Django serializer Imagefield to get full URL

Question

I am beginner to Django and currently, I can construct model like this.

models.py

class Car(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=255)
    price = models.DecimalField(max_digits=5, decimal_places=2)
    photo = models.ImageField(upload_to='cars')

serializers.py

class CarSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = Car
        fields = ('id','name','price', 'photo') 

views.py

class CarView(APIView):
    permission_classes = ()
    def get(self, request):
        car = Car.objects.all()
        serializer = CarSerializer(car)
        return Response(serializer.data)

For photo, it doesn't show full URL. How can I show full URL?

Answer 1

Django is not providing an absolute URL to the image stored in a models.ImageField (at least if you don't include the domain name in the MEDIA_URL; including the domain is not recommended, except of you are hosting your media files on a different server (e.g. aws)).

However, you can modify your serializer to return the absolute URL of your photo by using a custom serializers.SerializerMethodField. In this case, your serializer needs to be changed as follows:

class CarSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    photo_url = serializers.SerializerMethodField()

    class Meta:
        model = Car
        fields = ('id','name','price', 'photo_url') 

    def get_photo_url(self, car):
        request = self.context.get('request')
        photo_url = car.photo.url
        return request.build_absolute_uri(photo_url)

Also make sure that you have set Django's MEDIA_ROOTand MEDIA_URL parameters and that you can access a photo via your browser http://localhost:8000/path/to/your/image.jpg.

As piling pointed out, you need to add the request while initialising the serializer in your views.py:

def my_view(request):
    …
    car_serializer = CarSerializer(car, context={"request": request})
    car_serializer.data