django-rest-framework: How Do I Serialize a Field That Already Contains JSON?

Question

I am pretty new to the django-rest-framework, so could use some help.

I have an object with a TextField that is a string containing JSON.

I'm using django-rest-framework to serialize the whole object as JSON. However, this one string that is already JSON gets serialized as an encoded string containing the JSON rather than the JSON itself.

How can I tell the serializer to send this field as-is rather than trying to transform this string to JSON? Is there some sort of "ignore" decorator or override I can use? Or can I pre-parse this JSON before serializing?

This is the difference between having:

{"data": data}

and

{"data": "data"}

The latter being more of a nuisance to use on the client side...

Answer 1

I solved this another way:

1: use a JSON-Field for the JSON content (django-jsonfield or django-json-field should be fine). These then will to loads/dumps as needed

2: in my serializer, use the transform-method to prevent the data added as string to the response

class MyModelSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    def transform_myjsonfield(self, obj, value):
        return obj.myjsonfield

    class Meta:
        model = MyModel

If you need write-access, you only have to add a method validate_myjsonfield which converts back.

(of course, this could be also done with a custom DRF serializer field.