Django REST Framework - Serializing optional fields

Question

I have an object that has optional fields. I have defined my serializer this way:

class ProductSerializer(serializers.Serializer):
    code = serializers.Fie         


        

Answer 1

From the "it's a terrible hack relying on specific implementation details of both DRF and Django, but it works (at least for now)" files, here's the approach I used to include some additional debugging data in the response from a "create" method implementation on a serializer:

def create(self, validated_data)
    # Actual model instance creation happens here...
    self.fields["debug_info"] = serializers.DictField(read_only=True)
    my_model.debug_info = extra_data
    return my_model

This is a temporary approach that lets me use the browsable API to display some of the raw response data received from a particular remote service during the creation process. In the future, I'm inclined to keep this capability, but hide it behind a "report debugging info" flag in the creation request rather than returning the lower level info by default.