Mongoengine serialize dictionary (with nested dicts)? - dictionary

Question

I've created a dictionary from an Uploaded file in Django.
This dictionary has a nested list of dictionaries:
file = {"name": "filename", "sections": [{"section_name": "string", "lines": [{line_number: 0, "line"; "data"}]}], "etc": "etc"}
The model represents the dictionaries depth too.
class Line(EmbeddedDocument):
line_number = IntField()
line = StringField()
definition = ReferenceField(Definition)
class Section(EmbeddedDocument):
section_name = StringField()
lines = EmbeddedDocumentListField(Line))
class File(Document):
name = StringField()
sections = EmbeddedDocumentListField(Section))
created_on = DateTimeField()
created_by = StringField()
modified_on = DateTimeField()
modified_by = StringField()
In the POST I have the following to chop the file up into the above Dict (the file is a simple text file):
file= {}
with open(os.path.join(path, filename + ".txt"), 'r') as temp_file:
filelines = temp_file.readlines()
sections = []
section = {}
lines = []
for i, l in enumerate(filelines):
if i == 0:
section["section_name"] = "Top"
elif '*' in l:
if l.index('*') == 0 and '*' not in lines[len(lines) - 2"line"]:
section["lines"] = lines
lines = []
sections.append(section)
section = dict()
section["section_name"] = filelines[i + 1][1:-2]
line = {"line_number": i + 1, "line": l}
lines.append(line)
section['lines'] = lines
sections.append(section)
file["name"] = filename
file["sections"] = sections
I will tidy this up eventually.
Once the dict has been made how do I serialise it using the serializer?
Is it possible to insert this into a serializer?
If not how can I get it all into the database with validation?
I've tried json.dumps() and JsonRequst() then putting them in data= for the serializer but get Unable to get repr for <class '....'>
I'm pretty new to Django and MongoDB so if you need more info I can provide :)
Thanks!
Update
Change the model's List Fields to EmbeddedDocumentListField as suggest in the answer.
Answered
Thanks to Boris' suggestion below it pointed me to an error I wasn't getting initially. I had a typo and passing the dict directly into FileSerializer(data=file) works like a charm! :)

Answer 1

James!
The easiest way to validate that your incoming JSONs adhere to the Mongoengine Documents schema that you've specified is to use DRF-Mongoengine's DocumentSerializer.
Basically, what you need to do is create a serializer
serializers.py
import rest_framework_mongoengine
class FileSerializer(rest_framework_mongoengine.DocumentSerializer):
class Meta:
fields = '__all__'
model = File
Then you need a view or viewset that makes use of this Serializer to respond to GET/POST/PUT/DELETE requests.
views.py
from rest_framework_mongoengine import viewsets
class FileViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
lookup_field = 'id'
serializer_class = FileSerializer
def get_queryset(self):
return File.objects.all()
and register this viewset with a router
urls.py
from rest_framework import routers
# this is DRF router for REST API viewsets
router = routers.DefaultRouter()
# register REST API endpoints with DRF router
router.register(r'file', FileViewSet, r"file")
I'd also recommend using EmbeddedDocumentListField instead of ListField(EmbeddedDocumentField(Section)) - it has additional methods.