Django Rest Framework and JSONField

Question

Given a Django model with a JSONField, what is the correct way of serializing and deserializing it using Django Rest Framework?

I've already tried crating a custom serializers.WritableField and overriding to_native and from_native:

from json_field.fields import JSONEncoder, JSONDecoder from rest_framework import serializers  class JSONFieldSerializer(serializers.WritableField):     def to_native(self, obj):     return json.dumps(obj, cls = JSONEncoder)      def from_native(self, data):         return json.loads(data, cls = JSONDecoder) 

But when I try to updating the model using partial=True, all the floats in the JSONField objects become strings.

Answer 1

If you're using Django Rest Framework >= 3.3, then the JSONField serializer is now included. This is now the correct way.

If you're using Django Rest Framework < 3.0, then see gzerone's answer.

If you're using DRF 3.0 - 3.2 AND you can't upgrade AND you don't need to serialize binary data, then follow these instructions.

First declare a field class:

from rest_framework import serializers  class JSONSerializerField(serializers.Field):     """ Serializer for JSONField -- required to make field writable"""     def to_internal_value(self, data):         return data     def to_representation(self, value):         return value 

And then add in the field into the model like

class MySerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):     json_data = JSONSerializerField() 

And, if you do need to serialize binary data, you can always the copy official release code

Answer 2

In 2.4.x:

from rest_framework import serializers # get from https://gist.github.com/rouge8/5445149  class WritableJSONField(serializers.WritableField):     def to_native(self, obj):         return obj   class MyModelSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):     my_json_field = WritableJSONField() # you need this.