How To Set Field-Level Error From Serializer Validate() Method In Django Rest Framework

Ouch, it looks like it's the longest post title of this blog! But the solution itself is pretty short and straightforward.

When you raise a serializers.ValidationError, you may be tempted to provide an error as a string argument. Which works, but as a result, this error will be shown under "non_field_errors" key of JSON response.

To set the error as a field-level, instead of passing a string argument, provide a dictionary of type {'field_name': 'Error message'}.

Here's an example:

def trigger_validator(value):
    if value['event_type'] not in ['click', 'submit']:
        raise serializers.ValidationError({'event_type': "Please provide a correct type of event"})

class TriggerSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = Trigger
        fields = ('id', 'event_type', 'events')
        validators = [
            trigger_validator
        ]