DRF Object of type 'User' is not JSON serializable

Question

I'm trying to return the details of the current logged in user in the following way:

from .serializers import UserSerializer

class UserDetailsView(RetrieveAPIView):                                                                                                                                                                           
    model = User                                                                                                                                                                                                  
    queryset = User.objects.all()                                                                                                                                                                                 
    permission_classes = [permissions.IsAuthenticated]                                                                                                                                                            
    serializer_class = UserSerializer                                                                                                                                                                             

    def get(self, request, *args, **kwargs):                                                                                                                                                                      
        user = User.objects.get(id=request.user.id)                                                                                                                                                               
        print(user)                                                                                                                                                                                               
        return Response(user)

in serializers.py I've use ModelSerializer

class UserSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):                                                                                                                                                                
      password = serializers.CharField(write_only=True)                                                                                                                                                             

      def create(self, validated_data):                                                                                                                                                                             
          user = UserModel.objects.create(username=validated_data['username'])                                                                                                                                      
          user.set_password(validated_data['password'])                                                                                                                                                             
          user.save()                                                                                                                                                                                               
          return user                                                                                                                                                                                               

      class Meta:                                                                                                                                                                                                   
          model = UserModel                                                                                                                                                                                         
          fields = ('id', 'username', 'password')                                                                                                                                                                   
          write_only_fields = ('password',)

I get an error Object of type 'User' is not JSON serializable. What is wrong in my use case?

Answer 1

You need to return

return Response(serializer.data)

in your get function under UserDetailsView. More details here.

Answer 2

DRF response should be JSON-like objects, to convert model instanse to it you use seralizer class:

def get(self, request, *args, **kwargs):                                                                                                                                                                      
    user = User.objects.get(id=request.user.id)    
    serializer = self.get_serializer(user)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
    return Response(serializer.data)

Also you dont need additional query to get current user, you can user request.user directly:

serializer = self.get_serializer(request.user)    
return Response(serializer.data)

Answer 3

Please check you are returning value of particular field in serializer get method, not entire user object.