django-rest-framework Mixins [Intermediate] Creating Custom Mixins

Example

---

DRF offers the chance to further customize the behavior of the generic views/viewsets by allowing the creation of custom mixins.

---

How to:

To define a custom mixin we just need to create a class inheriting from object.

Let's assume that we want to define two separate views for a model named MyModel. Those views will share the same queryset and the same serializer_class. We will save ourselves some code repetition and we will put the above in a single mixin to be inherited by our views:

• my_app/views.py (that is not the only file option available to place our custom mixins, but it is the less complex):

  from rest_framework.generics import CreateAPIView, RetrieveUpdateAPIView
  from rest_framework.permissions import IsAdminUser
  
  class MyCustomMixin(object):
      queryset = MyModel.objects.all()
      serializer_class = MyModelSerializer
  
  class MyModelCreateView(MyCustomMixin, CreateAPIView):
      """
      Only an Admin can create a new MyModel object
      """
      permission_classes = (IsAdminUser,)
      
      Do view staff if needed...
  
  class MyModelCreateView(MyCustomMixin, RetrieveUpdateAPIView):
      """
      Any user can Retrieve and Update a MyModel object
      """
      Do view staff here...
  

Conclusion:

Mixins are essentially blocks of reusable code for our application.