django rest add data to serializer when saving

Question

I want to do the following:

models.py

class MyModel(TimeStampedModel, models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    owner = models.ForeignKey(settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL)

serializers.py

class MyModelSerializerCreate(serializers.ModelSerializer):

    class Meta:
        model = MyModel
        fields = (
            'name',
        )

And I would like to add as owner the current user in request.user. Currently I am adding this in my view directly by uptading request.data with user and then pass the updated data to my serializer.

    data = request.data
    # Add owner to data
    data["owner"] = request.user.pk
    serializer = self.get_serializer(data=data)
    serializer.is_valid(raise_exception=True)
    self.perform_create(serializer)
    headers = self.get_success_headers(serializer.data)

I would like to do this in my serializer directly but can't find a way to properly do it because it looks like data validation to me. Is this a good idea ? Should I keep this logic in my views or move it to my serializer ?

Answer 1

You can get a user from serializer context:

self.context['request'].user
It is passed from a method get_serializer_context which originally created in a GenericAPIView:

class GenericAPIView(APIView):
    ....
    def get_serializer_context(self):
        """
        Extra context provided to the serializer class.
        """
        return {
            'request': self.request,
            'format': self.format_kwarg,
            'view': self
        }  

Inside a serializer you need to override a create method:

class MyModelSerializerCreate(serializers.ModelSerializer):

    class Meta:
        model = MyModel
        fields = ('name', )
 
    def create(self, validated_data):
        validated_data['owner'] = self.context['request'].user
        return super(MyModelSerializerCreate, self).create(validated_data)

You could also override an update and delete methods if you need some special interactions with the User model.