Django Rest Framework: Insert Multiple Objects in One Post Request

If you are using Django Rest Framework to build your API, you may come across a situation where you need to insert multiple objects in a single POST request. This can be a common requirement when dealing with related models and relationships in your database.

Fortunately, Django Rest Framework provides a straightforward way to achieve this through the use of serializers and nested data structures. Let’s walk through the process of inserting multiple objects in one POST request using Django Rest Framework.

Creating Serializers for Nested Data

The first step is to create serializers for your models that can handle nested data. For example, if you have a model for a blog post and a model for comments, and you want to create multiple comments for a single blog post in one POST request, you would need to create a serializer for the blog post model and a serializer for the comment model that can handle nested data.

Here is an example of what the serializers might look like:

    
class CommentSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = Comment
        fields = '__all__'

class BlogPostSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    comments = CommentSerializer(many=True, required=False)

    class Meta:
        model = BlogPost
        fields = '__all__'
  
  

Using Nested Data in the POST Request

Once you have created the appropriate serializers, you can use nested data in your POST request to insert multiple objects at once. For example, you can send a POST request to create a new blog post along with its comments in a single request.

Here is an example of what the POST request might look like:

    
{
  "title": "My First Blog Post",
  "content": "This is my first blog post!",
  "comments": [
    {
      "text": "Great post!"
    },
    {
      "text": "I totally agree!"
    }
  ]
}
  
  

Handling Nested Data in the View

Finally, you will need to handle the nested data in the view that processes the POST request. In your view, you can use the serializers to validate and save the nested data along with the parent object.

Here is an example of how you might handle the nested data in your view:

    
class BlogPostCreateAPIView(generics.CreateAPIView):
    serializer_class = BlogPostSerializer
  
  

With these steps, you can easily insert multiple objects in one POST request using Django Rest Framework. By creating the appropriate serializers, using nested data in the POST request, and handling the nested data in the view, you can efficiently manage related models and relationships in your API.