Django Rest Framework: Writable nested serializers with Generic Foreign Key

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There are examples how to create a writable nested serializer like this and then how to serialize a generic foreign key (here).

But I cannot find how to do both at the same time, i.e how to create a nested writable serializer for a generic foreign key field.

In my models there is a Meeting model with a GenericForeignKey which can be either DailyMeeting or WeeklyMeeting like:

class Meeting(models.Model):
    # More fields above
    content_type = models.ForeignKey(ContentType, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    object_id = models.PositiveIntegerField()
    recurring_meeting = GenericForeignKey('content_type', 'object_id')

class DailyMeeting(models.Model):
    meeting = GenericRelation(Meeting)
    # more fields

class WeeklyMeeting(models.Model):
    meeting = GenericRelation(Meeting)
    # more fields

Then I created a custom field in my serializers.py:

class RecurringMeetingRelatedField(serializers.RelatedField):
    def to_representation(self, value):
        if isinstance(value, DailyMeeting):
            serializer = DailyMeetingSerializer(value)
        elif isinstance(value, WeeklyMeeting):
            serializer = WeeklyMeetingSerializer(value)
        else:
            raise Exception('Unexpected type of tagged object')
        return serializer.data


class MeetingSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    recurring_meeting = RecurringMeetingRelatedField()

    class Meta:
        model = Meeting
        fields = '__all__'

I am passing a JSON which looks like:

{
    "start_time": "2017-11-27T18:50:00",
    "end_time": "2017-11-27T21:30:00",
    "subject": "Test now",
    "moderators": [41],
    "recurring_meeting":{
        "interval":"daily",
        "repetitions": 10,
        "weekdays_only": "True"
        }
}

But the problem is that I am getting the following error:

AssertionError: Relational field must provide a queryset argument, override get_queryset, or set read_only=True.

Why does the Relational field has to be read_only? If I set it as read_only then it is not passed in the data in the serializer.

And what type of queryset do I have to provide?

django-serializer django-rest-framework django
2 Answers

You need to implement to_internal_value as well, and you can use just plain Field class. 

from rest_framework.fields import Field

class RecurringMeetingRelatedField(Field):
    def to_representation(self, value):
        if isinstance(value, DailyMeeting):
            serializer = DailyMeetingSerializer(value)
        elif isinstance(value, WeeklyMeeting):
            serializer = WeeklyMeetingSerializer(value)
        else:
            raise Exception('Unexpected type of tagged object')
        return serializer.data

    def to_internal_value(self, data):
        # you need to pass some identity to figure out which serializer to use
        # supose you'll add 'meeting_type' key to your json
        meeting_type = data.pop('meeting_type')

        if meeting_type == 'daily':
            serializer = DailyMeetingSerializer(data)
        elif meeting_type == 'weekly':
            serializer = WeeklyMeetingSerializer(data)
        else:
            raise serializers.ValidationError('no meeting_type provided')

        if serializer.is_valid():
            obj = serializer.save()
        else:
            raise serializers.ValidationError(serializer.errors)

        return obj

If validation went well then you'll get created object in the MeetingSerializer validated data in other case RecurringMeetingRelatedField will raise an exception.

user_52318770

In this case instead of using a RecurringMeetingRelatedField in the Meeting serializer, you could define a nested serializer like this.

class RecurringMeetingSerializer(serializers.Serializer):
    interval = serializers.CharField()
    repetitions = serializers.IntegerField()
    weekdays_only = serializers.BooleanField()

    class Meta:
        fields = '__all__'


class MeetingSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    recurring_meeting = RecurringMeetingSerializer()

    class Meta:
        model = Meeting
        exclude = ['object_id', 'content_type']

    def create(self, validated_data):
        recurring_meeting = validated_data.pop('recurring_meeting')

        if recurring_meeting['interval'] == 'daily':
            instance = DailyMeeting.objects.create(**recurring_meeting)
            type = ContentType.objects.get_for_model(instance)
        else:
            instance = WeeklyMeeting.objects.create(**recurring_meeting)
            type = ContentType.objects.get_for_model(instance)

        meeting = Meeting.objects.create(content_type=type,
                                         object_id=instance.id)

        return meeting
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