[Django]-Individual search filters for fields in django-rest-framework

To achieve this you will need a custom filter backend extending the rest_framework.filters.SearchFilter class. Specifically in the rest_framework.filters.SearchFilter class there is a method get_search_terms:

    def get_search_terms(self, request):
        """
        Search terms are set by a ?search=... query parameter,
        and may be comma and/or whitespace delimited.
        """
        params = request.query_params.get(self.search_param, '')
        return params.replace(',', ' ').split()

We can override this method in our own CustomSearchFilter class to take control of how you specify the search terms within the url, for example:

class CustomSearchFilter(SearchFilter):
    search_field_prefix = "search_"

    def get_search_terms(self, request):
        # get search fields from the class
        search_fields = getattr(request.resolver_match.func.view_class, 'search_fields', list())

        params = []

        # iterate over each query paramater in the url
        for query_param in request.query_params:

            # check if query paramater is a search paramater
            if query_param.startswith(CustomSearchFilter.search_field_prefix):

                # extrapolate the field name while handling cases where <CustomSearchFilter.search_field_prefix> is in the field name
                field = CustomSearchFilter.search_field_prefix.join(
                    query_param.split(CustomSearchFilter.search_field_prefix)[1:]
                )

                # only apply search filter for fields that are in the views search_fields
                if field in search_fields:
                    params.append(request.query_params.get(query_param, ''))

        return params

Now replace the filters.SearchFilter with your new CustomSearchFilter in your views filter_backends.

Hope this helps, I’ve written this without testing the code myself so let me know how you go!