Django Rest Framework: Serialize data from nested json fields to plain object

I would suggest you create your own custom serializer to receive the data. You can do this like so:

from rest_framework import serializers

class MySerializer(serializers.Serializer):
    """
    Custom serializer
    """
    id = serializers.IntegerField(read_only=True)
    name = serializers.CharField()


    def create(self, validated_data):
        """Create a new object"""
        validated_data['custom_value'] = 0 # you can manipulate and restructure data here if you wish
        return MyModel.objects.create(**validated_data)

You can then manipulate the data as you wish in the create() function. You could also create nested custom serializers to parse this data.

Finally, solution was found in tests of django-rest-framework.
https://github.com/tomchristie/django-rest-framework/blob/master/tests/test_serializer.py#L149

You may easily define nested serializers which will act as a containers and extract data to your plain object. Like so:

    class NestedSerializer1(serializers.Serializer):
        a = serializers.IntegerField()
        b = serializers.IntegerField()

    class NestedSerializer2(serializers.Serializer):
        c = serializers.IntegerField()
        d = serializers.IntegerField()

    class TestSerializer(serializers.Serializer):
        nested1 = NestedSerializer1(source='*')
        nested2 = NestedSerializer2(source='*')

    data = {
        'nested1': {'a': 1, 'b': 2},
        'nested2': {'c': 3, 'd': 4}
     }

     serializer = TestSerializer(data=self.data)
     assert serializer.is_valid()

     assert serializer.validated_data == {
        'a': 1, 
        'b': 2,
        'c': 3, 
        'd': 4
    }