Django REST framework serializer without a model

Question

I'm working on a couple endpoints which aggregate data. One of the endpoints will for example return an array of objects, each object corresponding with a day, and it'll have the number of comments, likes and photos that specific user posted. This object has a predefined/set schema, but we do not store it in the database, so it doesn't have a model.

Is there a way I can still use Django serializers for these objects without having a model?

Solution

You can create a serializer that inherits from serializers.Serializer and pass your data as the first parameter like:

serializers.py

from rest_framework import serializers

class YourSerializer(serializers.Serializer):
   """Your data serializer, define your fields here."""
   comments = serializers.IntegerField()
   likes = serializers.IntegerField()

views.py

from rest_framework import views
from rest_framework.response import Response

from .serializers import YourSerializer

class YourView(views.APIView):

    def get(self, request):
        yourdata= [{"likes": 10, "comments": 0}, {"likes": 4, "comments": 23}]
        results = YourSerializer(yourdata, many=True).data
        return Response(results)

Comments

[zaidfazil]

You could use serializers.Serializer...

[Chris]

useful answer! Docs here: django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/serializers

[Shrikanth Kalluraya]

In this case is possible to add calculated field to YourSerializer?

[NurShomik]

This worked perfectly! I wanted to expose a list of tuples with some constant values to an API endpoint. I had to convert them into a list of objects, but that was all the change I needed in the view class.

[Harsha Biyani]

I am getting AssertionError: basename` argument not specified, and could not automatically determine the name from the viewset, as it does not have a .queryset attribute.` by referring this answer. Do you have any pointers?

[Harsha Biyani]

router.register(r'my-model/', MyModelView, basename='MyModel') add basename like this