How to set SlugRelated field to a field within an object field - django

Question

I have the following models:
class Category(models.Model):
name = models.CharField()
... # fields omitted
class Prediction(models.Model):
conversation = models.ForeignKey(Conversation)
category = models.ForeignKey(Category)
... # fields omitted
class Conversation(models.Model):
sid = models.CharField()
... # fields omitted
Now I'm trying to create a model serializer for Category that would return me the following serialized object:
{
"name":"blah",
"conversations":[
"2af22188c5c97256", # This is the value of the sid field
"073aef6aad0883f8",
"5d3dc73fc8cf34be",
]
}
Here is what I have in my serializer:
class CategorySerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
conversations = serializers.SlugRelatedField(many=True,
read_only=True,
source="prediction_set",
slug_field='conversation.sid')
class Meta:
model = models.Class
fields = ('class_name', 'conversations')
However, this doesn't work because somehow django doesn't allow me to set slug_field to be a field that's within an object field. Any suggestions on how to accomplish this?

Answer 1

You are modelling a Many-to-Many relationship between Categorys and Conversations with a explicit table called Prediction. The django way of doing this would be to explicitly state the Many-to-Many on either side of the relationship and specify Prediction as the "through-model":
Shamelessly stolen example from this question:
class Category(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=255)
slug = models.SlugField(unique=True, max_length=255, blank=True,default=None)
desc = models.TextField(blank=True, null=True )
...
class Post(models.Model):
title = models.CharField(max_length=255)
pub_date = models.DateTimeField(editable=False,blank=True)
author = models.ForeignKey(User, null=True, blank=True)
categories = models.ManyToManyField(Category, blank=True, through='CatToPost')
...
class CatToPost(models.Model):
post = models.ForeignKey(Post)
category = models.ForeignKey(Category)
...
This shows a good way to set up the relationship.
Equally shamelessly stolen from the answer by #Amir Masnouri:
class CategorySerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = Category
fields = ('name','slug')
class PostSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = Post
fields = ('id','{anything you want}','categories')
depth = 2
This shows a nice way of achieving the nested serialization behavior that you would like.