[Django]-Creating multiple objects with one request in Django and Django Rest Framework

This answer was a really good solution to this problem:

You can simply overwrite the get_serializer method in your APIView and pass many=True into get_serializer of the base view like so:

    class SomeAPIView(CreateAPIView):
        queryset = SomeModel.objects.all()
        serializer_class = SomeSerializer

        def get_serializer(self, instance=None, data=None, many=False, partial=False):
            if data is not None:
                data.is_valid(raise_exception=True)
                return super(SomeAPIView, self).get_serializer(instance=instance, data=data, many=True, partial=partial)
            else:
                return super(SomeAPIView, self).get_serializer(instance=instance, many=True, partial=partial)

As mentioned in the original post comments you then also have to call data.is_valid() in cases where a data keyword is passed to the serializer.

You can check number of seats in the view function and create one or many tickets:

@api_view(['POST'])
@permission_classes([IsAuthenticated])
def buy_ticket(request):
    # Check if seats is a list
    if isinstance(request.data['seat'], list):
        seats = request.data.pop('seat')
        models = []
        for seat in seats:
            # validate each model with one seat at a time
            request.data['seat'] = seat
            serializer = MovieTicketSerializer(data=request.data)
            serializer.is_valid(raise_exception=True)
            models.append(serializer)
        # Save it only after all seats are valid. 
        # To avoid situations when one seat has wrong id 
        # And you already save previous
        saved_models = [model.save() for model in models]
        result_serializer = MovieTicketSerializer(saved_models, many=True)
        # Return list of tickets
        return Response(result_serializer.data)
    # Save ticket as usual
    serializer = MovieTicketSerializer(data=request.data)
    serializer.is_valid(raise_exception=True)
    serializer.save()
    return Response(serializer.data)

It will work but honestly it is such a mess. You can move logic for seats creation in different function so it looks better.

If you want the user to be able to select multiple seats for one ticket, its probably a good idea to remove the one-one mapping of Seat and MovieTicket, and create a many-one relationship. like so:

Serializers:

class SeatSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = Seat

class MovieTicketSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    seats = SeatSerializer(many=True)
    class Meta:
        model = MovieTicket
        fields = '__all__'

    def create(self, vlaidated_data):
        seats = validated_data.pop('seats')
        instance = MovieTicket.objects.create(
            **validated_data)

        for seat in seats:
            Seat.objects.create(
                movieticket=instance, **seats)

        return instance

And the Model should look like:

class MovieTicket(models.Model):
    show = models.ForeignKey(Show)
    user = models.ForeignKey(User)
    purchased_at = models.DateTimeField(default=timezone.now)
    qrcode = models.ImageField(upload_to='qrcode', blank=True, null=True)
    qrcode_data = models.CharField(max_length=255, unique=True, blank=True)

class Seat(models.Model):
    movieticket = ForeignKey(
        MovieTicket, related_name="movieticket")

    # ... other fields.

This would then allow you to pass an array of ‘seats’ in the request.

If you don’t mind adding another app to your django project, you can try with django-rest-framework-bulk, if not you can check the code and see how it was implemented.

If you use this app, you will be able to perform bulk create operations, by sending a list of elements on your POST request.

e.g:

[{'name': 'Jane'}, {'name': 'John'}, {'name': 'Johny'}]