Django REST bulk post / post array of JSON objects

Question

I have started to play around with the Django REST framework. So far I succeeded in creating a serializer for my object, creating the post view, post objects and return objects via Javascript's $.post(). So right now I have a proper conversion between my JSONs and Django model objects.

The problem is that I have an array of objects [A1, A2, ..., An]. Right now when I need to post such an array I do it object by object. Is there any possibility to post the whole array at once, and recover an array of objects inside my Django View? If so, what is the pattern to follow here? I guess I could define a new model which is an array of my current model, create a serializer for it, etc., but this does not seem too elegant.

Below are my view and serializer:

#serializers.py
class SearchRequestSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):

    def create(self):
        return SearchRequest(**self.validated_data)

    class Meta:
        model = SearchRequest



#views.py
@api_view(['POST'])
def post_calculation(request):
    if request.method == 'POST':

        #JSON to serializer object
        serializer = SearchRequestSerializer(data=request.data, many=False)
        if (serializer.is_valid() == False):
            return Response(serializer.errors, status=status.HTTP_400_BAD_REQUEST)

        #create the Python object   
        search_request = serializer.create()

        #-- I do some processing stuff with the search_request object here ---

        #object back to JSON
        serializer3 = SearchRequestSerializer(search_request, many=False)
        return Response(serializer3.data)

garzuze · Accepted Answer · 2025-05-29 11:21:16Z

13

There are two solutions to your problem:

The first solution is to override the `.create()` method of your view

By default, django rest framework assumes you are passing it a single object. To account for the possibility to pass it a list of objects you might rewrite it as follows:

def create(self, request, pk=None, company_pk=None, project_pk=None):
    is_many = isinstance(request.data, list)

    serializer = self.get_serializer(data=request.data, many=is_many)
    serializer.is_valid(raise_exception=True)
    self.perform_create(serializer)
    headers = self.get_success_headers(serializer.data)
    return Response(serializer.data, status=status.HTTP_201_CREATED, headers=headers)

Now your view will handle both single objects in POST data as well as a list of objects.

The second solution is to use a third party package

django-rest-framework-bulk provides the above functionality plus additional features (e.g. bulk update). You can check it out and decide whether it fits your needs.

Update: The solution for function based views

In order to get it to work with your function based view, the approach is similar:

@api_view(['POST'])
def post_calculation(request):
    if request.method == 'POST':
        is_many = isinstance(request.data, list)
        
        # JSON to serializer object
        serializer = SearchRequestSerializer(data=request.data, many=is_many)
        if not serializer.is_valid():
            return Response(serializer.errors, status=status.HTTP_400_BAD_REQUEST)

        serializer.save()
            
        #-- do some processing stuff here ---

        return Response(serializer.data)

Do not call .create() method directly, use .save() instead. Also, when using many=False on serializer, the created instance is available under serializer.instance. I am not sure how to obtain the list of created instances though. You can try the same serializer.instance. If it doesn't work, try to find how to get it.

edited May 29 at 11:21

garzuze

336 bronze badges

answered May 19, 2016 at 19:42

iulian

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8 Comments

Botond Over a year ago

Thank you. I assume this works for class based views. Is there a way for function based views as well?...

iulian Over a year ago

@Botond can you share your function based view please?

iulian Over a year ago

@Botond basically, when you call your serializer in your functional based view, if you have a list in your request.data, pass many=True to your serializer and it should do the trick

Botond Over a year ago

oh I see... so can I just submit an array of JSON from the JS post()?

iulian Over a year ago

@Botond yes, you can

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Django REST bulk post / post array of JSON objects

1 Answer 1

The first solution is to override the `.create()` method of your view

The second solution is to use a third party package

Update: The solution for function based views

8 Comments

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Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

The first solution is to override the .create() method of your view

The second solution is to use a third party package

Update: The solution for function based views

8 Comments

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The first solution is to override the `.create()` method of your view