Is there a way to pre-lookup related field models?

Question

I am exposing an API for a particular model, and want to serialize some of its related fields. These related fields are commonly repeated, and I don't want to have to do a numerous db queries for each related field serialization. Is there a simple way to pre-query all related instances, and then have have the RelatedField serializer look it up in a dictionary? Or maybe to specify from the ModelSerializer of the related field?

Answer 1

You can use Django's standard prefetch_related and select_related methods on your queryset.

On the view, use the queryset attribute, rather than the model shortcut. For example...

class ExampleView(generics.ListCreateAPIView):
    serializer_class = ExampleSerializer
    queryset = Example.objects.select_related(...)