Filtering & Searching in DRF (Django REST Framework)

In APIs, sometimes we don’t want to fetch all data. Instead, we want to filter or search based on a condition like:

Show only books by a specific author
Show books published on a specific date
Search books with keyword “Python” in title

Django REST Framework makes this easy using query parameters, django-filter, and search filters.

1. Install and Setup django-filter

First, install the django-filter package:

pip install django-filter

Then add it to your Django project in settings.py:

INSTALLED_APPS = [

…

‘django_filters’,

]

2. Enable Filtering and Searching in DRF

Inside your settings.py, update the REST_FRAMEWORK section to include:

REST_FRAMEWORK = {

…

‘DEFAULT_FILTER_BACKENDS’: [

‘django_filters.rest_framework.DjangoFilterBackend’, # For filtering

‘rest_framework.filters.SearchFilter’, # For searching

}

3. Update Your View for Filtering & Searching

Go to your books/views.py and update your view class like this:

from rest_framework import viewsets, filters

from django_filters.rest_framework import DjangoFilterBackend

from .models import Book

from .serializers import BookSerializer

class BookViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):

queryset = Book.objects.all()

serializer_class = BookSerializer

# Adding filtering and searching

filter_backends = [DjangoFilterBackend, filters.SearchFilter]

# Filter by these fields using exact match

filterset_fields = [‘author’, ‘published_date’]

# Search by these fields using partial match

search_fields = [‘title’, ‘author’]

Code Explanation :

from rest_framework import viewsets, filters

This imports viewsets (to create REST API views) and filters (used for search functionality like ?search=).

from django_filters.rest_framework import DjangoFilterBackend

This imports the filtering backend from django-filter. It allows us to filter data using URL query parameters like ?author=Shahid.

from .models import Book

We import the Book model. This is the database table we’ll be filtering and searching.

from .serializers import BookSerializer

The BookSerializer is used to convert Book model data into JSON format for API responses.

The Main View

class BookViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):

This creates a view class that handles CRUD operations (Create, Read, Update, Delete) for the Book model.

queryset = Book.objects.all()

This line fetches all books from the database as the default list.

serializer_class = BookSerializer

This tells DRF to use the BookSerializer when sending data in API responses.

Filtering and Searching Logic

filter_backends = [DjangoFilterBackend, filters.SearchFilter]

This enables both filtering and searching.
- DjangoFilterBackend: For exact field filters like ?author=Shahid.
- SearchFilter: For partial search like ?search=python.

filterset_fields = [‘author’, ‘published_date’]

You can filter the book list by exact values of these fields.
- Example: /books/?author=Shahid
- Example: /books/?published_date=2024-01-01

search_fields = [‘title’, ‘author’]

You can search the book list by partial match in title or author.

Example: /books/?search=python will return any books with “python” in title or author name.

What These Do?

filterset_fields: Enables exact-match filtering using query parameters
➤ Example: ?author=Shahid
search_fields: Enables partial/keyword search
➤ Example: ?search=python