For what purpose is the class Meta: used in the class inside the Django serializers.py file?

1
pythondjango-modelsdjango-rest-frameworkdjango-viewsdjango-serializer
it tells it the model to use and what fields to serialize ... - Joran Beasley
@JoranBeasley Only the field can be displayed in the meta class - Brijesh Kalkani
@JoranBeasley I've seen a lot written in the meta class, you just talked about the field itself - Brijesh Kalkani
its used for all the things @ django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/serializers/… ... just read the docs ... it defines recursion depth and readonly attributes etc ... see all the Setting XXXX sections - Joran Beasley
It serves the same point as using a Meta class object inside a Django model class, or a form class, etc. It’s a standard pattern to attach configuration (metadata) to a set of fields that make up the model, form, or in this case, serializer. - Martijn Pieters

1 Answers

3
votes

Serializer classes can also include reusable validators that are applied to the complete set of field data. These validators are included by declaring them on an inner Meta class.
Also when you are defining a serializer then meta tags will help the serializer to bind that object in the specified format

Below are some of the examples :

While validating request data in specified format:

class EventSerializer(serializers.Serializer):
    name = serializers.CharField()
    room_number = serializers.IntegerField(choices=[101, 102, 103, 201])
    date = serializers.DateField()

    class Meta:
        # Each room only has one event per day.
        validators = UniqueTogetherValidator(
            queryset=Event.objects.all(),
            fields=['room_number', 'date']
        )

While getting data from db

class AccountSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = Account
        fields = ['id', 'account_name', 'users', 'created']

More you can read here