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

Nov 14, 2017 · by Tim Kamanin

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:

python

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
        ]