CODEWITHSUNDEEP
jsondjangoserializationdjango-rest-framework
Bossam
Bossam

Reputation: 764

is it possible to dynamically change field name within django-rest-framework serializer?

I have Product and ProductCategory models.

Let's say I have ProductCategory TV, which has Sony, Samsung as its products. I also have MobilePhone category with Apple and Nokia as its products. Using DRF, I would like to get JSON output using serializers, which is similar to the below:

{
    'TV': 
        [
            'Sony': 
                {
                    'price': '$100',
                    'country': 'Japan',
                },
            'Samsung': 
                {
                    'price': '$110',
                    'country': 'Korea',
                }
        ]

    'mobile_phone':
        [
            'Apple': 
                {
                    'price': '$300',
                    'country': 'USA',
                },
            'Nokia': 
                {
                    'price': '$210',
                    'country': 'Finland',
                }
        ]
}

The problem here is that the field names('TV', 'mobile_phone') in serializer have to be dynamic.

I know I can get the following JSON type

{ 
    [
            {   
                'product_category': 'TV',
                'manufacturer: 'Sony',
                'price': '$100',
                'country': 'Japan',
            },
            {
                'product_category': 'TV',
                'manufacturer: 'Samgsung',
                'price': '$110',
                'country': 'Korea',
            }
    ]

    [
            {
                'product_category': 'mobile_phone',
                'manufacturer: 'Samgsung',
                'price': '$300',
                'country': 'USA',
            },
            {
                'product_category': 'mobile_phone',
                'manufacturer: 'Apple',
                'price': '$210',
                'country': 'Finland',
            }
    ]
}

with

class CategorySerializer(serializers.Serializer):
    product_category = serializer.CharField()
    manufacturer = serializer.CharField()
    price = serializer.CharField()
    country = serializer.CharField()

But the dynamically-changing-field-names is difficult to achieve. Is there any way I can do this?

Upvotes: 6

Views: 2955

Answers (1)

pchiquet
pchiquet

Reputation: 3187

You can support this kind of custom format by overriding to_representation of your Serializer and of the default ListSerializer:

  1. First, you override to_representation of your serializer:

    class CategorySerializer(serializers.Serializer):
    # your fields here

    def to_representation(self, obj):
      return {
          obj.manufacturer: {
             'price': obj.price,
             'country': obj.country
          }
      }

    So that your serialized categories are of this form:

    {
    'Sony': {
      'price': '$100',
      'country': 'Japan'
    }
}

  2. Then to prepend the product_category in front of your list, you can use a custom ListSerializer with a custom to_representation:

    class CategoryListSerializer(serializers.ListSerializer):

    def to_representation(self, data):
        # Group your data entries by category here
        ...
        return {
            'TV': tv_data
            'mobile_phone': mobile_data
        }

class CategorySerializer(serializers.Serializer):
    ...
    class Meta:
      list_serializer_class = CategoryListSerializer

Upvotes: 13

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