Using Django-taggit with django-rest-framework, i'm not able to save my tags

Question

I'm trying to figure it out why when i submit my form, my tags are not saved in my db. Pretty new with the django-rest-framework and Django-taggit too, i think i'm doing something wrong :)

First, before making my API with the rest-framework, i was using a generic view (CreateView and UpdateView) to register/validate my event. It was working fine but i decided to go further and try to build an API since i'm using Angularjs now.

Now my model event is created but without my tag and i have some errors. I put some code and i'll describe my errors after.

events/models.py

class Event(models.Model):
[...]

    title = models.CharField(max_length=245, blank=False)
    description = models.TextField(max_length=750, null=True, blank=True)
    start = models.DateTimeField()
    end = models.DateTimeField()
    created_at = models.DateTimeField(editable=False)
    updated_at = models.DateTimeField(editable=False)
    slug = AutoSlugField(populate_from='title', unique=True, editable=False)
    expert = models.BooleanField(choices=MODE_EXPERT, default=0)
    home = models.BooleanField(choices=HOME, default=0)
    nb_participant = models.PositiveSmallIntegerField(default=1)
    price = models.PositiveSmallIntegerField(default=0)
    cancelled = models.BooleanField(default=0)

    user = models.ForeignKey(User, editable=False, related_name='author')
    address = models.ForeignKey('Address', editable=False, related_name='events')
    participants = models.ManyToManyField(User, related_name='participants', blank=True, editable=False,
                                      through='Participants')
    theme_category = models.ForeignKey('EventThemeCategory', unique=True, editable=False)

    tags = TaggableManager(blank=True)

    class Meta:
        db_table = 'event'

    def save(self, *args, **kwargs):
        if not self.pk:
            self.created_at = timezone.now()
        self.updated_at = timezone.now()
        super(Event, self).save(*args, **kwargs)
    [...]

i'm using the serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer.

api/serializer.py

from taggit.models import Tag

class TagListSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = Tag
        fields = ('url', 'id', 'name')


class EventSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):
    address = AddressSerializer()
    user = UserSerializer(required=False)
    tags = TagListSerializer(blank=True)

    class Meta:
        model = Event
        fields = ('url', 'id', 'title', 'description', 'start', 'end', 'created_at', 'updated_at', 'slug', 'expert','home', 'nb_participant', 'price', 'address', 'user', 'theme_category', 'tags')
        depth = 1

api/views/tags_views.py

from rest_framework import generics
from api.serializers import TagListSerializer
from taggit.models import Tag


class TagsListAPIView(generics.ListCreateAPIView):
    queryset = Tag.objects.all()
    model = Tag
    serializer_class = TagListSerializer


class TagsDetailAPIView(generics.RetrieveUpdateDestroyAPIView):
    queryset = Tag.objects.all()
    model = Tag
    serializer_class = TagListSerializer

api/views/events_views.py

class EventListAPIView(generics.ListCreateAPIView):
    queryset = Event.objects.all()
    model = Event
    serializer_class = EventSerializer
    paginate_by = 100

    def pre_save(self, obj):
        """
        Set the object's owner, based on the incoming request.
        """
        obj.user = self.request.user
        return super(EventListAPIView, self).pre_save(obj)

api/urls.py

    url(r'^events/(?P<slug>[0-9a-zA-Z_-]+)/$', EventDetailAPIView.as_view(), name='event-detail'),

So first when i call /api/events/name-of-my-event the API send me the good resource with my tags on it. The GET method is working fine.

I was thinking that rest-framework follow the query set. So if i can get the resource with with all my tags why when i use POST my tags are not register ?

Actually i have two problems with the POST method:

• first one if i send a tag which i have already created, he send me an error saying that the tag must be unique. I understand that, i don't want to create a new one, i just want it to be linked with my object. I don't have this problem when i use the generic view (it's done by magic :) and all is working fine)
• Secondly, when i try to create a new tag, my new event is saved but without my tags. You can see the response received by angularjs for my tag... He send me the name of the tag but without id, url (hyperlinked). When i checked my db the tag has not been created.

I think i have to make a custom get_queryset(self) in my tags_views but i'm not sure. I'll will continue to investigate. If someone have already to that and have some advise, i'll be very API. Thanks.

Answer 1

I used to follow the following ways to serialize taggit objects but currently django-taggit provide a built in serializer https://github.com/jazzband/django-taggit/blob/master/taggit/serializers.py and it was vendor from the package I mentioned previously.

