[Django]-Django serializer ManyToMany retrun array of names instead of an array of IDs

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7👍

✅

Option 1

You can use your models __str__ method for this. Just use a StringRelatedField:

class MovieSerializer(serializers.ModelSerialier):
   categories = serializers.StringRelatedField(many=True)
   class Meta:
      model= Movie
      fields = ['name', 'categories']

and add the __str__ method to your category model:

class Category(models.Model):
    name = models.Charfield()
    code = models.Charfield()

    def __str__(self):
        return self.name

Option 2

Use a custom RelatedField, like described in the docs:

class CategoryListingField(serializers.RelatedField):
    def to_representation(self, value):
        return value.name

class MovieSerializer(serializers.ModelSerialier):
   categories = CategoryListingField(many=True)
   class Meta:
      model= Movie
      fields = ['name', 'categories']

This is close to what you did, just a little bit cleaner, as a RelatedField is designed to accomplish exactly that. Using a custom serializer is not the way to go here, since you dont want to serialize the object itself, but only a specific field from it. Per default, this is the pk (or id), but by specifying your own related field, you can change it to whatever you want.

👤Hafnernuss

0👍

Add depth = 1 to your serializer.

This will give you something like:

[
  {
    "name": "My Movie",
    "categories": [
      { "id": 1, "name": "Fun", "code": "category_code" }
    ]
  }
]

then you can extract whatever you want from this object.

👤Gerges Fikry

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