django-rest-framework: Rendering both HTML and JSON with the same ModelViewSet

Question

I'm using Django==1.10.5 and djangorestframework==3.5.3.

I have a few ModelViewSets that handle JSON API requests properly. Now, I'd like to use TemplateRenderer to add HTML rendering to those same ModelViewSets. I started with the list endpoint, and created a simple template that lists the available objects. I implemented the get_template_names to return the template I created.

Accessing that endpoint through the browser works fine when there are no objects to list, so everything related to setting up HTML renderers alongside APIs seems to work.However, when tere are objects to return the same endpoint fails with the following error:

ValueError: dictionary update sequence element #0 has length XX; 2 is required

Where XX is the number of attributes the object has.

This documentation section suggests the view function should act slightly differently when returning an HTML Response object, but I assume this is done by DRF's builtin views when necessary, so I don't think that's the issue.

This stackoverflow Q/A also looks relevant but I'm not quite sure it's the right solution to my problem.

How can I make my ModelViewSets work with both HTML and JSON renderers? Thanks!

I now understand doing this is not as trivial as I initially thought. I ended up implementing my own list method in my ViewSets that checks the request.accepted_renderer.format — NirIzr
– NirIzr, Commented Feb 5, 2017 at 16:00

getup8 · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-06 20:40:51Z

DRF has a brief explanation of how to do this in their documentation.

I think you'd do something like this...

On the client side, tell your endpoint what type of response you want:

fetch(yourAPIUrl, {
    headers: {
      'Accept': 'application/json'
      // or 'Accept': 'text/html'
    }
  })

In your view, just check that and act accordingly:

class FlexibleAPIView(APIView):
    """
    API view that can render either JSON or HTML.
    """
    renderer_classes = [TemplateHTMLRenderer, JSONRenderer]

    def get(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
        queryset = Things.objects.all()

        # If client wants HTML, give them HTML.
        if request.accepted_renderer.format == 'html':
            return Response({'things': queryset}, template_name='example.html')

        # Otherwise, the client likely wants JSON so serialize the data.
        serializer = ThingSerializer(instance=queryset)
        data = serializer.data
        return Response(data)

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