Dynamically limiting queryset of related field

Question

Using Django REST Framework, I want to limit which values can be used in a related field in a creation.

For example consider this example (based on the filtering example on http://django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/filtering.html , but changed to ListCreateAPIView):

class PurchaseList(generics.ListCreateAPIView)
    model = Purchase
    serializer_class = PurchaseSerializer

    def get_queryset(self):
        user = self.request.user
        return Purchase.objects.filter(purchaser=user)

In this example, how do I ensure that on creation the purchaser may only be equal to self.request.user, and that this is the only value populated in the dropdown in the form in the browsable API renderer?

Answer 1

Here's how I do it:

class PurchaseList(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    ...
    def get_serializer(self, *args, **kwargs):
        serializer_class = self.get_serializer_class()
        context = self.get_serializer_context()
        return serializer_class(*args, request_user=self.request.user, context=context, **kwargs)

class PurchaseSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    ...
    def __init__(self, *args, request_user=None, **kwargs):
        super(PurchaseSerializer, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.fields['user'].queryset = User._default_manager.filter(pk=request_user.pk)

Answer 2

I ended up doing something similar to what Khamaileon suggested here. Basically I modified my serializer to peek into the request, which kind of smells wrong, but it gets the job done... Here's how it looks (examplified with the purchase-example):

class PurchaseSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):
    def get_fields(self, *args, **kwargs):
        fields = super(PurchaseSerializer, self).get_fields(*args, **kwargs)
        fields['purchaser'].queryset = permitted_objects(self.context['view'].request.user, fields['purchaser'].queryset)
        return fields

    class Meta:
        model = Purchase

permitted_objects is a function which takes a user and a query, and returns a filtered query which only contains objects that the user has permission to link to. This seems to work both for validation and for the browsable API dropdown fields.

Answer 3

In django rest framework 3.0 the get_fields method was removed. But in a similar way you can do this in the init function of the serializer:

class PurchaseSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = Purchase

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(PurchaseSerializer, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        if 'request' in self.context:
            self.fields['purchaser'].queryset = permitted_objects(self.context['view'].request.user, fields['purchaser'].queryset)

I added the if check since if you use PurchaseSerializer as field in another serializer on get methods, the request will not be passed to the context.

Answer 4

I wrote a custom CustomQueryHyperlinkedRelatedField class to generalize this behavior:

class CustomQueryHyperlinkedRelatedField(serializers.HyperlinkedRelatedField):
    def __init__(self, view_name=None, **kwargs):
        self.custom_query = kwargs.pop('custom_query', None)
        super(CustomQueryHyperlinkedRelatedField, self).__init__(view_name, **kwargs)

    def get_queryset(self):
        if self.custom_query and callable(self.custom_query):
            qry = self.custom_query()(self)
        else:
            qry = super(CustomQueryHyperlinkedRelatedField, self).get_queryset()

        return qry

    @property
    def choices(self):
        qry = self.get_queryset()
        return OrderedDict([
            (
                six.text_type(self.to_representation(item)),
                six.text_type(item)
            )
            for item in qry
        ])

Usage:

class MySerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):
    ....
    somefield = CustomQueryHyperlinkedRelatedField(view_name='someview-detail',
                        queryset=SomeModel.objects.none(),
                        custom_query=lambda: MySerializer.some_custom_query)

    @staticmethod
    def some_custom_query(field):
        return SomeModel.objects.filter(somefield=field.context['request'].user.email)
    ...

Answer 5

First to make sure you only allow "self.request.user" when you have an incoming http POST/PUT (this assumes the property on your serializer and model is named "user" literally)

def validate_user(self, attrs, source):
    posted_user = attrs.get(source, None)
    if posted_user:
        raise serializers.ValidationError("invalid post data")
    else:
        user = self.context['request']._request.user
        if not user:
            raise serializers.ValidationError("invalid post data")
        attrs[source] = user
    return attrs

By adding the above to your model serializer you ensure that ONLY the request.user is inserted into your database.

2) -about your filter above (filter purchaser=user) I would actually recommend using a custom global filter (to ensure this is filtered globally). I do something for a software as a service app of my own and it helps to ensure each http request is filtered down (including an http 404 when someone tries to lookup a "object" they don't have access to see in the first place)

I recently patched this in the master branch so both list and singular views will filter this

https://github.com/tomchristie/django-rest-framework/commit/1a8f07def8094a1e34a656d83fc7bdba0efff184

3) - about the api renderer - are you having your customers use this directly? if not I would say avoid it. If you need this it might be possible to add a custom serlializer that would help to limit the input on the front-end

Answer 6

Upon request @ gabn88, as you may know by now, with DRF 3.0 and above, there is no easy solution. Even IF you do manage to figure out a solution, it won't be pretty and will most likely fail on subsequent versions of DRF as it will override a bunch of DRF source which will have changed by then.

I forget the exact implementation I used, but the idea is to create 2 fields on the serializer, one your normal serializer field (lets say PrimaryKeyRelatedField etc...), and another field a serializer method field, which the results will be swapped under certain cases (such as based on the request, the request user, or whatever). This would be done on the serializers constructor (ie: init)

Your serializer method field will return a custom query that you want. You will pop and/or swap these fields results, so that the results of your serializer method field will be assigned to the normal/default serializer field (PrimaryKeyRelatedField etc...) accordingly. That way you always deal with that one key (your default field) while the other key remains transparent within your application.

Along with this info, all you really need is to modify this: http://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/serializers/#dynamically-modifying-fields