Filtered list in URL for hierarchical data with Django Rest Framework

Question

Viewsets in Django Rest Framework keep my code very clean: I can define a model and then a viewset to go along with it.

However, how do I best deal with models which are hierarchically under another one? For example: I have a Project which has many Files and want this API:

GET /api/files: get all files across all projects
GET /api/files/:id: detail a particular file
GET /api/projects/:id/files: list all files in a project

The following code almost works, except that the URL for 3. comes out as api/files/projects/:id:

class FileViewSet(
    mixins.ListModelMixin, mixins.RetrieveModelMixin, viewsets.GenericViewSet
):
    queryset = File.objects.all()
    serializer_class = FileSerializer

    @action(methods=["get"], url_path="projects/(?P<project_id>[^/.]+)", detail=False)
    def list_for_project(self, request, project_id):
        project = Project.objects.get(id=project_id)
        # ... list only Files for this Project

I have looked in to a few solutions such as writing custom routers, using more than one viewset or view, or custom packages; but I'm surprised that it isn't easy to do with DRF out-of-the-box within one Viewset. Am I missing a trick? What do people usually do in this scenario?

Not sure if you've seen this: blog.apptension.com/2017/09/13/… which talks about how to build a nested API — Will Keeling
– Will Keeling, Commented Oct 4, 2018 at 15:48

Deepak K · Accepted Answer · 2018-10-04 11:55:25Z

0

For this, you should create relation between 2 different models. In the file model create 1 field with a foreign key association to projects.

class File(models.Model):
    projects = models.ForeignKey(Projects)

answered Oct 4, 2018 at 11:55

Deepak K

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1 Comment

biddlesby Over a year ago

That gives me the needed relation for the Django models, but it doesn't automatically create the REST API that I want.

user7474631 · Accepted Answer · 2018-10-04 15:05:35Z

What I understood is you need to simplify the code at the same time you need to do all these three. Usage of mixins is a great way to implement api, but in my opinion I recommend you to use ModelViewSet, for more details click here Its the simplest way in which you don't need to specify the url patterns like projects/(?P<project_id>[^/.]+), I will give you an example code

views.py

from rest_framework import view sets
from django.shortcuts import render
from .models import ModelName
from .serializers import SerializerName

class TestAPIView(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    queryset = ModelName.objects.all()
    serialiser_class = SerializerName

urls.py

import rest_framework import routers
from .views import TestAPIView


router = routers.DefaultRouter()
router.register('test',TestAPIView, base_name="api-test")
urlpatterns= router.urls

The first two will work correctly with this way and for the third one, you can deal it with creating multiple model classes projects and files add foreign key relation between these classes example:

class ProjectModel(models.Model):
   ...
   ...

class FileModel(models.Model):
   project = models.ForeignKey(ProjectModel);
   ....
   ....

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