Django rest framework generic view for multiple models - django-rest-framework

Question

Is there a way of creating a generic view to be used by several different models? I have many models in my project and do not want to have to create a view and serializer for each of them.
Assume this is a simple solution but I have spent hours googling with no results.
Within the Django REST framework API guide Generic views Examples the following code snippet is shown:
url(r'^/users/', ListCreateAPIView.as_view(model=User), name='user-list')
Which suggests this is possible but the example does not seem to be complete (or my understanding is not complete).
This is my attempt:
url.py
url(r'^foomodel/', views.GenericViewSet.as_view(model = Foomodel) ),
views.py
class GenericViewSet(generics.ListAPIView):
model = User # this is over ridden by the url
queryset = model.objects.all()
serializer_class = BaseSerializer
ordering_fields = '__all__'
serializers.py
class BaseSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = None
And of cause this fails as the serializer does not like model = None or any variation that I can think of.
Any suggestions as to how this should be addressed?

Answer 1

A solution would be overriding the get_serializer_class method of the ViewSet.
The model field in the view will be fine as you override it in the url, as you said, what I would do is build the serializer class on the fly.
class GenericViewSet(generics.ListAPIView):
queryset = model.objects.all()
def get_serializer_class(self):
class BaseSerializer(serializer.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = self.model
return BaseSerializer
Hope this helps!

Answer 2

To recap the intention is to create a reusable view that can be used for many models without having to repeat a heap of code. This leaves very little code in Django to create a backed API for many Django models. I am using this for ember.js
urls.py
from myapp import models as mymodels
url(r'^cs/(?P<strmodel>[A-Za-z]+)/(?P<id>[0-9]+)/', views.GenericViewSet.as_view({'get': 'retrieve', 'post':'update', 'delete':'destroy' }, application = mymodels ) ),
url(r'^cs/(?P<strmodel>[A-Za-z]+)/', views.GenericViewSet.as_view({'get': 'list','post': 'create' }, application = mymodels ) ),
Worth noting that I have several apps and there is a different set of URL's to access them. The model being accessed is passed as strmodel
views.py
class GenericViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
def __init__(self, application):
self.application = application
def initialize_request(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
self.model = getattr(self.application, self.kwargs['strmodel'] )
request = super(viewsets.ModelViewSet, self).initialize_request(request, *args, **kwargs)
return request
strmodel = None
application = None
model = User
lookup_field = 'id'
def get_queryset(self):
return self.model.objects.all()
def get_serializer_class(self):
class BaseSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = self.model
return BaseSerializer
Hope this helps :)