Here’s an approach based on James’s answer but for a newer version of Django Rest Framework and support for reading and writing (update of the nested field only, it should be easy enough to add creation, see DRF’s documentation for that.)
class ProfileSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
class Meta:
model = Profile
fields = ('phone', 'some', 'other', 'fields')
class UserDetailsSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
"""User model with Profile. Handled as a single object, profile is flattened."""
profile = ProfileSerializer()
class Meta:
model = User
fields = ('username', 'email', 'profile')
read_only_fields = ('email', )
def to_representation(self, obj):
"""Move fields from profile to user representation."""
representation = super().to_representation(obj)
profile_representation = representation.pop('profile')
for key in profile_representation:
representation[key] = profile_representation[key]
return representation
def to_internal_value(self, data):
"""Move fields related to profile to their own profile dictionary."""
profile_internal = {}
for key in ProfileSerializer.Meta.fields:
if key in data:
profile_internal[key] = data.pop(key)
internal = super().to_internal_value(data)
internal['profile'] = profile_internal
return internal
def update(self, instance, validated_data):
"""Update user and profile. Assumes there is a profile for every user."""
profile_data = validated_data.pop('profile')
super().update(instance, validated_data)
profile = instance.profile
for attr, value in profile_data.items():
setattr(profile, attr, value)
profile.save()
return instance