How to CreateAPIView using the request.user - django

Question

Hi I'm wondering what the best practice is for creating a new model entry with a user based off the request in Django Rest Framework?
Models:
class Asset(models.Model):
user = models.ForeignKey(UserAccount, on_delete=models.CASCADE, related_name="assets")
name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
amount = models.DecimalField(max_digits=10, decimal_places=2)
Serializers:
class AssetSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = Asset
fields = '__all__'
Views
class CreateAssetView(generics.CreateAPIView):
serializer_class = AssetSerializer
<Doesn't seem to work, possibly since user isn't in the json>
def perform_create(self, serializer):
serializer.save(user=self.request.user)
Basically I want to be able to send a POST request {name: 'myasset', amount: '50'} to this endpoint and have a new Asset saved with the User field obtain from the request. What is the best way to do this? Thanks
*** EDIT ***
Thought of a better solution:
class CreateAssetView(generics.CreateAPIView):
serializer_class = AssetSerializer
queryset = Asset.objects.all()
def perform_create(self, serializer):
serializer.save(user=self.request.user)
However this means I must send a dummy user_id in the POST request from the front-end. I'm not sure how this can be avoided. Any suggestions highly welcome.

Answer 1

I do most often this thing using function-based views not class-based ones. :
Basically, that will also be able to send a POST request and will save the user who requested the post request.
from rest_framework.response import Response
from rest_framework.decorators import api_view
from rest_framework.permissions import IsAuthenticated
#api_view(['POST'])
#permission_classes([IsAuthenticated])
def perform_create(request, pk):
user = request.user
asset= Asset.objects.get(id=pk)
data = request.data
# Create Asset
asset = Asset.objects.create(
user=user,
name=user.first_name,
amount=data['amount '],
)
asset.save()
return Response('Asset Added')
And to return the data I create another view for the serialized data
where needed. I guess there would be other approaches I'm sure but
this one is much simple and easy to do.

Answer 2

Since Post "author" cannot be null then we need to provide a user,
one way to do this is to put the user instance in the request.data from the frontend...
the example below is assigning the user instance to request.data from the backend after the request is made!
...models.py
class Post(models.Model):
author = models.ForeignKey(User, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
title = models.CharField(max_length=255)
content = models.CharField(max_length=255)
...views.py
class PostCreate(CreateAPIView):
queryset = Post
serializer_class = PostSerializer
# override this method
def create(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
request.data['author'] = request.user.pk
return super().create(request, *args, **kwargs)