Filtering in django rest framework

In my project I use django rest framework. To filter the results I use django_filters backend. There is my code:

models.py

from django.db import models


class Region(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100, blank=True, null=False)


class Town(models.Model):
    region = models.ForeignKey(Region)
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100, blank=True, null=False')

filters.py

import django_filters
from models import Town


class TownFilter(django_filters.FilterSet):
    region = django_filters.CharFilter(name="region__name", lookup_type="contains")
    town = django_filters.CharFilter(name="name", lookup_type="contains")

    class Meta:
        model = Town
        fields = ['region', 'town']

views.py

from models import Town
from rest_framework import generics
from serializers import TownSerializer
from filters import TownFilter


class TownList(generics.ListAPIView):
    queryset = Town.objects.all()
    serializer_class = TownSerializer
    filter_class = TownFilter

So, I can write ?region=Region_name&town=Town_name to the end of the request url, and the result will be filtered.

But I want to use only one get param in the request url, which can have region or town name as value. For example ?search=Region_name and ?search=Town_name. How can I do this?

There are a few options, but the easiest way is to just override 'get_queryset' in your API view.

Example from the docs adapted to your use case:

class TownList(generics.ListAPIView):
    queryset = Town.objects.all()
    serializer_class = TownSerializer
    filter_class = TownFilter(generics.ListAPIView)
    serializer_class = PurchaseSerializer

    def get_queryset(self):
        queryset = Town.objects.all()
        search_param = self.request.QUERY_PARAMS.get('search', None)
        if search_param is not None:
            """
            set queryset here or use your TownFilter 
            """
        return queryset

Another way is to set your search_fields on the list api view class in combination use the SearchFilter class. The problem is that if you're filtering over multiple models, you may have to do some additional implementation here to make sure it's looking at exactly what you want. If you're not doing anything fancy, just put double underscores for region for example: region__name