mttr/drf-dynamic-fields

Dynamically select only a subset of fields per DRF resource.

Dynamic Serializer Fields for Django REST Framework

This package provides a mixin that allows the user to dynamically select only a subset of fields per resource.

What It Does

Example serializer:

class IdentitySerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = models.Identity
        fields = ('id', 'url', 'type', 'data')

A regular request returns all fields:

GET /identities

[
  {
    "id": 1,
    "url": "http://localhost:8000/api/identities/1/",
    "type": 5,
    "data": "John Doe"
  },
  ...
]

A query with the fields parameter on the other hand returns only a subset of the fields:

GET /identities/?fields=id,data

[
  {
    "id": 1,
    "data": "John Doe"
  },
  ...
]

It also works on single objects!

GET /identities/1/?fields=id,data

{
  "id": 1,
  "data": "John Doe"
}

Usage

When defining a serializer, use the DynamicFieldsMixin:

class IdentitySerializer(DynamicFieldsMixin, serializers.ModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = models.Identity
        fields = ('id', 'url', 'type', 'data')

The mixin needs access to the request object. Some DRF classes like the ModelViewSet set that by default, but if you handle serializers yourself, pass in the request through the context:

events = Event.objects.all()
serializer = EventSerializer(events, many=True, context={'request': request})

Credits

• The implementation is based on this StackOverflow answer. Thanks YAtOff!
• The GitHub users X17 and rawbeans provided improvements on my gist that were incorporated into this library. Thanks!
• For other contributors, please see Github contributor stats.

License

MIT license, see LICENSE file.