Filtering related fields with related_field #916

SafaAlfulaij · 2021-04-04T15:58:45Z

SafaAlfulaij
Apr 4, 2021

How can we filter the related fields /authors/1/entries/?

SafaAlfulaij · 2021-04-14T14:24:08Z

SafaAlfulaij
Apr 14, 2021
Author

I took some time and now I have a solid thinking that we have to use the related views for related fields.
So, for the above exmaple, it should use a special function of EntryViewSet instead of AuthorViewSet's related_fields function.
Why?

The actual resource we are fetching here is the related resource. It makes more sense to have it's viewset serve the request.
We get all querysets, filtering, ordering, pagination, permissions for free (almost, after some modifications).
The "parent" resource (author in the example above) is just needed for authentication, and as a reference for related fields.

Currently what I do is this (not optimal and performant, but does the job):

Have the related field viewset handle the relation through as_view, passing the list for -to-many and retrieve for single objects.
Pass in the kwargs of re_path the parent view class, and whatever else needed for filtering.
In get_queryset, I check if the parent viewset is defined in kwargs, create the viewset, passing proper pk from url arguments, and some other fields, then I do get_object to check permissions, and save the instance for future use if any (could be for making performant queries by select_related the field in the parent request and returning it directly.

This approach has things to consider:

Client must pass the resulting queryset in get_queryset to a parent function to execute filtering for relations.
Performance of creating a viewset for each related fetch can be a lot.
Clients should use another mixin for the relations if the relation resource shouldn't be listed. For example, entry flags shouldn't accept GET /entry-flags api, but should accept GET /entry/1/flags.

I'll see if I can clean up the code and have others opinion.

0 replies

sliverc · 2021-04-16T20:06:19Z

sliverc
Apr 16, 2021
Maintainer

related urls served by a single viewset is a simple way of adding relationships links. It has its limitation though such as no filter support. Also important to note is that this got added later. The idea was to simplify the process of providing relationships links.

Before RelationshipView was actually used for related urls and can still be used today. So if you wanna use filters better switch to RelationshipView instead of related urls by a single view set. More configuration is needed but gives you the full power of DRF.

With all the complexity and errors related urls served by a single viewset brought I wondered though whether it was a good idea to include this feature. Or maybe there is a better way of simplifying support of related urls then a need to configure each single relationship individuall per resources as currently done with RelationshipView.

3 replies

SafaAlfulaij Apr 16, 2021
Author

I'm not sure if RelationshipView can be used now for normal relations. HTTP actions and the serializer are made for relationships.
I'll dig down and see previous versions of DJA.

Still, I'm convinced in a way that related views should be severed by the respective view.
This way we don't need to repeat filters, select/prefetch related, annotations, pagination, permissions, etc.
Perhaps it can also serve relationships as well, since they are nothing but pointers to the same data, but less detailed.

I believe that #467 will be of a huge benefit here.

sliverc Apr 20, 2021
Maintainer

Sorry I mixed up self and related links. Here is an example of a view which was used before the related urls feature got introduced.

SafaAlfulaij Apr 20, 2021
Author

I took a look into those. This is kind of what I do now, with some extra magic.

class BlogViewSet(ModelViewSet):
    queryset = Blog.objects.all()
    serializer_class = BlogSerializer

    def get_queryset(self, *args, **kwargs):
        queryset = Blog.objects.all() # simplified

        # special function to call appropriate function based on kwargs passed to `re_path`,
        # and to check the permissions and queryset of the "parent" object (Entry for example)
        return self.filter_queryset_for_relations(
            queryset
        ).annotate_read_counts()

    def filter_queryset_for_Entry(self, queryset, instance): # called within filter_queryset_for_relations, instance is an Entry
        return queryset.filter(
            entry_id=instance.id
        )

    def filter_queryset_for_X(self, queryset, instance): # called within filter_queryset_for_relations, instance is an X
        return queryset.filter( # or return another queryset completely (instance.authors.all())
            x_id=instance.id
        )

The current issue is that the schema generation is wrong as it assumes that the entry pk is blog pk (description of pk param), but it's solvable.

sliverc · 2021-04-16T20:14:15Z

sliverc
Apr 16, 2021
Maintainer

I converted this issue to a discussion so it can be further discussed how to move forward or to leave it as it is.

Issue can be extracted once there is an agreement on how to.

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SafaAlfulaij
Apr 14, 2021
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Apr 16, 2021
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SafaAlfulaij Apr 16, 2021
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sliverc Apr 20, 2021
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SafaAlfulaij Apr 20, 2021
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sliverc
Apr 16, 2021
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