Django REST Framework ModelSerializer get_or_create functionality

In my experience nmgeek’s solution won’t work in DRF 3+ as serializer.is_valid() correctly honors the model’s unique_together constraint. You can work around this by removing the UniqueTogetherValidator and overriding your serializer’s create method.

class MyModelSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):

    def run_validators(self, value):
        for validator in self.validators:
            if isinstance(validator, validators.UniqueTogetherValidator):
                self.validators.remove(validator)
        super(MyModelSerializer, self).run_validators(value)

    def create(self, validated_data):
        instance, _ = models.MyModel.objects.get_or_create(**validated_data)
        return instance

    class Meta:
        model = models.MyModel