Not getting foreign key data in django api views - django

Question

Currently I have a site, and I want the user to be able to view their liked articles. I want this to be included in the user api view that is already set up. I have tried the tracks = serializers.StringRelatedField(many=True)that is in the drf docs yet this didn't work. I have also tried the following:
from rest_framework import serializers
from articles.models import Article, CustomUser,FavoriteArticles
class ArticleSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = Article
fields = ('title', 'content')
class UserSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = CustomUser
fields = '__all__'
class FavoriteArticleSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = FavoriteArticles
fields = '__all__'
class UserProfileSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
fav_title = FavoriteArticleSerializer(read_only=False)
class Meta:
model = CustomUser
fields = 'username, git, email, fav_article, fav_title, homepage'
and my models:
from django.db import models
# users/models.py
from django.contrib.auth.models import AbstractUser
from django.db.models.signals import post_save
from django.dispatch import receiver
import uuid
class ProgrammingLanguage(models.Model):
programming_language = models.CharField(max_length=120, null=False, primary_key=True, default="React")
def __str__(self):
return self.programming_language
class Article(models.Model):
title = models.CharField(max_length=25, primary_key=True)
content = models.TextField()
usedfor = models.TextField()
url=models.CharField(max_length=200, null=True)
article_programming_language = models.ForeignKey(ProgrammingLanguage, on_delete=models.CASCADE, related_name="article_programming_language", default="react")
score = models.IntegerField(max_length=5, null=0)
def __str__(self):
return self.title
class CustomUser(AbstractUser):
username = models.CharField(max_length=50, unique=True, primary_key=True)
git = models.CharField(max_length=200, null=True)
homepage = models.CharField(max_length=250, null=True)
user_programming_language = models.ForeignKey(ProgrammingLanguage, on_delete=models.CASCADE, related_name="most_used_programming_language", default="react")
def __str__(self):
return str(self.username)
class FavoriteArticles(models.Model):
id = models.UUIDField(primary_key=True, default=uuid.uuid4, editable=False)
fav_title = models.ForeignKey(Article, on_delete=models.CASCADE, related_name='fav_title')
reasons_liked = models.CharField(max_length=120, null=True)
user = models.ForeignKey(CustomUser, on_delete=models.CASCADE, related_name="user", default="tom" )
def __unicode__(self):
return '%s: %s' % (self.fav_title, self.reasons_liked)

Answer 1

I think you misunderstood what related_name means. It specifies how you would access a model from its reverse relationship. So I'd recommend you remove it from fields in your FavoriteArticles model and use the default Django already provides (in this case favoritearticles_set):
class FavoriteArticles(models.Model):
id = models.UUIDField(primary_key=True, default=uuid.uuid4, editable=False)
fav_title = models.ForeignKey(Article, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
reasons_liked = models.CharField(max_length=120, null=True)
user = models.ForeignKey(CustomUser, on_delete=models.CASCADE, default="tom")
def __unicode__(self):
return '%s: %s' % (self.fav_title, self.reasons_liked)
This way, you can access favorite articles of a user via my_user.favoritearticles_set.all(). Then, you can change your UserSerializer to include a liked_articles field which is populated from the favoritearticles_set reverse relationship to a user's FavoriteArticles using a source attribute:
class UserSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
liked_articles = FavoriteArticleSerializer(source='favoritearticles_set', many=True, read_only=True)
class Meta:
model = CustomUser
# explicitly include other fields as required
fields = ('username', 'git', 'user_programming_language', 'liked_articles')
Note that we've made this a read_only field, so it will only get populated if you perform a GET request.