Django REST Framework Serialization of ManyRelatedField

django, django-rest-framework, serialization

Solution

Create custom serializer:

class MyKeywordsField(serializers.RelatedField):
    def to_native(self, value):
        return { str(value.pk): value.name }

Use it:

class ImageResourceSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):
    keywords = MyKeywordsField(many=True)
    # ...

Problem

I am trying to serialize my models with Django Rest framework - http://django-rest-framework.org/ This what I want is to serialize a model with ManyToMany relation in it: ``` class ImageResource(models.Model): # Some code here image = models.ImageField(upload_to=upload_images_to) keywords = models.ManyToManyField('cards.Keyword', related_name='image_keywords', blank=True); # More code here ``` So this is my model (I removed some of the fields to help you focus on the keywords field) My seriallizer looks something like this: ``` class ImageResourceSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer): keywords = serializers.ManyRelatedField(source='keywords') class Meta: model = ImageResource fields = ('id', 'url', 'image', 'keywords') ``` And the last thing that I will show is the result from the API ``` { "id": 2, "url": "http://127.0.0.1:3004/apiimageresource/2/", "image": "images/1386508612-97_img-02.JPG", "keywords": [ "birthday", "cake" ] }, ``` As you see the keywords are returned as an array from strings (their names). My wish is to return them as a key value pair with their id and value: ``` "keywords": [ "1":"birthday", "3":"cake" ] ``` If you know how to do this with my seriallizer I will be thankfull :)

Original source