"""
Django-taggit serializer support
Originally vendored from https://github.com/glemmaPaul/django-taggit-serializer
"""
import json

# Third party
from django.utils.translation import gettext_lazy
from rest_framework import serializers


class TagList(list):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        pretty_print = kwargs.pop("pretty_print", True)
        super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.pretty_print = pretty_print

    def __add__(self, rhs):
        return TagList(super().__add__(rhs))

    def __getitem__(self, item):
        result = super().__getitem__(item)
        try:
            return TagList(result)
        except TypeError:
            return result

    def __str__(self):
        if self.pretty_print:
            return json.dumps(self, sort_keys=True, indent=4, separators=(",", ": "))
        else:
            return json.dumps(self)


class TagListSerializerField(serializers.Field):
    child = serializers.CharField()
    default_error_messages = {
        "not_a_list": gettext_lazy(
            'Expected a list of items but got type "{input_type}".'
        ),
        "invalid_json": gettext_lazy(
            "Invalid json list. A tag list submitted in string"
            " form must be valid json."
        ),
        "not_a_str": gettext_lazy("All list items must be of string type."),
    }
    order_by = None

    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
        pretty_print = kwargs.pop("pretty_print", True)

        style = kwargs.pop("style", {})
        kwargs["style"] = {"base_template": "textarea.html"}
        kwargs["style"].update(style)

        super().__init__(**kwargs)

        self.pretty_print = pretty_print

    def to_internal_value(self, value):
        if isinstance(value, str):
            if not value:
                value = "[]"
            try:
                value = json.loads(value)
            except ValueError:
                self.fail("invalid_json")

        if not isinstance(value, list):
            self.fail("not_a_list", input_type=type(value).__name__)

        for s in value:
            if not isinstance(s, str):
                self.fail("not_a_str")

            self.child.run_validation(s)

        return value

    def to_representation(self, value):
        if not isinstance(value, TagList):
            if not isinstance(value, list):
                if self.order_by:
                    tags = value.all().order_by(*self.order_by)
                else:
                    tags = value.all()
                value = [tag.name for tag in tags]
            value = TagList(value, pretty_print=self.pretty_print)

        return value


class TaggitSerializer(serializers.Serializer):
    def create(self, validated_data):
        to_be_tagged, validated_data = self._pop_tags(validated_data)

        tag_object = super().create(validated_data)

        return self._save_tags(tag_object, to_be_tagged)

    def update(self, instance, validated_data):
        to_be_tagged, validated_data = self._pop_tags(validated_data)

        tag_object = super().update(instance, validated_data)

        return self._save_tags(tag_object, to_be_tagged)

    def _save_tags(self, tag_object, tags):
        for key in tags.keys():
            tag_values = tags.get(key)
            getattr(tag_object, key).set(tag_values)

        return tag_object

    def _pop_tags(self, validated_data):
        to_be_tagged = {}

        for key in self.fields.keys():
            field = self.fields[key]
            if isinstance(field, TagListSerializerField):
                if key in validated_data:
                    to_be_tagged[key] = validated_data.pop(key)

        return (to_be_tagged, validated_data)

http://blog.pedesen.de/2013/07/06/Using-django-rest-framework-with-tagged-items-django-taggit/

With the release of the Django Rest Framework 3.0, the code for the TagListSerializer has changed slightly. The serializers.WritableField was depreciated in favour for serializers.Field for the creation of custom serializer fields such as this. Below is the corrected code for Django Rest Framework 3.0.

class TagListSerializer(serializers.Field):
    def to_internal_value(self, data):
        if type(data) is not list:
            raise ParseError("expected a list of data")
        return data

    def to_representation(self, obj):
        if type(obj) is not list:
            return [tag.name for tag in obj.all()]
        return obj

I now use the bulit in taggit serializer which was taken from https://github.com/glemmaPaul/django-taggit-serializer library.

Answer 2

meet the same question. But I just want to save the tag list directly by TaggableManager (without TagListSerializer and TagsListAPIView). My solution is:

class MyModel(models.Model):
    ...
    tags = TaggableManager(blank=True)

    def get_tags_display(self):
        return self.tags.values_list('name', flat=True)

class MyModelSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):
    ...
    tags = serializers.Field(source='get_tags_display') # more about: http://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/fields#generic-fields
    ...

class MyModelViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    ...
    def post_save(self, *args, **kwargs):
        if 'tags' in self.request.DATA:
            self.object.tags.set(*self.request.DATA['tags']) # type(self.object.tags) == <taggit.managers._TaggableManager>
        return super(MyModelViewSet, self).post_save(*args, **kwargs)

The post data of tags data will be ['tagA', 'tagB',...], the TaggableManager will handle it. Thx.

For DRF>3.1, you just need to override create and update in your ModelSerializer class:

class StringListField(serializers.ListField): # get from http://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/fields/#listfield
    child = serializers.CharField()

    def to_representation(self, data):
        return ' '.join(data.values_list('name', flat=True)) # you change the representation style here.


class MyModelSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    tags = StringListField()

    class Meta:
        model = models.MyModel

    def create(self, validated_data):
        tags = validated_data.pop('tags')
        instance = super(MyModelSerializer, self).create(validated_data)
        instance.tags.set(*tags)
        return instance

    def update(self, instance, validated_data):
        # looks same as create method