Django Rest Framework POST Update if existing or create

Unfortunately your provided and accepted answer does not answer your original question, since it does not update the model. This however is easily achieved by another convenience method: update-or-create

def create(self, validated_data):
    answer, created = Answer.objects.update_or_create(
        question=validated_data.get('question', None),
        defaults={'answer': validated_data.get('answer', None)})
    return answer

This should create an Answer object in the database if one with question=validated_data['question'] does not exist with the answer taken from validated_data['answer']. If it already exists, django will set its answer attribute to validated_data['answer'].

As noted by the answer of Nirri, this function should reside inside the serializer. If you use the generic ListCreateView it will call the create function once a post request is sent and generate the corresponding response.