Django Rest Framework how to post date field

Question

I want to post JSON request with field date:

{
    "date":"2015-02-11T00:00:00.000Z"
}

It's the string is automatically converted from Date object and I don't want to crop the part T00:00:00.000Z manually at frontend.

But if I post such request, Django Rest Framework validator of DateField will say me, that date has invalid format.

My model:

class Event(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField('Name', max_length=40, blank=True, null=True)
    date = models.DateField('Date', blank=True, null=True)

My serializer:

class EventSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = Event
        fields = ('id', 'name', 'date')

What is the right way to solve this problem?

Solution

You can modify your date field in your serializer with a different format (different from the default one, which you are using implicitly).

More info:

https://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/fields/#datefield

https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html#strftime-and-strptime-behavior

from rest_framework import serializers, fields


class EventSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):

    date = fields.DateField(input_formats=['%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%fZ'])

    class Meta:
        model = Event
        fields = ('id', 'name', 'date')

Note that if you need to parse timestamps other than in UTC (Z at the end of your timestamp), you will need to customize DateField a bit more.

As @nitrovatter mentioned in the comments, the date input formats can also be configured in the settings to affect every serializer by default. For example:

REST_FRAMEWORK = {
    'DATE_INPUT_FORMATS': ['iso-8601', '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%fZ'],
}

Comments

[nitrovatter]

Is the code of the serializer correct? Should it be date = DateField(input_formats=['%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%fZ'])?

[JoseKilo]

This works for example: datetime.strptime("2015-02-11T00:00:00.000Z", "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%fZ"). But note that the Z is hardcoded, see my last paragraph. Do you need to parse any possible timezone ?

[nitrovatter]

In my specific case, I may not parse any possible timezones. But if it's easy to make the general solution for all timezones, I would know it.

[JoseKilo]

Also, I've fixed the typo, you were right: I missed the date = bit

[JoseKilo]

Tested on the shell: EventSerializer(data={'date': '2015-02-11T00:00:00.000Z'}).is_valid() returns True. But this EventSerializer(data={'date': '__WRONG__'}).is_valid() return False and the error that you mention is stored in serializer.errors.

[nitrovatter]

Yeah! It works! Sorry for false statement before and thank you very much! I've added the following string to config, to deliver me from necessity to add that string in each serializator: REST_FRAMEWORK = { 'DATE_INPUT_FORMATS': ['iso-8601', '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%fZ'] }

[JoseKilo]

Oh yes, that's also possible. I will add it to the answer in case someone else needs it.