CODEWITHSUNDEEP
djangoserializationdjango-rest-framework
Buddyshot
Buddyshot

Reputation: 1684

Unable to use my DRF serializers manually

Very strange but whenever I try to use any of my DRF serializers to serialize an object, like for instance:

me = CustomUser.objects.all()[0]
serializer = CustomUserSerializer(me)

serializer.is_valid()
# --> False
print(serializer.errors)
# {"non_field_errors": ["No input provided"]}

and this happens with totally different serializers and various objects.

However, if I use a class-based view (that indirectly uses the same serializers and the same objects), I am able to receive a JSON response with the data serialized as expected. Said differently, calling an endpoint linked to this view

class CustomUserList(generics.ListAPIView):
    queryset = CustomUser.objects.all()
    serializer_class = CustomUserSerializer

will indeed return a JSON representation of all the CustomUsers in the database.

There must be something I did not quite understand.

Upvotes: 6

Views: 4314

Answers (1)

Kevin Brown-Silva
Kevin Brown-Silva

Reputation: 41671

Django REST Framework allows you to serialize an object by passing it into a serializer through the instance keyword (or the first positional argument). From there, you just need to call data on it. This is all covered in the serializing objects part of the documentation.

me = CustomUser.objects.all()[0]
serializer = CustomUserSerializer(me)
serializer.data

You only need to call is_valid when you are deserializing data into an object. The error you are getting ("No input provided") is because you are trying to validate the data to be deserialized, but you are passing no data in.

Upvotes: 13

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