Django-notifications serialize target rest framework

Question

I'm trying to add Django-notifications to my drf project. I get response when hitting the endpoint:

[
    {
        "recipient": {
            "id": 274,
            "username": "harry",
            "first_name": "Harry",
            "last_name": "Moreno"
        },
        "unread": true,
        "target": null,
        "verb": "invite approved"
    }
]

serializers.py

class GenericNotificationRelatedField(serializers.RelatedField):                                                          
    User = get_user_model()                                                                                               

    def to_representation(self, value):                                                                                   
        if isinstance(value, Invite):                                                                                     
            serializer = InviteSerializer(value)                                                                          
        if isinstance(value, User):                                                                                       
            serializer = UserSerializer(value)                                                                        
        return serializer.data                                                                                            


class NotificationSerializer(serializers.Serializer):                                                                     
    recipient = UserSerializer(read_only=True)                                                                            
    unread = serializers.BooleanField(read_only=True)                                                                     
    target = GenericNotificationRelatedField(read_only=True)  

How do I make the target non-null?

Answer 1

Turns out the target is null because that is how I created the notification in the model

notify.send(user, recipient=user, verb='you reached level 10')

if I wanted a non-null target I should specify one like

notify.send(user, recipient=user, target=user, verb='you reached level 10')

Note: there is no django view that generates the json in the question. In our urls.py we wire up the route to the notification view from the app.

    path(
      "alerts/",
      views.NotificationViewSet.as_view({"get": "list"}),
      name="notifications",
    ),

see the installation instructions https://github.com/django-notifications/django-notifications#installation