I know this was asked a while ago now but I found it whilst trying to figure this out myself.
It turns out if you pass many=True when instantiating the serializer class for a model, it can then accept multiple objects.
This is mentioned here in the django rest framework docs
For my case, my view looked like this:
class ThingViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
"""This view provides list, detail, create, retrieve, update
and destroy actions for Things."""
model = Thing
serializer_class = ThingSerializer
I didn't really want to go writing a load of boilerplate just to have direct control over the instantiation of the serializer and pass many=True, so in my serializer class I override the __init__ instead:
class ThingSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
many = kwargs.pop('many', True)
super(ThingSerializer, self).__init__(many=many, *args, **kwargs)
class Meta:
model = Thing
fields = ('loads', 'of', 'fields', )
Posting data to the list URL for this view in the format:
I couldn't quite figure out getting the request.DATA to convert from a dictionary to an array - which was a limit on my ability to Tom Manterfield's solution to work. Here is my solution:
And then I run the equivalent of this on the client:
var things = {
"things":[
{'loads':'foo','of':'bar','fields':'buzz'},
{'loads':'fizz','of':'bazz','fields':'errrrm'}]
}
thingClientResource.post(things)
I think the best approach to respect the proposed architecture of the framework will be to create a mixin like this:
class CreateListModelMixin(object):
def create(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
"""
Create a list of model instances if a list is provided or a
single model instance otherwise.
"""
data = request.data
if isinstance(data, list):
serializer = self.get_serializer(data=request.data, many=True)
else:
serializer = self.get_serializer(data=request.data)
serializer.is_valid(raise_exception=True)
self.perform_create(serializer)
headers = self.get_success_headers(serializer.data)
return Response(serializer.data, status=status.HTTP_201_CREATED,
headers=headers)
Then you can override the CreateModelMixin of ModelViewSet like this:
class <MyModel>ViewSet(CreateListModelMixin, viewsets.ModelViewSet):
...
...
Now in the client you can work like this:
var things = [
{'loads':'foo','of':'bar','fields':'buzz'},
{'loads':'fizz','of':'bazz','fields':'errrrm'}
]
thingClientResource.post(things)
or
var thing = {
'loads':'foo','of':'bar','fields':'buzz'
}
thingClientResource.post(thing)
EDIT:
As Roger Collins suggests in his response is more clever to overwrite the get_serializer method than the 'create'.
I came to a similar conclusion as Daniel Albarral, but here's a more succinct solution:
class CreateListModelMixin(object):
def get_serializer(self, *args, **kwargs):
""" if an array is passed, set serializer to many """
if isinstance(kwargs.get('data', {}), list):
kwargs['many'] = True
return super(CreateListModelMixin, self).get_serializer(*args, **kwargs)
Here's another solution, you don't need to override your serializers __init__ method. Just override your view's (ModelViewSet) 'create' method. Notice many=isinstance(request.data,list). Here many=True when you send an array of objects to create, and False when you send just the one. This way, you can save both an item and a list!
from rest_framework import status, viewsets
from rest_framework.response import Response
class ThingViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
"""This view snippet provides both list and item create functionality."""
#I took the liberty to change the model to queryset
queryset = Thing.objects.all()
serializer_class = ThingSerializer
def create(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
serializer = self.get_serializer(data=request.data, many=isinstance(request.data,list))
serializer.is_valid(raise_exception=True)
self.perform_create(serializer)
headers = self.get_success_headers(serializer.data)
return Response(serializer.data, status=status.HTTP_201_CREATED, headers=headers)
from rest_framework import serializers
from movie.models import Movie
class MovieSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = Movie
fields = [
'popularity',
'director',
'genre',
'imdb_score',
'name',
]
Views.py
from rest_framework.response import Response
from rest_framework import generics
from .serializers import MovieSerializer
from movie.models import Movie
from rest_framework import status
from rest_framework.permissions import IsAuthenticated
class MovieList(generics.ListCreateAPIView):
queryset = Movie.objects.all().order_by('-id')[:10]
serializer_class = MovieSerializer
permission_classes = (IsAuthenticated,)
def list(self, request):
queryset = self.get_queryset()
serializer = MovieSerializer(queryset, many=True)
return Response(serializer.data)
def post(self, request, format=None):
data = request.data
if isinstance(data, list): # <- is the main logic
serializer = self.get_serializer(data=request.data, many=True)
else:
serializer = self.get_serializer(data=request.data)
if serializer.is_valid():
serializer.save()
return Response(serializer.data, status=status.HTTP_201_CREATED)
return Response(serializer.errors, status=status.HTTP_400_BAD_REQUEST)
These line are the actual logic of Multiple Instance -
data = request.data
if isinstance(data, list): # <- is the main logic
serializer = self.get_serializer(data=request.data, many=True)
else:
serializer = self.get_serializer(data=request.data)