djangorestframework serializer errors: {u'non_field_errors': [u'No input provided']}

Question

I'm using djangorestframework, and someone makes a PUT request to a .../peoplelist/2/markAsSeen, passing in just a Person object's id in the URL. I fetch the Person object (2 in this case) and then simply change the fetched Person object's field has_been_viewed to True. The updated Person object is then to be serialized and returned back to the client.

if request.method == 'PUT':
    serializer = PersonSerializer(person,partial=True)#person is a valid object here
    if serializer.is_valid():
        serializer.save()
        return Response(serializer.data)
    else:
        return Response(serializer.errors,)

serializer errors is {u'non_field_errors': [u'No input provided']} serializer.data looks fine to me

class PersonSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):

    class Meta:
        model = Person
        fields = ('id',)

Answer 1

You're providing a person instance to be updated by the serializer, but no accompanying data to update that instance with.

If you want to deserialize some request data to update that instance with then you're missing the data argument, for example:

PersonSerializer(person, data=request.DATA, partial=True)

However it sounds like the endpoint you want doesn't actually expect to deal with any input data (it's just an empty PUT request you're making right?) In which case you don't want/need to be using a serializer at all.