Adding a custom, non-model attribute to query set in Django? - django

Question

Newbie to DRF and have a model called posts. And another called user. The post object looks as follows:
class Post(models.Model):
"""
Post model
"""
title = models.CharField(max_length=250)
body = models.TextField()
author = models.ForeignKey(settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL,
on_delete=models.CASCADE,
related_name='forum_posts')
parent_post = models.ForeignKey('self',
on_delete=models.CASCADE,
blank=True,
null=True)
time_stamp = models.DateTimeField(default=timezone.now)
objects = models.Manager()
The serializer for this model is:
class PostSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = models.Post
fields = ('id', 'title', 'body', 'parent_post', 'author', 'time_stamp')
extra_kwargs = {'id': {'read_only': True},
'author': {'read_only': True}}
When returning data for this model, I want to add an extra attribute to each object within the query set called "author_username". The username should be the username belonging to the post's author id. I also want to do this without modifying the model to add another attribute such as "author_username" since this'll be redundant (already have an FK for author). So, ideally, the json for an object would look like:
'post_id': 1
'post_title': 'Example post'
'post_body': 'Example post'
'author_id': 1
'parent_post_id': null
'time_stamp': '2022'
'author_username': 'testUser'
How can I go about doing this?
Here's my view:
class PostList(generics.ListCreateAPIView):
permission_classes = [IsAuthenticatedOrReadOnly]
queryset = models.Post.objects.all()
serializer_class = serializers.PostSerializer

Answer 1

The source argument can be passed to a serializer field to access an attribute from a related model
class PostSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
author_username = serializers.CharField(source="author.username", read_only=True)
class Meta:
model = models.Post
...
You should add a select_related call to your view's queryset
class PostList(generics.ListCreateAPIView):
...
queryset = models.Post.objects.select_related('author')
...