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

I prefer the answer by @nicolaspanel to keep the field writeable. If you use this definition instead of his ChoiceField, you take advantage of any/all of the infrastructure in the built-in ChoiceField while mapping the choices from str => int:

class MappedChoiceField(serializers.ChoiceField):

    @serializers.ChoiceField.choices.setter
    def choices(self, choices):
        self.grouped_choices = fields.to_choices_dict(choices)
        self._choices = fields.flatten_choices_dict(self.grouped_choices)
        # in py2 use `iteritems` or `six.iteritems`
        self.choice_strings_to_values = {v: k for k, v in self._choices.items()}

The @property override is "ugly" but my goal is always to change as little of the core as possible (to maximize forward compatibility).

P.S. if you want to allow_blank, there's a bug in DRF. The simplest workaround is to add the following to MappedChoiceField:

def validate_empty_values(self, data):
    if data == '':
        if self.allow_blank:
            return (True, None)
    # for py2 make the super() explicit
    return super().validate_empty_values(data)

P.P.S. If you have a bunch of choice fields that all need to be mapped this, way take advantage of the feature noted by @lechup and add the following to your ModelSerializer (not its Meta):

serializer_choice_field = MappedChoiceField