Many-To-Many Serializer Issue | Django | Page 1

I have 2 models: Document and Source. These 2 models have a many-to-many relationship like this. Within Source, I would like to have an array of Documents.

class Document(models.Model):
    id = models.BigAutoField(primary_key=True)
    uuid = models.UUIDField(default=uuid.uuid4, editable=False, unique=True)
     # lots of other fields

class Source(models.Model):
    id = models.BigAutoField(primary_key=True)
    uuid = models.UUIDField(default=uuid.uuid4, editable=False, unique=True)
    references = models.ManyToManyField(Document, blank=True)
    # lots of other fields

I've created a DocumentUUIDSerializer, that is seperate from DocumentSerializer, to only contain the uuids, ie. just so its lighter. Within my SourceSerializer, I use this new lighter serializer.

class DocumentUUIDSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    uuid = serializers.UUIDField(read_only=True)
    class Meta:
        model = Document
        fields = ("uuid",)

class SourceSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    # other serializers
    references = DocumentUUIDSerializer(required=False, many=True)

    class Meta:
        model = Source
        exclude = ["id"]

    def create(self, validated_data):
        print(validated_data)

        # lots more code

For some reason, however, the first output is from my ModelViewSet:

{'references': [{'uuid': 'd74b1941-8270-4a85-adea-9e2fb19332f6'}], 'title': 'GGs', 'content': {}, 'author': 'Sidd Mittal', 'url': 'http://example.com'}

And this output is from my create function:

{'references': [OrderedDict()], 'title': 'GGs', 'content': {}, 'author': 'Sidd Mittal', 'url': 'http://example.com'}

references simply becomes an empty OrderedDict, and I can't seem to figure out why. I've tried adding multiple print statements, and it's clear that there seems to be an error with the DocumentUUIDSerializer, but I can't understand where. Any help would be greatly appreciated 🙂

just to add: the weird thing is if i change fields, within DocumentUUIDSerializer, to "title" for example (another field), the OrderedDict becomes populated correctly. Using "uuid", however, always causes the OrderedDict to be empty within the create() function

Reference Data: OrderedDict([('title', 'Sources_2')])

vs.

Reference Data: OrderedDict()

#Many-To-Many Serializer Issue