How do I access the value of the parent class in Django? - django

Question

So I have two models here
class ProductType(models.Model):
product_type = models.CharField(max_length=50)
def __str__(self):
return self.product_type
class Product(models.Model):
product_name = models.CharField(max_length=50)
product_type = models.ForeignKey(ProductType, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
product_image = models.ImageField(blank=False, null=False, upload_to="products")
product_price = models.FloatField()
product_description = models.TextField(default="Product Description")
def __str__(self):
return self.product_name
And I have created an api using django-rest-framework to be consumed by the React frontend. However, when I try to get the product_type, it'd just give me a number instead of the name as shown below. So, how can I replace that when retrieving the data with Product.objects.all() in the view?

Answer 1

If you want to only show product_type instead of id you can use serializers.SerializerMethodField() in your ProductSerializer and with defining source in that method you can tell serializer to return your desired field.
Example:
class ProductSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
product_type = serializers.SerializerMethodField(source='product_type__product_type')
class Meta:
model = Product
fields = ('id', 'product_name', 'product_image', 'product_price', 'product_description', 'product_type')
But if you want to serialize all the ProductType itself you can define a serializer for this model and then use this serializer in your ProductSerializer to serialize the whole object of ProductType.
Example:
class ProductTypeSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = ProductType
fields = ('id', 'product_type',)
class ProductSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
product_type = ProductTypeSerializer()
class Meta:
model = Product
fields = ('id', 'product_name', 'product_image', 'product_price', 'product_description', 'product_type')
The second solution is also known as nested serializers.