How can I select specific fields in django rest framework?

You can create dynamic field serializer for this and get the field data dynamically.

class DynamicFieldsModelSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    """
    A ModelSerializer that takes an additional `fields` argument that
    controls which fields should be displayed.
    """

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        # Don't pass the 'fields' arg up to the superclass
        fields = kwargs.pop('fields', None)

        # Instantiate the superclass normally
        super(DynamicFieldsModelSerializer, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

        if fields is not None:
            # Drop any fields that are not specified in the `fields` argument.
            allowed = set(fields)
            existing = set(self.fields.keys())
            for field_name in existing - allowed:
                self.fields.pop(field_name)

class SimplePersonSerializer(DynamicFieldsModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = Person
        fields = '__all__' 

And then you can use it in your views like this.

@api_view(['GET'])
def people(request):
    fields = ('first_name', 'last_name')
    people = Person.objects.all().only(fields)
    data = SimplePersonSerializer(people, many=True, fields = fields).data
    return Response(data)

This helps to improve performance because it will fetch only the required data. (when using Person.objects.all().only('first_name', 'last_name') to fetch specific data)

You get all the fields queried because that's the query that runs by default when you do .all etcetera. You only limit the fields (SELECT field1, field2, ...) when you do .only, .values, or .values_list.

You can you can define the fields inside the serializer or you can go further and do dynamic things like: https://github.com/wimglenn/djangorestframework-queryfields

Inside the serializer:

class Meta:
    fields = (*,...)

But, this is specific to the serializer. As the name implies this is just serializing the returned data into objects.

You can do queries in the serializer, but this typically for custom fields.