Django rest framework generic view for multiple models

Question

Is there a way of creating a generic view to be used by several different models? I have many models in my project and do not want to have to create a view and serializer for each of them.

Assume this is a simple solution but I have spent hours googling with no results.

Within the Django REST framework API guide Generic views Examples the following code snippet is shown:

url(r'^/users/', ListCreateAPIView.as_view(model=User), name='user-list')

Which suggests this is possible but the example does not seem to be complete (or my understanding is not complete).

This is my attempt:

url.py

url(r'^foomodel/', views.GenericViewSet.as_view(model = Foomodel) ),

views.py

class GenericViewSet(generics.ListAPIView):
  model = User # this is over ridden by the url 
  queryset = model.objects.all()
  serializer_class = BaseSerializer
  ordering_fields = '__all__'

serializers.py

class BaseSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = None

And of cause this fails as the serializer does not like model = None or any variation that I can think of.

Any suggestions as to how this should be addressed?

qwattash · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-12 15:53:40Z

1

A solution would be overriding the get_serializer_class method of the ViewSet.

The model field in the view will be fine as you override it in the url, as you said, what I would do is build the serializer class on the fly.

class GenericViewSet(generics.ListAPIView):
    queryset = model.objects.all()

    def get_serializer_class(self):
        class BaseSerializer(serializer.ModelSerializer):
            class Meta:
                model = self.model
        return BaseSerializer

Hope this helps!

answered May 12, 2015 at 15:53

qwattash

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3 Comments

oden Over a year ago

You post was very helpful, but there were more issues once that one was addressed. Thank you for the help!

Mohit Harshan Over a year ago

Can i add an extra field to this serializer? I want to add a type field in serializer

Mohit Harshan Over a year ago

return BaseSerializer.update({'type':'data'}) doesnt work

oden · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-13 11:52:38Z

To recap the intention is to create a reusable view that can be used for many models without having to repeat a heap of code. This leaves very little code in Django to create a backed API for many Django models. I am using this for ember.js

urls.py

from myapp import models as mymodels
url(r'^cs/(?P<strmodel>[A-Za-z]+)/(?P<id>[0-9]+)/', views.GenericViewSet.as_view({'get': 'retrieve', 'post':'update', 'delete':'destroy' }, application = mymodels ) ),
url(r'^cs/(?P<strmodel>[A-Za-z]+)/', views.GenericViewSet.as_view({'get': 'list','post': 'create' }, application = mymodels ) ),

Worth noting that I have several apps and there is a different set of URL's to access them. The model being accessed is passed as strmodel

views.py

class GenericViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):

    def __init__(self, application):
        self.application = application

    def initialize_request(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
        self.model = getattr(self.application, self.kwargs['strmodel'] )
        request = super(viewsets.ModelViewSet, self).initialize_request(request, *args, **kwargs)   
        return request

    strmodel = None
    application = None
    model = User
    lookup_field = 'id'

    def get_queryset(self):     
        return self.model.objects.all()

    def get_serializer_class(self):
        class BaseSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):      
            class Meta:
                model = self.model
        return BaseSerializer

Hope this helps :)

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