DRF Typescript generator

This package allows you to generate typescript types / interfaces for Django REST framework serializers, which can be then simply used in frontend applications.

Setup

Install the package with your preferred dependency management tool:

$ poetry add drf-typescript-generator

Add drf_typescript_generator to INSTALLED_APPS in your django settings.py file:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'drf_typescript_generator',
    ...
]

Usage

To generate types run django management command generate_types with the names of django apps you want the script to look for serializers in:

$ python manage.py generate_types my_app

Example serializer found in my_app:

class MySerializer(serializers.Serializer):
    some_string = serializers.CharField(max_length=100)
    some_number = serializers.IntegerField()
    some_boolean = serializers.BooleanField()
    choice = serializers.ChoiceField(
        choices=[1, 2, 3],
        allow_null=True
    )
    multichoice = serializers.MultipleChoiceField(
        choices=[2, 3, 5]
    )

Generated typescript type:

export type MySerializer = {
  choice: 1 | 2 | 3 | null
  multichoice: (2 | 3 | 5)[]
  someBoolean: boolean
  someNumber: number
  someString: string
}

The script looks for classes that inherit from APIView in project urls.py file as well as urls.py files in given apps. It then extracts serializers which are used in modules of found classes. This approach cover Views as well as ViewSets.

Arguments

The generate_types command supports following arguments:

Argument	Value type	Description	Default value
--format	"type" | "interface"	Whether to output typescript types or interfaces	"type"
--semicolons	boolean	If the argument is present semicolons will be added in output	False
--spaces	int	Output indentation will use given number of spaces (mutually exclusive with --tabs). Spaces are used if neither --spaces nor --tabs argument is present.	2
--tabs	int	Output indentation will use given number of tabs (mutually exclusive with --spaces)	None
--preserve-case	boolean	If present properties in generated types will preserve serializer fields casing (camelcased otherwise)	False

Features

The package currently supports following features that are correctly transformed to typescript syntax:

• Basic serializers
• Model serializers
• Nested serializers
• Method fields (typed with correct type if python type hints are used)
• Required / optional fields
• List fields
• Choice and multiple choice fields (results in composite typescript type)
• allow_blank, allow_null (results in composite typescript type)

More features are planned to add later on:

• One to many and many to many fields correct typing
• Differentiate between read / write only fields while generating type / interface
• Integration with tools like drf_yasg to allow downloading the generated type from the documentation of the API
• Accept custom mappings