Django REST Framework CSV

3.0.2 · active · verified Sat Apr 11

djangorestframework-csv provides tools to integrate CSV rendering and parsing into Django REST Framework APIs. It enables DRF serializers to output data as CSV and allows DRF parsers to consume CSV data. The current version is 3.0.2, with releases tending to be driven by Django and DRF compatibility updates rather than a fixed cadence.

Warnings

breaking Python 2 support was completely removed in version 3.0.0. Projects using older Python versions must upgrade to Python 3.
Fix: Ensure your project is running on Python 3.6 or newer (as per general DRF recommendations).
gotcha Ensure compatibility with your Django and Django REST Framework versions. Version 3.0.0 and above officially support Django 2.x, 3.x, 4.x and DRF 3.x. Older `djangorestframework-csv` versions might have narrower compatibility ranges.
Fix: Always check the `djangorestframework-csv` documentation or release notes for precise compatibility with your Django and DRF versions, especially before upgrading either framework.
gotcha When rendering CSV, the default headers are automatically derived from dictionary keys or serializer fields. To specify custom headers or control field order, set the `header` attribute on your `CSVRenderer` subclass, or dynamically provide headers via `renderer_context={'header': ['field_a', 'field_b']}`.
Fix: For static headers: `class MyRenderer(CSVRenderer): header = ['id', 'name']`. For dynamic headers, override the `get_header` method or pass `renderer_context`.
gotcha For very large datasets, using `CSVRenderer` can consume significant memory as it loads all data into memory before rendering. Use `CSVStreamingRenderer` instead to stream data, which reduces memory footprint and improves performance for large exports.
Fix: Replace `CSVRenderer` with `CSVStreamingRenderer` in your `renderer_classes` for endpoints returning potentially large amounts of data to enable streaming.

Install

pip install djangorestframework-csv Install Package

Imports

CSVRenderer

from rest_framework_csv.renderers import CSVRenderer

CSVStreamingRenderer
```
from rest_framework_csv.renderers import CSVStreamingRenderer
```
Use this for large datasets to avoid memory issues.

CSVParser

from rest_framework_csv.parsers import CSVParser

Quickstart

This example demonstrates how to integrate `CSVRenderer` into a Django REST Framework `APIView` to output a list of dictionary objects as CSV. When an endpoint using this renderer is accessed with a `.csv` format suffix (e.g., `/products.csv`), the response will be a CSV file. For very large datasets, consider using `CSVStreamingRenderer`.

from rest_framework.response import Response
from rest_framework.views import APIView
from rest_framework_csv.renderers import CSVRenderer

class ProductListView(APIView):
    renderer_classes = (CSVRenderer, )

    def get(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
        # In a real application, this would come from a database query
        # or a DRF serializer output.
        products = [
            {'id': 1, 'name': 'Laptop', 'price': 1200.00},
            {'id': 2, 'name': 'Mouse', 'price': 25.00},
            {'id': 3, 'name': 'Keyboard', 'price': 75.00}
        ]
        return Response(products)

# To integrate this, you would typically add it to a Django URLconf, e.g.:
# from django.urls import path
# urlpatterns = [
#     path('products.csv', ProductListView.as_view(), name='product-csv'),
# ]
# When accessing /products.csv, the API will return CSV data.

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