Automatically add all model fields to django rest serializer

Question

When i define a ModelSerializer the meta class can be used for defining fields which are to be serialized it automagically inherits all fields in the Model:

class ClientSerializer(ModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = Client

I have to build a nested serializer (based on a SerializerMethodField). So i have to define the fields which to include:

class ClientSerializer(ModelSerializer)
     address = SerializerMethodField('get_client_addresses')

     class Meta:
          model = Client
          fields = ('address','name','city', <etc*>)

     def get_client_addresses(self, obj):
          addresses = Addresses.objects.all().filter(parent=obj)
          serializer = AddressSerializer(addresses, many=True,
                                         context={'request', self.context.get('request') })
          return serializer.data

Question: In this case i have to manually add all client-fields to the fields-tuple. I don't want to do that since it seems pretty repetatative and fault sensitive. How can i add a "plus-1" field (in this case address) to the default fields that are included when a ModelSerialzer is used???

note: this is a simplified example. I have models with 40+ fields and i have to use a SerializerMethodField for the nested models, since i have to pass the context data (user-info) to the serializer for field-level authentication i have implemented.

(update, address is a SerializerMethodField, got names mixed up)

Answer 1

By default, the ModelSerializer returns all model fields if fields argument is not defined in the Meta.
Similarly for normal serializers.Serializer, it will return all the fields defined in the serializer(except read-only fields).

You have to specify fields in your Meta class only if you want a subset of all the fields to be returned.

(From the DRF docs)

If you only want a subset of the default fields to be used in a model serializer, you can do so using fields or exclude options.

So just don't specify the fields argument in your Meta class and it should return all the fields.

Answer 2

What you need is the list of fields from the model. It is reachable in model._meta.fields. At this point, you may add the field address if it's not part of your model.

Even better, with django 1.8, you can use model.get_fields. doc