Retrieving a Foreign Key value with django-rest-framework serializers

Question

I'm using the django rest framework to create an API. I have the following models:

class Category(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)

    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.name


class Item(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    category = models.ForeignKey(Category, related_name='items')

    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.name

To create a serializer for the categories I'd do:

class CategorySerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    items = serializers.RelatedField(many=True)

    class Meta:
        model = Category

... and this would provide me with:

[{'items': [u'Item 1', u'Item 2', u'Item 3'], u'id': 1, 'name': u'Cat 1'},
 {'items': [u'Item 4', u'Item 5', u'Item 6'], u'id': 2, 'name': u'Cat 2'},
 {'items': [u'Item 7', u'Item 8', u'Item 9'], u'id': 3, 'name': u'Cat 3'}]

How would I go about getting the reverse from an Item serializer, ie:

[{u'id': 1, 'name': 'Item 1', 'category_name': u'Cat 1'},
{u'id': 2, 'name': 'Item 2', 'category_name': u'Cat 1'},
{u'id': 3, 'name': 'Item 3', 'category_name': u'Cat 1'},
{u'id': 4, 'name': 'Item 4', 'category_name': u'Cat 2'},
{u'id': 5, 'name': 'Item 5', 'category_name': u'Cat 2'},
{u'id': 6, 'name': 'Item 6', 'category_name': u'Cat 2'},
{u'id': 7, 'name': 'Item 7', 'category_name': u'Cat 3'},
{u'id': 8, 'name': 'Item 8', 'category_name': u'Cat 3'},
{u'id': 9, 'name': 'Item 9', 'category_name': u'Cat 3'}]

I've read through the docs on reverse relationships for the rest framework but that appears to be the same result as the non-reverse fields. Am I missing something obvious?

Answer 1

Just use a related field without setting many=True.

Note that also because you want the output named category_name, but the actual field is category, you need to use the source argument on the serializer field.

The following should give you the output you need...

class ItemSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    category_name = serializers.RelatedField(source='category', read_only=True)

    class Meta:
        model = Item
        fields = ('id', 'name', 'category_name')