Serialization through the Django Rest Framework - how to deserialize? - json

Question

I have an array of the objects and then try to serialize it using the following statement:
serializer = MovieWithDescriptionSerializer(movies, many=True)
data = serializer.data
The class and the serializer are as below:
class MovieWithDescription(object):
id = 0
name = ''
description = ''
rating = ''
year = 0
def __init__(self, uid, name, description):
self.id = uid
self.name = name
self.description = description
class MovieWithDescriptionSerializer(serializers.Serializer):
class Meta:
model = MovieWithDescription
fields = ('id', 'name', 'description')
id = serializers.IntegerField()
name = serializers.StringRelatedField()
description = serializers.StringRelatedField()
The data is saved to session:
request.session['movies'] = data
And read on the other page:
movies = request.session['movies']
However when I tried to deserialize it I learned that the movies variable contains list. So it looks like I don't need to deserialize and just need to iterate through the list to process the data. What I'm doing wrong with this serialization? Is there any more simple way to serialize data than to use Django Rest Framework?

Answer 1

Answering your question from the comments section; also to clarify for whoever is migrating from a Java environment:
In Django Rest Framework; Serialization happens as follows:
Python Object --> serializer.data ==> Python Native Types --> Renderer Class ==> JSON
serializer.data is constructed by calling to_representation on each of the fields declared on the Serializer.
#property
def data(self):
...
if not hasattr(self, '_data'):
if self.instance is not None and not getattr(self, '_errors', None):
self._data = self.to_representation(self.instance)
elif hasattr(self, '_validated_data') and not getattr(self, '_errors', None):
self._data = self.to_representation(self.validated_data)
else:
self._data = self.get_initial()
return self._data
To representation is supposed to take an object instance and return a dict of primitive types:
def to_representation(self, instance):
"""
Object instance -> Dict of primitive datatypes.
"""
...
So if serializer.data does not render to JSON, where does this magic happen?
It happens inside the Response object. When you construct a Response object with the data attribute (data here is a dict of primitive or a list of dict of primitives), the rendered_content method then defines how the data is rendered, sets the appropriate Content-Type headers, and so on.
#property
def rendered_content(self):
renderer = getattr(self, 'accepted_renderer', None)
accepted_media_type = getattr(self, 'accepted_media_type', None)
context = getattr(self, 'renderer_context', None)
assert renderer, ".accepted_renderer not set on Response"
assert accepted_media_type, ".accepted_media_type not set on Response"
assert context is not None, ".renderer_context not set on Response"
context['response'] = self
media_type = renderer.media_type
charset = renderer.charset
content_type = self.content_type
if content_type is None and charset is not None:
content_type = "{0}; charset={1}".format(media_type, charset)
elif content_type is None:
content_type = media_type
self['Content-Type'] = content_type
ret = renderer.render(self.data, accepted_media_type, context)
if isinstance(ret, six.text_type):
assert charset, (
'renderer returned unicode, and did not specify '
'a charset value.'
)
return bytes(ret.encode(charset))
if not ret:
del self['Content-Type']
return ret
This allows you to do something neat; you can define a single Django Rest Framework View, that can render XML, JSON, and many more -> you can find them under rest_framework.renderers.
For example, you can define an APIView that supports multiple render formats based on the query parameter (?format=json, ?format=xml, ?format=csv) as follows:
class ExampleAPIView(APIView):
renderer_classes = (JSONRenderer, XMLRenderer, CSVRenderer)
...
XML and CSV require additional package installations. Read more here: http://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/renderers/#xml