Is there an option to turn off the dynamic fields option (DynamicFieldsMixin) even when passing the query?

[daidaitaotao]

We recently run into a situation that the children serializer break inside the to_representation method.
For example

class ParentSerializer(DynamicFieldsMixin, serializer.ModelSerializer):
    ...
    def to_representation(self, instance):
        representation = super().to_representation(instance)
        # Manually set the representation here. Imagine that we need to do some extra work that can't be put
        # into a serializer method field for some reason.
        # Because we pass `self.context`, any restql querying is using the parent query fields, so those fields
        # might not exist on the child, which raises a parser error.
        representation["children"] = ChildSerializer(data=instance.child, context=self.context)
class ChildSerializer(DynamicFieldsMixin, serializers.ModelSerializer)

As a result, ChildSerializer did not work because it did not pass correct data in the query params which were for the parent serializer. I wonder if we have an option to toggle dynamic field functionality when instantiating the serializer?

Thanks,
Tao

[yezyilomo]

I wonder if we have an option to toggle dynamic field functionality when instantiating the serializer?

You can remove DynamicFieldsMixin on your ChildSerializer if you don't want filtering to apply on a child serializer.

[ashleyredzko]

@yezyilomo What if there are other places where the ChildSerializer might be used with dynamic fields? Could we add an argument, like use_dynamic_fields that could be passed into the instance and checked?

[yezyilomo]

@yezyilomo What if there are other places where the ChildSerializer might be used with dynamic fields? Could we add an argument, like use_dynamic_fields that could be passed into the instance and checked?

I see your point, this could be very useful, though I wouldn't suggest the name of the argument to be use_dynamic_fields because that's implied when inheriting DynamicFieldsMixin, I think it should be something like disable_*, I can't find a good word to put on *.

[ashleyredzko]

@yezyilomo disable_dynamic_fields? 😉

[daidaitaotao]

I like the idea, can we make it happen?

[yezyilomo]

@yezyilomo disable_dynamic_fields?

Kinda long but very descriptive, I think we can go with that. @daidaitaotao what's your opinion on this?

[yezyilomo]

I like the idea, can we make it happen?

Definitely, we are going to implement it.

[daidaitaotao]

yeah disable_dynamic_fields sounds good, or we can have enable_dynamic_fields with the default value True and then only do enable_dynamic_fields = False when needed. But I am good with disable_dynamic_fields too. Thanks.

[yezyilomo]

But I am good with disable_dynamic_fields too.

Okay, disable_dynamic_fields it is.

[ashleyredzko]

This could also just be dynamic_fields and we could pass in a boolean (default to True) if we wanted to shorten it.

[yezyilomo]

This could also just be dynamic_fields and we could pass in a boolean (default to True) if we wanted to shorten it.

I think disable_dynamic_fields makes more sense and it's easy to predict that it's a boolean kwarg unlike dynamic_fields