Use existing ModelSerializer with JSONResponse

Question

I have a Twitter authentication view that doesn't use a viewset so the auth can be handled on the backend. The view takes in the oauth_token & uses Twython to get the profile & create a Twitter model.

Currently I just return status 201 on success, but to alleviate the need for another request after creation, I'd like to return the created model. I have a TwitterSerializer already which defines the fields that I want to include, so I'd like to be able to reuse this if possible.

TwitterSerializer

class TwitterSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):

    class Meta:
        model = Twitter
        fields = (
            "id",
            "twitter_user_id",
            "screen_name",
            "display_name",
            "profile_image_url",
        )

When I try to use this, I get the error that Instance of TwitterSerializer is not JSON serializable .

            serialized = TwitterSerializer(instance=twitter)
            return JsonResponse({ "created": serialized })

I could return a serialized instance of the model using serializers.serialize()

            serialized = serializers.serialize('json', [twitter, ])
            serialized = serialized[0]
            return JsonResponse({ "created": serialized })

I could pass the fields kwarg to serialize() but I don't want to have to repeat myself if I don't have to. So would it be possible to re-use my TwitterSerializer in this case? I'm having trouble finding a direct answer since most docs assume you'll be using a ViewSet when using serializerss understandably, and this feels like an edge case. I'm open to suggestions for refactoring this approach as well!

Answer 1

After serialization, you can get your data using data attribute of serializer like this.

serialized = TwitterSerializer(instance=twitter)
return JsonResponse({ "created": serialized.data })

You should use Django rest Response instead of JsonResponse like this

from rest_framework response
serialized = TwitterSerializer(instance=twitter)
return response.Response({ "created": serialized.data })