Centralizing Validation in DRF: Shared Functions vs Inheritance
djangopythondrf
When working with Django REST Framework, validations often start scattered across serializers, leading to duplication and inconsistencies. This post shares a real-world case where two serializers handled the same model differently, creating mismatched validation rules. I’ll walk through why validators = [], parent serializers, or clean() weren’t the right solution, and how I extracted domain-specific rules into a shared validator module and mixin. The result: one single source of truth for validation, less code duplication, and easier evolution of legacy APIs.
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