Django Rest Framework: Dynamically return subset of fields

Question

Problem

As recommended in the blogpost Best Practices for Designing a Pragmatic RESTful API, I would like to add a fields query parameter to a Django R

Answer 1

serializers.py

class DynamicFieldsSerializerMixin(object):

    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(DynamicFieldsSerializerMixin, 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 UserSerializer(DynamicFieldsSerializerMixin, serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):

    password = serializers.CharField(
        style={'input_type': 'password'}, write_only=True
    )

    class Meta:
        model = User
        fields = ('id', 'username', 'password', 'email', 'first_name', 'last_name')


    def create(self, validated_data):
        user = User.objects.create(
            username=validated_data['username'],
            email=validated_data['email'],
            first_name=validated_data['first_name'],
            last_name=validated_data['last_name']
        )

        user.set_password(validated_data['password'])
        user.save()

        return user

views.py

class DynamicFieldsViewMixin(object):

 def get_serializer(self, *args, **kwargs):

    serializer_class = self.get_serializer_class()

    fields = None
    if self.request.method == 'GET':
        query_fields = self.request.QUERY_PARAMS.get("fields", None)

        if query_fields:
            fields = tuple(query_fields.split(','))


    kwargs['context'] = self.get_serializer_context()
    kwargs['fields'] = fields

    return serializer_class(*args, **kwargs)



class UserList(DynamicFieldsViewMixin, ListCreateAPIView):
    queryset = User.objects.all()
    serializer_class = UserSerializer