model field named url and django rest framework url

Question

I started to use the great django-rest-framework days ago. I'm not able to solve this simple issue.

My model contains a models.URLField named url.

My serializers.py file:

class ModelSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):
    owner = serializers.Field(source='owner.username')    

    class Meta:
        model = Model
        fields = ('url', 'owner', 'title', 'abstract', 'category', 'position', 'param1')

Checking the API result the field 'url' is populated with model.URLField.

"results": [
        {
            "url": "http://www.web.com", 
            "owner": "me", 
            "title": "title of the stuff"
        }

Instead I would like to have

"results": [
        {
            "url": "http://localhost:8000/en/apiv1/maps/4/", 
            "url_in_model": "http://www.web.com", 
            "owner": "me", 
            "title": "Forest fire"
        }

How can I solve? Thanks

Answer 1

It may be considered poor form (I am by no means a pro programmer or rest_framework expert), but I believe you can add extra context to the serialized output:

http://django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/serializers.html#specifying-fields-explicitly

---

class AccountSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    url = serializers.CharField(source='get_absolute_url', read_only=True)
    groups = serializers.PrimaryKeyRelatedField(many=True)

    class Meta:
        model = Account

Extra fields can correspond to any property or callable on the model.

---

So in the above the field 'get_absolute_url' must be in the 'Account' model. In your case (I think) you could do this:

class ModelSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):
    owner = serializers.Field(source='owner.username')
    url_in_model = serializer.Field(source='url')    

    class Meta:
        model = Model
        fields = ('url', 'url_in_model', 'owner', 'title', 'abstract', 'category', 'position', 'param1')

Of course you would pick the field type that suits.

I haven't had the chance to test this, so there is the chance that using 'url' as your source causes an issue and you may want to name your model field something else - apologies if that is the case and I have wasted your time.

Hope I have helped.

Answer 2

The accepted answer didn't work for me in DRF 3. I got my model's url data for both url and url_in_model. To get the correct url value from DRF, it looked like:

class AccountSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    url = serializers.HyperlinkedIdentityField(view_name='account-detail')
    url_in_model = serializer.URLField(source='url')  

    class Meta:
        model = Account

account-detail should be replaced with whatever view corresponds to a single Account.