Full Text search on Django Rest Framework only supported for MYSQL?

Question

Why does Django Rest Framework only support a full text search for MYSQL backend when there is much more capable db like Postgres, I read this and was surprised :/

http://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/filtering

"@' Full-text search. (Currently only supported Django's MySQL backend.)"

Know any concrete reason behind this ?

Answer 1

This has changed since @stalk answered. As of Django 1.10, the Django Rest Framework can support PostgreSQL as well.

And since django.contrib.postgres provides the same __search interface as MySQL does, you can connect your API to Postgres using the same setup as for MySQL:

• Add django.contrib.postgres to your INSTALLED_APPS.

• In your view, use the @ symbol to mark the full-text search fields:

  search_fields = ('@title', '@description')
  

In fact, it sounds like Django's full-text search support for MySQL is either deprecated or is at least changing, according to the deprecation note on the Django docs link in @stalk's original answer. That note links to the following explanation, which also contains example code for replacing it:

The search lookup, which supports MySQL only and is extremely limited in features, is deprecated. Replace it with a custom lookup...

I apologize, I don't have enough reputation to post additional direct links.

Answer 2

That is because django-rest-framework use django's __search.

From current latest commit in master of django-rest-framework:

def construct_search(self, field_name):
    if field_name.startswith('^'):
        return "%s__istartswith" % field_name[1:]
    elif field_name.startswith('='):
        return "%s__iexact" % field_name[1:]
    elif field_name.startswith('@'):
        return "%s__search" % field_name[1:]
    else:
        return "%s__icontains" % field_name

And django docs tells about __search(boolean full-text search):

Note this is only available in MySQL and requires direct manipulation of the database 
to add the full-text index. By default Django uses BOOLEAN MODE for full text searches.
See the MySQL documentation for additional details.