Serialize multiple models and send all in one json response django rest framework
You'll find things easier in Django REST Framework if you design your response format rationally.
It seems a bit vague at the moment, but I would suggest something like:
{
"tweets": [
{"tweet_attr_A": value_1, ...}, // first tweet
{"tweet_attr_A": value_2, ...}, // second tweet
//etc
],
"articles": [
{"id": 1, ...}, // first article
{"id": 2, ...}, // second article
//etc
]
}
We can express this with three serializers, like:
class TweetSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = Tweet
class ArticleSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = Article
class TimelineSerializer(serializers.Serializer):
tweets = TweetSerializer(many=True)
articles = ArticleSerializer(many=True)
http://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/serializers/#dealing-with-nested-objects
Then, because we're using more than one model, it's easiest just to define your own custom viewset rather than trying to shoe-horn this into DRF's magic ModelViewSet type.
http://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/viewsets/#example
First we need an object type to pass into our TimelineSerializer. It should have two attributes: tweets
and articles
from collections import namedtuple
Timeline = namedtuple('Timeline', ('tweets', 'articles'))
Then we'll define the custom viewset to fetch the tweets and articles, instantiate a Timeline object and return the TimelineSerializer data:
class TimelineViewSet(viewsets.ViewSet):
"""
A simple ViewSet for listing the Tweets and Articles in your Timeline.
"""
def list(self, request):
timeline = Timeline(
tweets=Tweet.objects.all(),
articles=Article.objects.all(),
)
serializer = TimelineSerializer(timeline)
return Response(serializer.data)