Django Filter Backend
I solved my problem by modifying my class ContactFilter like this:
import django_filters
from .models import Contact
class ContactFilter(django_filters.FilterSet):
class Meta:
model = Contact
fields = {
'first_name': ['startswith'],
'last_name': ['startswith'],
}
together = ['first_name', 'last_name']
And in my view I just had to do this :
class ContactViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
queryset = Contact.objects.all()
serializer_class = ContactSerializer
filter_class = ContactFilter
My request url looks like :
http://localhost:8000/api/v1/contact/?first_name__contains=Cl&last_name__contains=Tes
But I still wonder if I can have something like this in Django
http://localhost:8000/api/v1/contacts/?first_name=Cl**&last_name=Tes**
What I do, is write custom FilterBackend. Something like this:
# views.py
from rest_framework import filters
class ObjektFilterBackend(filters.BaseFilterBackend):
allowed_fields = ['objekt', 'naziv', 'kategorija', 'zadnja_sprememba']
def filter_queryset(self, request, queryset, view):
flt = {}
for param in request.query_params:
for fld in self.allowed_fields:
if param.startswith(fld):
flt[param] = request.query_params[param]
return queryset.filter(**flt)
class ObjektiViewSet(mixins.ListModelMixin,
mixins.RetrieveModelMixin,
viewsets.GenericViewSet):
authentication_classes = (
authentication.TokenAuthentication,
authentication.SessionAuthentication)
permission_classes = (IsAuthenticated,)
queryset = models.Objekt.objects.all()
serializer_class = serializers.ObjektSerializer
filter_backends = (ObjektFilterBackend, ObjektOrderBackend,)
....
Besides basic filtering (fieldname=value pairs) I can use any Django queryset Field Lookups (__gt, __gte, __startswith,...) in my URLs like this:
http://localhost:8000/api/v2/objekti/?naziv__startswith=Apartma&zadnja_sprememba__gte=2018-01-01
And ObjektFilterBackend class could be easily adapted to support searching by pattern.
Just a little warning - this approach is potentially dangerous, because it allows end user to filter also by foreign key field. Something like this also works:
http://localhost:8000/api/v2/objekti/?kategorija__naziv__icontains=sobe
So restrict allowed_fields carefully and not include foreign keys that could lead to related User model.
I think the DjangoFilterBackend is mainly equality-based filtering. But you can customize the filtering method.
Also in DRF, for non exact filtering, there is the SearchFilter which makes case-insensitive partial matches searches by default.