Django Rest Framework: Writable nested serializers with Generic Foreign Key - django

Question

There are examples how to create a writable nested serializer like this and then how to serialize a generic foreign key (here).
But I cannot find how to do both at the same time, i.e how to create a nested writable serializer for a generic foreign key field.
In my models there is a Meeting model with a GenericForeignKey which can be either DailyMeeting or WeeklyMeeting like:
class Meeting(models.Model):
# More fields above
content_type = models.ForeignKey(ContentType, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
object_id = models.PositiveIntegerField()
recurring_meeting = GenericForeignKey('content_type', 'object_id')
class DailyMeeting(models.Model):
meeting = GenericRelation(Meeting)
# more fields
class WeeklyMeeting(models.Model):
meeting = GenericRelation(Meeting)
# more fields
Then I created a custom field in my serializers.py:
class RecurringMeetingRelatedField(serializers.RelatedField):
def to_representation(self, value):
if isinstance(value, DailyMeeting):
serializer = DailyMeetingSerializer(value)
elif isinstance(value, WeeklyMeeting):
serializer = WeeklyMeetingSerializer(value)
else:
raise Exception('Unexpected type of tagged object')
return serializer.data
class MeetingSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
recurring_meeting = RecurringMeetingRelatedField()
class Meta:
model = Meeting
fields = '__all__'
I am passing a JSON which looks like:
{
"start_time": "2017-11-27T18:50:00",
"end_time": "2017-11-27T21:30:00",
"subject": "Test now",
"moderators": [41],
"recurring_meeting":{
"interval":"daily",
"repetitions": 10,
"weekdays_only": "True"
}
}
But the problem is that I am getting the following error:
AssertionError: Relational field must provide a queryset argument, override get_queryset, or set read_only=True.
Why does the Relational field has to be read_only? If I set it as read_only then it is not passed in the data in the serializer.
And what type of queryset do I have to provide?

Answer 1

You need to implement to_internal_value as well, and you can use just plain Field class.
from rest_framework.fields import Field
class RecurringMeetingRelatedField(Field):
def to_representation(self, value):
if isinstance(value, DailyMeeting):
serializer = DailyMeetingSerializer(value)
elif isinstance(value, WeeklyMeeting):
serializer = WeeklyMeetingSerializer(value)
else:
raise Exception('Unexpected type of tagged object')
return serializer.data
def to_internal_value(self, data):
# you need to pass some identity to figure out which serializer to use
# supose you'll add 'meeting_type' key to your json
meeting_type = data.pop('meeting_type')
if meeting_type == 'daily':
serializer = DailyMeetingSerializer(data)
elif meeting_type == 'weekly':
serializer = WeeklyMeetingSerializer(data)
else:
raise serializers.ValidationError('no meeting_type provided')
if serializer.is_valid():
obj = serializer.save()
else:
raise serializers.ValidationError(serializer.errors)
return obj
If validation went well then you'll get created object in the MeetingSerializer validated data in other case RecurringMeetingRelatedField will raise an exception.

Answer 2

In this case instead of using a RecurringMeetingRelatedField in the Meeting serializer, you could define a nested serializer like this.
class RecurringMeetingSerializer(serializers.Serializer):
interval = serializers.CharField()
repetitions = serializers.IntegerField()
weekdays_only = serializers.BooleanField()
class Meta:
fields = '__all__'
class MeetingSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
recurring_meeting = RecurringMeetingSerializer()
class Meta:
model = Meeting
exclude = ['object_id', 'content_type']
def create(self, validated_data):
recurring_meeting = validated_data.pop('recurring_meeting')
if recurring_meeting['interval'] == 'daily':
instance = DailyMeeting.objects.create(**recurring_meeting)
type = ContentType.objects.get_for_model(instance)
else:
instance = WeeklyMeeting.objects.create(**recurring_meeting)
type = ContentType.objects.get_for_model(instance)
meeting = Meeting.objects.create(content_type=type,
object_id=instance.id)
return meeting