Getting rest history from Django simple History

Question

I am using django-simple-history (1.8.1) and DRF (3.5.3). I want to get a rest service containing the history of each element. Let's take an example !

models.py

class Product(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=50)
    price = models.IntegerField()
    history = HistoricalRecords()

    def __str__(self):
        return self.name

So, what must be serializers.py ? I'd like to GET something like :

[
    {
        "id": 1,
        "name": "Apple",
        "price": 8,
        "history": [
            {
                "history_id": 1,
                "id": 1,
                "name": "Apple",
                "price": 0,
                "history_date": "2016-11-22T08:02:08.739134Z",
                "history_type": "+",
                "history_user": 1
            },
            {
                "history_id": 2,
                "id": 1,
                "name": "Apple",
                "price": 10,
                "history_date": "2016-11-22T08:03:50.845634Z",
                "history_type": "~",
                "history_user": 1
            },
            {
                "history_id": 3,
                "id": 1,
                "name": "Apple",
                "price": 8,
                "history_date": "2016-11-22T08:03:58.243843Z",
                "history_type": "~",
                "history_user": 1
            }
        ]
    }
]

After searching whitout finding the solution, I finally found it by myself. But if someone have a better solution...

Answer 1

I know it's been a year, but anyway, maybe someone finds it useful. Here is my solution (it seems far easier to me):

A new serializer field:

class HistoricalRecordField(serializers.ListField):
    child = serializers.DictField()

    def to_representation(self, data):
        return super().to_representation(data.values())

Now simply use it as a a field in your serializer:

history = HistoricalRecordField(read_only=True)

This makes use of DRF's built in list and dict serializers, only trick is to pass it the correct iterable, which is being done by calling .values() on the simple-history model manager class.