Django Filter Backend

Question

I'm working with Django rest framework API, I am trying to make a filter by first_name or by last_name or by both of them. This is my ContactViewSet.py :

class ContactViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    queryset = Contact.objects.all()
    serializer_class = ContactSerializer
    filter_backends = (DjangoFilterBackend, )
    filter_fields = ('first_name', 'last_name')
    lookup_field = 'idContact'

My DRF's settings :

REST_FRAMEWORK = {
    'DEFAULT_FILTER_BACKENDS': ('django_filters.rest_framework.DjangoFilterBackend',),
}

My actuel request url looks like :

http://localhost:8000/api/v1/contacts/?first_name=Clair&last_name=Test

But I'm looking for something like this :

http://localhost:8000/api/v1/contacts/?first_name=Cl**&last_name=Tes**

Any help would be appreciated ..

Answer 1

I solved my problem by modifying my class ContactFilter like this:

import django_filters
from .models import Contact

class ContactFilter(django_filters.FilterSet):
   class Meta:
        model = Contact
        fields = {
            'first_name': ['startswith'],
            'last_name': ['startswith'],
        }
        together = ['first_name', 'last_name']

And in my view I just had to do this :

class ContactViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    queryset = Contact.objects.all()
    serializer_class = ContactSerializer
    filter_class = ContactFilter

My request url looks like :

http://localhost:8000/api/v1/contact/?first_name__contains=Cl&last_name__contains=Tes

But I still wonder if I can have something like this in Django

http://localhost:8000/api/v1/contacts/?first_name=Cl**&last_name=Tes**

Answer 2

I think the DjangoFilterBackend is mainly equality-based filtering. But you can customize the filtering method.

Also in DRF, for non exact filtering, there is the SearchFilter which makes case-insensitive partial matches searches by default.

Answer 3

What I do, is write custom FilterBackend. Something like this:

# views.py
from rest_framework import filters

class ObjektFilterBackend(filters.BaseFilterBackend):
    allowed_fields = ['objekt', 'naziv', 'kategorija', 'zadnja_sprememba']

    def filter_queryset(self, request, queryset, view):
        flt = {}
        for param in request.query_params:
            for fld in self.allowed_fields:
                if param.startswith(fld):
                    flt[param] = request.query_params[param]

        return queryset.filter(**flt)


class ObjektiViewSet(mixins.ListModelMixin,
                 mixins.RetrieveModelMixin,
                 viewsets.GenericViewSet):
    authentication_classes = (
        authentication.TokenAuthentication,
        authentication.SessionAuthentication)
    permission_classes = (IsAuthenticated,)
    queryset = models.Objekt.objects.all()
    serializer_class = serializers.ObjektSerializer
    filter_backends = (ObjektFilterBackend, ObjektOrderBackend,)
    ....

Besides basic filtering (fieldname=value pairs) I can use any Django queryset Field Lookups (__gt, __gte, __startswith,...) in my URLs like this:

http://localhost:8000/api/v2/objekti/?naziv__startswith=Apartma&zadnja_sprememba__gte=2018-01-01

And ObjektFilterBackend class could be easily adapted to support searching by pattern.

Just a little warning - this approach is potentially dangerous, because it allows end user to filter also by foreign key field. Something like this also works:

http://localhost:8000/api/v2/objekti/?kategorija__naziv__icontains=sobe

So restrict allowed_fields carefully and not include foreign keys that could lead to related User model.

Answer 4

For fuzzy search lookups I recommend using this approach:

filters.py

from django_filters import rest_framework as filters
from django.db.models import Q
from . import models

def filter_name(queryset, name, value):
    """
    Split the filter value into separate search terms and construct a set of queries from this. The set of queries
    includes an icontains lookup for the lookup fields for each of the search terms. The set of queries is then joined
    with the OR operator.
    """
    lookups = [name + '__icontains', ]

    or_queries = []

    search_terms = value.split()

    for search_term in search_terms:
        or_queries += [Q(**{lookup: search_term}) for lookup in lookups]

    return queryset.filter(reduce(operator.or_, or_queries))


class ContactFilter(filters.FilterSet):
    first_name = filters.CharFilter(method=filter_name, name='first_name')
    last_name = filters.CharFilter(method=filter_name, name='last_name')

    class Meta:
        model = models.Contact
        fields = [
            'first_name',
            'last_name',
        ]

api.py

class ContactViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    queryset = Contact.objects.all()
    serializer_class = ContactSerializer
    filter_class = ContactFilter
    ...

Answer 5

If your requests aren't too complicated you can also use:

class YourModelViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    queryset = YourModel.objects.all()
    serializer_class = YourModelSerializer
    filter_fields = {'some_field': ['startswith']}

Which will enable '?some_field__starswith=text' sintax support in request query params.

I suppose 'startswith' can be replaced with any django standart queryset filter param.