Include intermediary (through model) in responses in Django Rest Framework

How about…..

On your MemberSerializer, define a field on it like:

groups = MembershipSerializer(source="membership_set", many=True)

and then on your membership serializer you can create this:

class MembershipSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):

    id = serializers.Field(source="group.id")
    name = serializers.Field(source="group.name")

    class Meta:
        model = Membership

        fields = ('id', 'name', 'join_date', )

That has the overall effect of creating a serialized value, groups, that has as its source the membership you want, and then it uses a custom serializer to pull out the bits you want to display.

EDIT: as commented by @bryanph, serializers.field was renamed to serializers.ReadOnlyField in DRF 3.0, so this should read:

class MembershipSerializer(serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer):

    id = serializers.ReadOnlyField(source="group.id")
    name = serializers.ReadOnlyField(source="group.name")

    class Meta:
        model = Membership

        fields = ('id', 'name', 'join_date', )

for any modern implementations