Django Rest Framework nested object response

Question

I am new to Django Rest Framework, I am trying to implement Comment System API, I have model like this

class Comment(models.Model):
    parent_id = models.IntegerField()
    user = models.ForeignKey(User)
    content = models.CharField(max_length=1000,blank=True)
    likes = models.IntegerField(default=0)
    active = models.BooleanField(default=True)
    created = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=False,auto_now_add=True)
    updated = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True,auto_now_add=False)

where parent_id is used for replies, if Parent_id is greater than 0 that means current comment is reply to some other comment. Now I want to use Django Rest Framework to have json response like this :

[ { "id": 10, "parent_id": 0, "content": "Test Comment", "likes": 1, replies : [ { "id": 11, "parent_id": 10, "content": " Reply 1 Test Comment", "likes": 1, } { "id": 12, "parent_id": 10, "content": " Reply 2 Test Comment", "likes": 1, } ]

Can some buddy help me how to make such response ? I am using Django 1.7.6 and Django Rest Framework 3.1.1

Answer 1

I assumed you have the Replies model like this:

class Replies(models.Model):
    comment = Models.Foreignkey(Comment)
    content = models.CharField(max_length=1000,blank=True)
    likes = models.IntegerField(default=0)

Then you could use rest_framework.serializers.ModelSerializer class (http://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/serializers/#modelserializer):

from rest_framework import serializers
class RepliesSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = Replies
        fields = ('id', 'content', 'parent_id', 'likes')
    parent_id = serializers.Field(source='comment.parent_id')

class CommentSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = Comment
        fields = ('id', 'parent_id', 'content', 'likes', 'replies')
    replies = RepliesSerializer(many=True)