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Django Rest Framework's ModelSerialzer allows you to build a serializer automatically from a model.

Django Rest Framework's ModelSerializer allows you to build a serializer automatically from a model.

from itertools import chain def to_dict(instance): opts = instance._meta data = {} for f in chain(opts.concrete_fields, opts.private_fields): data[f.name] = f.value_from_object(instance) for f in opts.many_to_many: data[f.name] = [i.id for i in f.value_from_object(u)] return data 

from django.db import models from itertools import chain class PrintableModel(models.Model): def __repr__(self): return str(self.to_dict()) def to_dict(instance): opts = instance._meta data = {} for f in chain(opts.concrete_fields, opts.private_fields): data[f.name] = f.value_from_object(instance) for f in opts.many_to_many: data[f.name] = [i.id for i in f.value_from_object(u)] return data class Meta: abstract = True 

from itertools import chain def to_dict(instance): opts = instance._meta data = {} for f in chain(opts.concrete_fields, opts.private_fields): data[f.name] = f.value_from_object(instance) for f in opts.many_to_many: data[f.name] = [i.id for i in f.value_from_object(instance)] return data 

from django.db import models from itertools import chain class PrintableModel(models.Model): def __repr__(self): return str(self.to_dict()) def to_dict(instance): opts = instance._meta data = {} for f in chain(opts.concrete_fields, opts.private_fields): data[f.name] = f.value_from_object(instance) for f in opts.many_to_many: data[f.name] = [i.id for i in f.value_from_object(instance)] return data class Meta: abstract = True 

The code for django's model_to_dict had most of the answer. It explicitly removed non-editable fields, so removing that check results in the following code which behaves as desired:

from django.db.models.fields.related import ManyToManyField def to_dict(instance): opts = instance._meta data = {} for f in opts.concrete_fields + opts.many_to_many: if isinstance(f, ManyToManyField): if instance.pk is None: data[f.name] = [] else:   data[f.name] = list(f.value_from_object(instance).values_list('pk', flat=True))   else:   data[f.name] = f.value_from_object(instance) return data 

from django.db import models from django.db.models.fields.related import ManyToManyField class PrintableModel(models.Model): def __repr__(self): return str(self.to_dict())   def to_dict(self): opts = self._meta data = {} for f in opts.concrete_fields + opts.many_to_many: if isinstance(f, ManyToManyField): if self.pk is None: data[f.name] = [] else:   data[f.name] = list(f.value_from_object(self).values_list('pk', flat=True))   else:   data[f.name] = f.value_from_object(self) return data class Meta: abstract = True 

The code for django's model_to_dict had most of the answer. It explicitly removed non-editable fields, so removing that check and getting the ids of foreign keys for many to many fields results in the following code which behaves as desired:

from itertools import chain def to_dict(instance): opts = instance._meta data = {} for f in chain(opts.concrete_fields, opts.private_fields): data[f.name] = f.value_from_object(instance) for f in opts.many_to_many: data[f.name] = [i.id for i in f.value_from_object(u)] return data 

from django.db import models from itertools import chain class PrintableModel(models.Model): def __repr__(self): return str(self.to_dict()) def to_dict(instance): opts = instance._meta data = {} for f in chain(opts.concrete_fields, opts.private_fields): data[f.name] = f.value_from_object(instance) for f in opts.many_to_many: data[f.name] = [i.id for i in f.value_from_object(u)] return data class Meta: abstract = True