How can I get the parent object in Django Rest Framework serializer

Question

I have this model:

class Track(models.Model):
    album = models.ForeignKey(Album)

Now in my TrackSerializer I want to get the name of album.

class TrackSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):

    class Meta:
        model = Track
        fields = ('album__name')

It's not working.

I don't want to declare AlbumSerializer for that. Is there any way to do that without declaring a new serializer?

Answer 1

You can do this by creating a field on your TrackSerializer that has a custom source that retrieves the album name.

The name of the attribute that will be used to populate the field. May be a method that only takes a self argument, such as URLField('get_absolute_url'), or may use dotted notation to traverse attributes, such as EmailField(source='user.email').

So in your case, the field album_name would need to be added with the custom source set

class TrackSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    album_name = serializers.CharField(read_only=True, source="album.name")

    class Meta:
        model = Track
        fields = ("album_name", )

This will include the album name in the output under the key album_name.

Answer 2

To include the parent relation you only need to include its serializer and include it in the fields list.

Class TrackSerializer(ModelSerializer):
    album = AlbumSerializer()

    class Meta:
         model = Track
         fields = ('name', 'year', 'album',)