Django-REST Serializing RelatedField - django

Question

I'm trying to serialize a model with RelatedFields as in the docs (http://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/relations) but I keep getting an AttributeError.
The Error:
AttributeError at /testapi/foo/
'Foo' object has no attribute 'bar1'
The Models:
class Foo(models.Model):
foo_id = models.AutoField(primary_key=True)
name = models.TextField()
zip_code = models.TextField()
class Bar(models.Model):
user = models.OneToOneField(User)
arbitrary_field1 = models.ForeignKey(Foo, related_name='bar1')
arbitrary_field2 = models.ForeignKey(Foo, related_name='bar2')
The Serializer:
class FooSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
bar1 = serializers.RelatedField()
bar2 = serializers.RelatedField()
class Meta:
model = Foo
fields = (
'foo_id',
'name',
'zip_code',
'bar1',
'bar2',
)

Answer 1

I may be completely wrong with this answer as I don't have a test environment set up right now but I'll do my best.
Ok, tried it in a test environment and the solution below is working for me.
I do not believe the RelatedField is needed in this case, since you are specifying the related_name for both the arbitrary fields you'd just need to reference the related name in the fields tuple instead of specifying them with RelateField in the serializer.
So you'd probably be fine with just this:
class FooSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = Foo
fields = (
'foo_id',
'name',
'zip_code',
'bar1',
'bar2',
)
This will return serialized data similar to this:
{
....
"bar1": [
1,
2,
3,
4
],
"bar2": [
1,
2,
3
]
....
}
Just a side note, but if you don't want just the pk's of the relationship you can try setting the depth variable in the Meta class of the Foo serializer to 1 or whatever number you'd like, example from the docs http://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/serializers#specifying-nested-serialization.
Or if you want a more custom representation of that relationship you can just create a serializer for the Bar model with whatever fields you want to be included or excluded and use that serializer in the Foo serializer, just like this example in the docs http://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/relations#example.
Edit:
Here is the DRF documentation on reverse relationships http://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/relations#reverse-relations