Django rest framework - serializer for dictionary structured payload - django

Question

I'm trying to create a Serializer for a payload that looks something like this -
{
"2fd08845-9b21-4972-87ed-2e7fd03448c5": {
"operation": "Create",
"operationId": "356f6501-a117-4c8d-98ce-dcb4344d481b",
"user": "superuser",
"immediate": "true"
},
"fe6d0c85-0021-431e-9955-e8e1b1ebc414": {
"operation": "Create",
"operationId": "adcedb2f-c751-441f-8108-2c29667ea9cf",
"user": "employee",
"immediate": "false"
}
}
I thought of using DictField, but my problem is that there isn't a field name. it's only a dictionary of keys and values.
I tried something like:
class UserOperationSerializer(serializers.Serializer):
operation = serializers.ChoiceField(choices=["Create", "Delete"])
operationId = serializers.UUIDField()
user = serializers.CharField()
immediate = serializers.BooleanField()
class UserOperationsSerializer(serializers.Serializer):
test = serializers.DictField(child=RelationshipAuthorizeObjectSerializer())
But again, there isn't a 'test' field.

Answer 1

I think your easiest path forward would be to flatten the payload to the following format:
[
{
"request_id": "2fd08845-9b21-4972-87ed-2e7fd03448c5",
"operation": "Create",
"operationId": "356f6501-a117-4c8d-98ce-dcb4344d481b",
"user": "superuser",
"immediate": "true"
},
{
"request_id": "fe6d0c85-0021-431e-9955-e8e1b1ebc414",
"operation": "Create",
"operationId": "adcedb2f-c751-441f-8108-2c29667ea9cf",
"user": "employee",
"immediate": "false"
}
]
And then serialize it. Otherwise, you'd be creating custom fields/serializers which is not pretty.

Answer 2

The way I finally solved it was to add a dynamic 'body' field that contains the real payload of the request.
class UserOperationSerializer(serializers.Serializer):
operation = serializers.ChoiceField(choices=["Create", "Delete"])
operationId = serializers.UUIDField()
user = serializers.CharField()
immediate = serializers.BooleanField()
class UserOperationsSerializer(serializers.Serializer):
body = serializers.DictField(child=UserOperationSerializer())
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
kwargs['data'] = {'body': kwargs['data']}
super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)
Then, in the View, I will use that data as serializer.validated_data['body']
That did the work for me.