Django Rest Framework with ChoiceField

Question

I have a few fields in my user model that are choice fields and am trying to figure out how to best implement that into Django Rest Framework.

Below is some simplifi

Answer 1

Since DRF 3.1 there is new API called customizing field mapping. I used it to change default ChoiceField mapping to ChoiceDisplayField:

import six
from rest_framework.fields import ChoiceField


class ChoiceDisplayField(ChoiceField):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(ChoiceDisplayField, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.choice_strings_to_display = {
            six.text_type(key): value for key, value in self.choices.items()
        }

    def to_representation(self, value):
        if value is None:
            return value
        return {
            'value': self.choice_strings_to_values.get(six.text_type(value), value),
            'display': self.choice_strings_to_display.get(six.text_type(value), value),
        }

class DefaultModelSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    serializer_choice_field = ChoiceDisplayField

If You use DefaultModelSerializer:

class UserSerializer(DefaultModelSerializer):    
    class Meta:
        model = User
        fields = ('id', 'gender')

You will get something like:

...

"id": 1,
"gender": {
    "display": "Male",
    "value": "M"
},
...