My Django-powered app with a DRF API is working fine, but I've started to run into performance issues as the database gets populated with actual data. I've done some profiling with Django Debug Toolbar and found that many of my endpoints issue tens to hundreds of queries in the course of returning their data.
I expected this, since I hadn't previously optimized anything with regard to database queries. Now that I'm setting up prefetching, however, I'm having trouble making use of properly prefetched serializer data when that serializer is nested in a different serializer. I've been using this awesome post as a guide for how to think about the different ways to prefetch.
Currently, my ReadingGroup
serializer does prefetch properly when I hit the /api/readinggroups/
endpoint. My issue is the /api/userbookstats/
endpoint, which returns all UserBookStats
objects. The related serializer, UserBookStatsSerializer
, has a nested ReadingGroupSerializer
.
The models, serializers, and viewsets are as follows:
models.py
class ReadingGroup(models.model):
owner = models.ForeignKeyField(settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL)
users = models.ManyToManyField(settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL)
book_type = models.ForeignKeyField(BookType)
....
<other group related fields>
def __str__(self):
return '%s group: %s' % (self.name, self.book_type)
class UserBookStats(models.Model):
reading_group = models.ForeignKey(ReadingGroup)
user = models.ForeignKey(settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL)
alias = models.CharField()
total_books_read = models.IntegerField(default=0)
num_books_owned = models.IntegerField(default=0)
fastest_read_time = models.IntegerField(default=0)
average_read_time = models.IntegerField(default=0)
serializers.py
class ReadingGroupSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
users = UserSerializer(many = True,read_only=True)
owner = UserSerializer(read_only=True)
class Meta:
model = ReadingGroup
fields = ('url', 'id','owner', 'users')
@staticmethod
def setup_eager_loading(queryset):
#select_related for 'to-one' relationships
queryset = queryset.select_related('owner')
#prefetch_related for 'to-many' relationships
queryset = queryset.prefetch_related('users')
return queryset
class UserBookStatsSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):
reading_group = ReadingGroupSerializer()
user = UserSerializer()
awards = AwardSerializer(source='award_set', many=True)
class Meta:
model = UserBookStats
fields = ('url', 'id', 'alias', 'total_books_read', 'num_books_owned',
'average_read_time', 'fastest_read_time', 'awards')
@staticmethod
def setup_eager_loading(queryset):
#select_related for 'to-one' relationships
queryset = queryset.select_related('user')
#prefetch_related for 'to-many' relationships
queryset = queryset.prefetch_related('awards_set')
#setup prefetching for nested serializers
groups = Prefetch('reading_group', queryset ReadingGroup.objects.prefetch_related('userbookstats_set'))
queryset = queryset.prefetch_related(groups)
return queryset
views.py
class ReadingGroupViewset(views.ModelViewset):
def get_queryset(self):
qs = ReadingGroup.objects.all()
qs = self.get_serializer_class().setup_eager_loading(qs)
return qs
class UserBookStatsViewset(views.ModelViewset):
def get_queryset(self):
qs = UserBookStats.objects.all()
qs = self.get_serializer_class().setup_eager_loading(qs)
return qs
I've optimized the prefetching for the ReadingGroup
endpoint (I actually posted about eliminating duplicate queries for that endpoint here), and now I'm working on the UserBookStats
endpoint.
The issue I'm having is that, with my current setup_eager_loading
in the UserBookStatsSerializer
, it doesn't appear to use the prefetching set up by the eager loading method in the ReadingGroupSerializer
. I'm still a little hazy on the syntax for the Prefetch
object - I was inspired by this excellent answer to try that approach.
Obviously the get_queryset
method of UserBookStatsViewset
doesn't call setup_eager_loading
for the ReadingGroup
objects, but I'm sure there's a way to accomplish the same prefetching.
prefetch_related()
supports prefetching inner relations by using double underscore syntax:
queryset = queryset.prefetch_related('reading_group', 'reading_group__users', 'reading_group__owner')
I don't think Django REST provides any elegant solutions out of the box for fetching all necessary fields automatically.
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