Filter data in Django Rest Framework

1. Basic setup

Install the django-filter using pip,

pip install django-filter

Then add django_filters to Django's INSTALLED_APPS,

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'django_filters',
    ...
]

Add the DEFAULT_FILTER_BACKENDS setting in Django settings.py file as below,

REST_FRAMEWORK = {
    'DEFAULT_FILTER_BACKENDS': ['django_filters.rest_framework.DjangoFilterBackend']
}

For this example, I created the Introduction model and IntroductionSerializer class as below. I am going to develop mainly three functions here, i.e.

1. Filter data functionality based on name and id(automatically generated field from the Django model, which is treated as the primary key) field

2. Search the data based on name and intro fields and

3. Ordering the data based on the name field and set default order to id
   

from django.db import models

# Introduction model
class Introduction(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    intro = models.CharField(max_length=1000, blank=True)
    video_link = models.CharField(max_length=100, blank=True)

    def __str__(self):
        return self.name

from rest_framework import serializers
from .models import Introduction

class IntroductionSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = Introduction
        fields = '__all__'

Now let's write the viewset function to apply the required filters, search, and ordering. I am going to use the ModelViewSet in this tutorial. In ModelViewSet, you need to provide at least queryset and serializer_class attribute. For my case, queryset and serializer_class attributes will be as below,

from rest_framework.viewsets import ModelViewSet
from .models import Introduction
from .serializers import IntroductionSerializer

# Introduction viewset
class IntroductionViewSet(ModelViewSet):
    queryset = Introduction.objects.all()
    serializer_class = IntroductionSerializer

2. Implementation of filter function

For filtering the data, let's provide some other attributes as well. The filter_backends attribute will determine how your filter will work. You can pass the list of filter_backends functions in this attribute. The final viewset function with filter will look like following,

from django_filters.rest_framework import DjangoFilterBackend
from rest_framework.filters import SearchFilter, OrderingFilter
from rest_framework.viewsets import ModelViewSet
from .models import Introduction
from .serializers import IntroductionSerializer

# Introduction viewset function with filter functionality
class IntroductionViewSet(ModelViewSet):
    queryset = Introduction.objects.all()
    serializer_class = IntroductionSerializer
    filter_backends = [DjangoFilterBackend, SearchFilter, OrderingFilter]
    filterset_fields = ['id', 'name']
    search_fields = ['=name', 'intro']
    ordering_fields = ['name', 'id']
    ordering = ['id']

Here, I have three filter_backends,

1. DjangoFilterBackend: It will control to filter the fields based on name and id

The example of filter URL will look like follwoing,

http://localhost:8000/api/introduction/?name=ear

2. SearchFilter: It will help to search the name and intro fields. The search behavior may be restricted by prepending various characters to the search_fields,

1. '^' Starts-with search
2. '=' Exact matches
3. '@' Full-text search (Currently only supported Django's PostgreSQL backend)
4. '$' Regex search

The example of search URL will look like following,

http://localhost:8000/api/introduction/?search=Lorem

3. OrderingFilter: It will help to order the data based on name and id fields. By default, the ordering will be according to the id field

The example of ordering filter URL will look like following,

http://localhost:8000/api/introduction/?ordering=name

Alright, finally you set the filter, search, and ordering functionality in your Django Rest Framework.