django rest framework queryset doesn't order

If your model does have an ordering it really will be reflected in the list view by default. I'd suggest overriding get_queryset() and debugging the return result there, or else explicitly adding the ordering to the queryset.

For example:

queryset = Invoice.objects.all().order_by('-published_date')

Wondering if it's possible you've configured a filter that's overriding the ordering. Worth testing what happens if you turn all filters off. I see you have the filter_fields attribute set, so assuming you've got something like this in your settings...

REST_FRAMEWORK = {
    'DEFAULT_FILTER_BACKENDS': ('rest_framework.filters.DjangoFilterBackend',)
}

If you comment that out does that fix things?

Solution is to override filter_queryset:

def filter_queryset(self, queryset):
    queryset = super(InvoiceViewSet, self).filter_queryset(queryset)
    return queryset.order_by('-published_date')

For Django REST Framework you can use OrderingFilter.

from django_filters import DjangoFilterBackend
from rest_framework import viewsets, filters


class InvoiceViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    queryset = Invoice.objects.all()
    serializer_class = InvoiceSerializer

    filter_backends = (DjangoFilterBackend, filters.OrderingFilter)

    # Explicitly specify which fields the API may be ordered against
    ordering_fields = ('items', 'table', 'published_date')

    # This will be used as the default ordering
    ordering = ('-published_date')