Django Rest Framework: Dynamically return subset o

Question

Problem

As recommended in the blogpost Best Practices for Designing a Pragmatic RESTful API, I would like to add a fields query parameter to a Django Rest Framework based API which enables the user to select only a subset of fields per resource.

Example

Serializer:

class IdentitySerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = models.Identity
        fields = ('id', 'url', 'type', 'data')

A regular query would return all fields.

GET /identities/

[
  {
    "id": 1,
    "url": "http://localhost:8000/api/identities/1/",
    "type": 5,
    "data": "John Doe"
  },
  ...
]

A query with the fields parameter should only return a subset of the fields:

GET /identities/?fields=id,data

[
  {
    "id": 1,
    "data": "John Doe"
  },
  ...
]

A query with invalid fields should either ignore the invalid fields or throw a client error.

Goal

Is this possible out of the box somehow? If not, what's the simplest way to implement this? Is there a 3rd party package around that does this already?

Answer 1

For nested data, I am using Django Rest Framework with the package recommended in the docs, drf-flexfields

This allows you to restrict the fields returned on both the parent and child objects. The instructions in the readme are good, just a few things to watch out for:

The URL seems to need the / like this '/person/?expand=country&fields=id,name,country' instead of as written in the readme '/person?expand=country&fields=id,name,country'

The naming of the nested object and its related name need to be completely consistent, which isn't required otherwise.

If you have 'many' e.g. a country can have many states, you'll need to set 'many': True in the Serializer as described in the docs.

Answer 2

Such functionality we've provided in drf_tweaks / control-over-serialized-fields.

If you use our serializers, all you need is to pass ?fields=x,y,z parameter in the query.

Answer 3

You could try Dynamic REST, which has support for dynamic fields (inclusion, exclusion), embedded / sideloaded objects, filtering, ordering, pagination, and more.

Answer 4

serializers.py

class DynamicFieldsSerializerMixin(object):

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        # Don't pass the 'fields' arg up to the superclass
        fields = kwargs.pop('fields', None)

        # Instantiate the superclass normally
        super(DynamicFieldsSerializerMixin, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

        if fields is not None:
            # Drop any fields that are not specified in the `fields` argument.
            allowed = set(fields)
            existing = set(self.fields.keys())
            for field_name in existing - allowed:
                self.fields.pop(field_name)


class UserSerializer(DynamicFieldsSerializerMixin, serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):

    password = serializers.CharField(
        style={'input_type': 'password'}, write_only=True
    )

    class Meta:
        model = User
        fields = ('id', 'username', 'password', 'email', 'first_name', 'last_name')


    def create(self, validated_data):
        user = User.objects.create(
            username=validated_data['username'],
            email=validated_data['email'],
            first_name=validated_data['first_name'],
            last_name=validated_data['last_name']
        )

        user.set_password(validated_data['password'])
        user.save()

        return user

views.py

class DynamicFieldsViewMixin(object):

 def get_serializer(self, *args, **kwargs):

    serializer_class = self.get_serializer_class()

    fields = None
    if self.request.method == 'GET':
        query_fields = self.request.QUERY_PARAMS.get("fields", None)

        if query_fields:
            fields = tuple(query_fields.split(','))


    kwargs['context'] = self.get_serializer_context()
    kwargs['fields'] = fields

    return serializer_class(*args, **kwargs)



class UserList(DynamicFieldsViewMixin, ListCreateAPIView):
    queryset = User.objects.all()
    serializer_class = UserSerializer

Answer 5

This functionality is available from a 3rd-party package.

pip install djangorestframework-queryfields

Declare your serializer like this:

from rest_framework.serializers import ModelSerializer
from drf_queryfields import QueryFieldsMixin

class MyModelSerializer(QueryFieldsMixin, ModelSerializer):
    ...

Then the fields can now be specified (client-side) by using query arguments:

GET /identities/?fields=id,data

Exclusion filtering is also possible, e.g. to return every field except id:

GET /identities/?fields!=id

disclaimer: I'm the author/maintainer.

Answer 6

You can override the serializer __init__ method and set the fields attribute dynamically, based on the query params. You can access the request object throughout the context, passed to the serializer.

Here is a copy&paste from Django Rest Framework documentation example on the matter:

from rest_framework import serializers

class DynamicFieldsModelSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    """
    A ModelSerializer that takes an additional `fields` argument that
    controls which fields should be displayed.
    """

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        # Instantiate the superclass normally
        super(DynamicFieldsModelSerializer, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

        fields = self.context['request'].query_params.get('fields')
        if fields:
            fields = fields.split(',')
            # Drop any fields that are not specified in the `fields` argument.
            allowed = set(fields)
            existing = set(self.fields.keys())
            for field_name in existing - allowed:
                self.fields.pop(field_name)


class UserSerializer(DynamicFieldsModelSerializer, serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):

    class Meta:
        model = User
        fields = ('url', 'username', 'email')