Serializer fields handle converting between primitive values and internal datatypes. They also deal with validating input values, as well as retrieving and setting the values from their parent objects.
**Note:** The serializer fields are declared in fields.py, but by convention you should import them using `from rest_framework import serializers` and refer to fields as `serializers.<FieldName>`.
Each serializer field class constructor takes at least these arguments. Some Field classes take additional, field-specific arguments, but the following should always be accepted:
### `source`
The name of the attribute that will be used to populate the field. May be a method that only takes a `self` argument, such as `Field(source='get_absolute_url')`, or may use dotted notation to traverse attributes, such as `Field(source='user.email')`.
The value `source='*'` has a special meaning, and is used to indicate that the entire object should be passed through to the field. This can be useful for creating nested representations. (See the implementation of the `PaginationSerializer` class for an example.)
Set this to `True` to ensure that the field is used when serializing a representation, but is not used when updating an instance during deserialization.
If set, this gives the default value that will be used for the field if none is supplied. If not set the default behavior is to not populate the attribute at all.
By default, the `Field` class will perform a basic translation of the source value into primitive datatypes, falling back to unicode representations of complex datatypes when necessary.
A field that supports both read and write operations. By itself `WritableField` does not perform any translation of input values into a given type. You won't typically use this field directly, but you may want to override it and implement the `.to_native(self, value)` and `.from_native(self, value)` methods.
A generic field that can be tied to any arbitrary model field. The `ModelField` class delegates the task of serialization/deserialization to it's associated model field. This field can be used to create serializer fields for custom model fields, without having to create a new custom serializer field.
This is a read-only field. It gets its value by calling a method on the serializer class it is attached to. It can be used to add any sort of data to the serialized representation of your object. The field's constructor accepts a single argument, which is the name of the method on the serializer to be called. The method should accept a single argument (in addition to `self`), which is the object being serialized. It should return whatever you want to be included in the serialized representation of the object. For example:
from rest_framework import serializers
from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from django.utils.timezone import now
class UserSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
When using `ModelSerializer` or `HyperlinkedModelSerializer`, note that any model fields with `auto_now=True` or `auto_now_add=True` will use serializer fields that are `read_only=True` by default.
If you want to override this behavior, you'll need to declare the `DateTimeField` explicitly on the serializer. For example:
class CommentSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
*`format` - A string representing the output format. If not specified, this defaults to `None`, which indicates that python `datetime` objects should be returned by `to_native`. In this case the datetime encoding will be determined by the renderer.
*`input_formats` - A list of strings representing the input formats which may be used to parse the date. If not specified, the `DATETIME_INPUT_FORMATS` setting will be used, which defaults to `['iso-8601']`.
DateTime format strings may either be [python strftime formats][strftime] which explicitly specifiy the format, or the special string `'iso-8601'`, which indicates that [ISO 8601][iso8601] style datetimes should be used. (eg `'2013-01-29T12:34:56.000000'`)
*`format` - A string representing the output format. If not specified, this defaults to `None`, which indicates that python `date` objects should be returned by `to_native`. In this case the date encoding will be determined by the renderer.
*`input_formats` - A list of strings representing the input formats which may be used to parse the date. If not specified, the `DATE_INPUT_FORMATS` setting will be used, which defaults to `['iso-8601']`.
Date format strings may either be [python strftime formats][strftime] which explicitly specifiy the format, or the special string `'iso-8601'`, which indicates that [ISO 8601][iso8601] style dates should be used. (eg `'2013-01-29'`)
*`format` - A string representing the output format. If not specified, this defaults to `None`, which indicates that python `time` objects should be returned by `to_native`. In this case the time encoding will be determined by the renderer.
*`input_formats` - A list of strings representing the input formats which may be used to parse the date. If not specified, the `TIME_INPUT_FORMATS` setting will be used, which defaults to `['iso-8601']`.
Time format strings may either be [python strftime formats][strftime] which explicitly specifiy the format, or the special string `'iso-8601'`, which indicates that [ISO 8601][iso8601] style times should be used. (eg `'12:34:56.000000'`)
Corresponds to `django.db.models.fields.IntegerField`, `django.db.models.fields.SmallIntegerField`, `django.db.models.fields.PositiveIntegerField` and `django.db.models.fields.PositiveSmallIntegerField`
If you want to create a custom field, you'll probably want to override either one or both of the `.to_native()` and `.from_native()` methods. These two methods are used to convert between the intial datatype, and a primative, serializable datatype. Primative datatypes may be any of a number, string, date/time/datetime or None. They may also be any list or dictionary like object that only contains other primative objects.
The `.to_native()` method is called to convert the initial datatype into a primative, serializable datatype. The `from_native()` method is called to restore a primative datatype into it's initial representation.
## Examples
Let's look at an example of serializing a class that represents an RGB color value:
class Color(object):
"""
A color represented in the RGB colorspace.
"""
def __init__(self, red, green, blue):
assert(red >= 0 and green >= 0 and blue >= 0)
assert(red <256andgreen<256andblue<256)
self.red, self.green, self.blue = red, green, blue
class ColourField(serializers.WritableField):
"""
Color objects are serialized into "rgb(#, #, #)" notation.
red, green, blue = [int(col) for col in data.split(',')]
return Color(red, green, blue)
By default field values are treated as mapping to an attribute on the object. If you need to customize how the field value is accessed and set you need to override `.field_to_native()` and/or `.field_from_native()`.
As an example, let's create a field that can be used represent the class name of the object being serialized:
