Django Rest Framework depth based on direction

Question

I have two models:

class Organization(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=64)

class OrgUser(User):
    organization = models.ForeignKey(Organization, related_name='users')
    role = models.CharField(max_length=1, choices=USER_TYPE_CHOICES)

class UserSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = OrgUser
        depth = 1
        fields = ('email', 'role', 'organization',)

class OrganizationSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):
    users = USerSerializer(many=True)
    class Meta:
        model = Organization
        depth = 1
        fields = ('name', 'users',)

I'm using the Django REST Framework and I'm trying to get the following output for the given URLS:

GET /organization/

{
    'name':'Hello World',
    'users':[{ 'email':'test@gmail.com', 'role':'A' }]
}

GET /user/

{
    'email':'test@gmail.com',
    'role':'A',
    'organization':{ 'name':'Hello World' }
}

So what's happening is GET /organization/ is giving me the users array and the organization information again.

I've been racking my brain setting the depth property on my serializer, but I can't figure it out for the life of me. If someone could please point me in the right direction, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Answer 1

The problem is that you want different output from your UserSerializer depending on if it's being used alone (i.e. at GET /user/) or as a nested relation (i.e. at GET /organization/).

Assuming you want different fields in both, you could just create a third Serializer to use for the nested relationship that only includes the fields you want in the OrganizationSerializer. This may not be the most elegant way to do it, but I can't find any alternatives.

Sample code:

class Organization(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=64)

class OrgUser(User):
    organization = models.ForeignKey(Organization, related_name='users')
    role = models.CharField(max_length=1, choices=USER_TYPE_CHOICES)

class UserSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = OrgUser
        depth = 1
        fields = ('email', 'role', 'organization',)

class OrganizationUserSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer): # New Serializer
    class Meta:
        model = OrgUser
        depth = 1
        fields = ('email', 'role',)

class OrganizationSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):
    users = OrganizationUserSerializer(many=True) # Change to new serializer
    class Meta:
        model = Organization
        depth = 1
        fields = ('name', 'users',)