Getting serialized data in another format

Question

How can I get JSON in a new format such as text/value like:

[
    {
        "name": "doc2",
        "directions": [
       
            "mar", 
            "qwe"
           
        ]
    },
    {
        "name": "John",
        "directions": [
              "Surgery",
              "qwe"
        ]
    }
]

instead of:

[
    {
        "name": "doc2",
        "directions": [
            {
                "name": "mar"
            },
            {
                "name": "qwe"
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "name": "John",
        "directions": [
            {
                "name": "Surgery"
            },
            {
                "name": "qwe"
            }
        ]
    }
]

Here are my models.py and serializers.py modules: models.py

class Directions(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=355)

    def __str__(self):
        return self.name


class Doctors(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=255)
    directions = models.ManyToManyField(Directions)

    def __str__(self):
        return self.name

serializer.py

class DirectionsSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = Directions
        fields = ('name',)


class DoctorsSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    directions = DirectionsSerializer(many=True)
    class Meta:
        model = Doctors
        fields = ('name', 'directions')

Answer 1

You have two options for achieving this purpose:

1. Using Custom relational fields ^[drf-docs]

For your case, we could define a relational field to serialize a track to a custom string representation, using its ordering, title, and duration:

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

class DoctorsSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    directions = DirectionsSerializer(many=True)

    class Meta:
        model = Doctors
        fields = ['name', 'directions']

This custom field would then serialize to the following representation:

[
    {
        "name": "doc2",
        "directions": [
       
            "mar", 
            "qwe"
           
        ]
    },
    {
        "name": "John",
        "directions": [
              "Surgery",
              "qwe"
        ]
    }
]

2. Using StringRelatedField() ^[drf-docs]

StringRelatedField may be used to represent the target of the relationship using its __str__ method.

For your case, the following serializer:

class DoctorsSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    directions = serializers.StringRelatedField(many=True)

    class Meta:
        model = Doctors
        fields = ['name', 'directions']

Would serialize to the following representation:

[
    {
        "name": "doc2",
        "directions": [
       
            "mar", 
            "qwe"
           
        ]
    },
    {
        "name": "John",
        "directions": [
              "Surgery",
              "qwe"
        ]
    }
]

This field is read_only.

Arguments:

• many - If applied to a to-many relationship, you should set this argument to True.