Conditionally return JSON or HTML response from Django django-rest-framework's view

Question

How can you conditionally return a JSON or HTML response from Django django-rest-framework's view?

1. djangorestframework == 2.3.10

2. My settings.py:

REST_FRAMEWORK = {
    'PAGINATE_BY': 10,
    'DEFAULT_RENDERER_CLASSES': (
        'rest_framework.renderers.TemplateHTMLRenderer',
        'rest_framework.renderers.JSONRenderer',
    )
}

3. In my url.py, I added this as the last line:

urlpatterns = format_suffix_patterns(urlpatterns, allowed=['json', 'html'])

4. My view is something like:

def myview(request, id, format='json'):
    if format == 'json' or format is None:
        return Response(my_dict, status=status.HTTP_200_OK)
        else:
            return Response(my_dict, template_name='myhtml.html')

Everything works OK, if I explicitly use .html or .json format_prefix in the url request. But it gives me the following error if I don't specify any format.

ImproperlyConfigured at /objects/29
Returned a template response with no template_name attribute set on either the view or response
Request Method: GET
Request URL: localhost:8000/objects/29
Django Version: 1.7
Exception Type: ImproperlyConfigured
Exception Value: Returned a template response with no template_name attribute set on either the view or response
Exception Location: D:\WORKSPACE\user...\lib\site-

I also tried:

urlpatterns = format_suffix_patterns(urlpatterns, allowed=['json', 'html', 'None'])

But it doesn't seem to work either.

Could someone please help? Thanks!

Answer 1

This worked for me:

class MyView(ListAPIView):
    renderer_classes = (JSONRenderer, TemplateHTMLRenderer,)

    def get(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
        data = SomerSerializer([]).data
        if request.accepted_renderer.format == 'html':
            return Response(data, template_name='blah.html')

        return Response(data)

FYI I've gotten this error before, but it wasn't because it was configured properly - it was because some unrelated code right before it errored out - so look for anything else that might be failing. Also note that your 'else' is redundant.