How do I make Django-Piston to include related child objects in the serialized output?
Ok so I got it working finally after debugging thru emitters.py and noting how it uses the 'fields' property of the handler to iterate the Model fields.
These are my models:
class Building(models.Model): address = models.CharField(max_length=255) def __unicode__(self): return self.address class BuildingArea(models.Model): display_name = models.CharField(max_length=30) building = models.ForeignKey(Building, related_name='areas') def __unicode__(self): return self.display_name
This is what my BuildingHandler looks like now:
class BuildingHandler(BaseHandler): allowed_methods = ('GET',) fields = ('address', ('areas', ('display_name',),),) model = Building def read(self, name=None): return self.model.objects.all()
The important thing to note here is that emmitters.py will activate certain codepaths only if the current field definition is a set or a list. I had forgotten to add a trailing ',' to the sets used to define the fields and this caused Piston to cause Python to return a set made of the characters contained in the string, 'display_name', rather than a set containing the string 'display_name'. I hope that made sense, Google 'Python single set trailing comma' for more info.
Hopefully this helps someone else! :D
On BuildingHandler, do:
fields = ('address', 'areas')
That should do it.