Image in profile can't be updated

[priyadhoundiyal]

On the endpoint {{apiUrl}}/user - the PUT request does not save the image in the user's profile since image field is a SerializerMethodField(which is readonly) in ProfileSerializer.

I was thinking that one way to allow image to be updated could be to remove image as a SerializerMethodField but keep it included in serializer fields like so:

class ProfileSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    username = serializers.CharField(source='user.username')
    bio = serializers.CharField(allow_blank=True, required=False)
    following = serializers.SerializerMethodField()

    class Meta:
        model = Profile
        fields = ('username', 'bio', 'image', 'following',)
        read_only_fields = ('username',)

    def get_following(self, instance):
        request = self.context.get('request', None)

        if request is None:
            return False

        if not request.user.is_authenticated():
            return False

        follower = request.user.profile
        followee = instance

        return follower.is_following(followee)

But in this way we end up losing the default image for the profile in the {{apiUrl}}/profiles/ view.

To get the default image in the {{apiUrl}}/user view - we could include image as a SerializerMethodField there
image = serializers.SerializerMethodField()
and define get_image as:

def get_image(self, obj):
    if obj.profile.image:
        return obj.profile.image
    return 'https://static.productionready.io/images/smiley-cyrus.jpg'

but I don't think it's very consistent if the user endpoint shows a default value for the image but the profile endpoint does not.
Could anyone share another - hopefully consistent - way to do this?
TIA

[Brian-Azizi]

@priyadhoundiyal One way to keep it consistent is to extend your solution in the following way:

You can create a custom field that extends the URL Field.

This allows you override the to_representation method to give you a default value and theto_internal_value method to still allow you to write to the field:

class ImageSerializerField(serializers.URLField):
    def get_attribute(self, obj):
        # We pass the object instance onto `to_representation`,
        # not just the field attribute.
        return obj

    def to_representation(self, obj):
        if obj.image:
            return obj.image

        return settings.DEFAULT_IMAGE_URL

    def to_internal_value(self, data):
        return data

(I have set the value 'https://static.productionready.io/images/smiley-cyrus.jpg' as a constant in the settings since we are now using this value in two places)

Next, in your ProfileSerializer, you can add the image attribute as ImageSerializerField

class ProfileSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    ...
    image = ImageSerializerField(allow_blank=True)
    ...

I think this is working but do let me know if you run into any problems with it.

If someone has a cleaner solution, please share :)

[abhinavsharma629]

Can you assign me this task, please?

[priyadhoundiyal]

Sure @abhinavsharma629, you can create a pull request with changes in the relevant sections

[abhinavsharma629]

Instead of using the read-only Serializer method field or a custom made image serializer and returning the image we can return the image URL in the Profile serializer, that would be correct and more efficient while handling a large number of requests for the API.

In the next PR, I will implement this.

[abhinavsharma629]

Please review the changes.
I think we can close these two issues now. It returns image url for profile of a user as well as updates the image url.
Besides shows the models view in the admin panel too.